ABSTRACT. This research demonstrates that consumers with high (vs. low) usage of social networking sites (SNSs) prefer NFTs representing a partial but the only digital piece (vs. one of the limited digital copies) of artwork. NFT uniqueness is identified as the psychological mechanism underlying the SNS usage effect on NFT preference.

ABSTRACT. This study aims to conceptualize rewarded customer engagement while investigating its impact on loyalty program members, and whether it induces and/or encourages their engagement on brand’s Metaverse platform(s). This study serves to address the research gap by conducting extensive un-structured face-to-face interviews with members of the brand’s loyalty program, who have been using the program as well as are aware of brand’s Metaverse platform(s). Our findings uncover several unique aspects of relationship between rewarded customer engagement, loyalty program and Metaverse. This research is vital for marketing scholars and practitioners who seek to understand the rise of Metaverse, how the rewarded customer engagement impacts differently on it versus on brand’s other digital platforms like loyalty program, and the relationship between them, in order to improve customer engagement as well as increase loyalty.

ABSTRACT. As the importance of online virtual space grows due to the restrictions on offline activities caused by COVID-19, interest in online virtual space using the 4th industrial technology is increasing. Accordingly, the metaverse that combines virtual and reality continues to be an important issue in marketing. Accordingly, in the fashion industry, various attempts are being made by converging with the metaverse to provide new and enjoyable experiences to customers. For instance, They open brand stores or events in the metaverse to deliver new experiences to customers. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine the impact of the customer experience of a luxury fashion brand pop-up store on customer satisfaction, affective commitment, and brand loyalty in metaverse environment. Furthermore, we hoped to contribute to the activation plan and marketing strategy of various fashion brands in metaverse, and we tried to present practical implications for the changing fashion industry.

ABSTRACT. NFTs are touted as revolutionary to market and monetize digital assets. However, critics have questioned NFT value, labeling it as fraudulent. Despite mixed reviews, various firms are leveraging NFTs as a value proposition for customers. In this study, using service-dominant (S-D) logic, we explore how NFTs can help firms in value co-creation and service exchange. We propose and test a conceptual framework using a multi-method approach -1) we investigate NFTs popularity using historical news articles spanning ten years, 2) we use a case study to examine business NFT use in value co-creation and service exchange, subsequently, proposing a conceptual framework illustrating such value exchange, 3) we test our conceptual framework by analyzing data from multiple sources, including surveys, online forums, social media, and transactions. Results from our study, provide business valuable insight into using NFTs as value co-creation and service exchange tool.

ABSTRACT. We propose that consumers respond differently depending on service agent type (human vs. AI) in a green consumption context. We further explore the mechanism underlying the process.

ABSTRACT. With the understanding of VIP sales behavior based on social comparison and the adequate use of VIP marketing programs, luxury brands can optimize their sales of luxury brands. However, scant research examines the simultaneous impact of social comparison and VIP marketing in the luxury industry.

We examine whether the purchase decision of VIP customers in the luxury industry is affected by the brand popularity of ordinary customers through social comparison. Also, we investigate whether and how various VIP marketing programs influence the impact of social comparison of VIP customers. Using the proprietary sales data of VIP customers in a department store, we find that the sales of VIPs for luxury brands are positively influenced by the brand popularity of similar high-end segments, while the opposite occurs for lower segments. The results also show that offline VIP marketing programs along with digital marketing for ordinary customers can enhance such behavior.

ABSTRACT. This study aims to verify that the authenticity of individual influencers who post daily life and review-oriented content on their social networking sites (SNS) forms parasocial interaction (PSI) and parasocial relationship (PSR) which facilitates purchase intention. Hypotheses are established on the effect of influencer's authenticity, which consists of integrity, empathy, credibility, and disclosure, on PSI and PSR, and on the effect of PSR on purchase intention. The structural equation modeling analysis shows that the integrity, empathy, credibility, and disclosure dimensions of influencers have a positive effect on PSI and PSR, the PSR increases purchase intention. The results show the consumer behavior process of individual influencers on SNS, and have implications for discovering new market segments and new distribution channels centered on individual influencers.

ABSTRACT. We explore the effect of social exclusion on consumers’ willingness to disclose personal information to brands. We propose that socially excluded (vs. non-excluded) consumers will be more willing to share their personal information to brands, due to the desire for social connection. Four studies tested the effect and boundary conditions.

ABSTRACT. The Net Promotor Score (NPS) is one of the most well-known metrics for measuring customer loyalty. While the measure has attracted much attention due to its simplicity and ease of use, there has equally been much criticism of its reliability, nomological validity and how it is connected to business outcomes. Therefore, the current study aims to understand whether the NPS can be used to identify brand advocacy, and secondly, does the NPS work in a care-based, low switching service context. The study included three unique contexts: at home care, residential care and disability care. In total, there were 611 participants, all of which were based in Australia. A questionnaire was developed and administered to each group and included both quantitative and qualitative questions to understand the consumer experience. The findings supported NPS as an effective metric in a care-based, low-switching context for identifying positive customer advocacy.

ABSTRACT. The main objective of the study is to investigate multichannel consumer choices between supermarkets and convenience stores when consumers buy products in the beverage category. The methodology involves both questionnaire surveys through fieldwork and purchase history data in Japan.

ABSTRACT. The current paper aims to understand green behavior from the perspective of Gen Z, the emerging consumers of a new tech-savvy world, driven by social media. We offer a novel definition of green behavior via the lens of consumer activism in the context of social media, the basis for purchase decision-making by Gen Z. Undertaking a review of extant literature, we also identify a conceptual model for green behavior as a form of consumer activism in social media. We identify perceived environmental transgression as a precursor to green behavior. We also study the less-studied moderators of green stigma and green skepticism, which are important both in the context of Gen Z as well as social media.

ABSTRACT. This manuscript introduces Digital Luxury wearable Assets (DLA), which we define as artificial intelligence (AI) and/or blockchain-enabled virtual garments and accessories offered by luxury brands worn on virtual platforms to dress a virtual representation of a consumer. We discuss these objects in terms of their futuristic imaginaries and the practices’ entanglements that are required for their usage by consumers. Through the analysis of 35 in-depth interviews with consumers, as well as selected industry materials from the consulting industry, we provide an overview of the challenges of the adoption of DLA. We conclude our work with a theoretical discussion on the role of futuristic imaginaries in consumption practices.

ABSTRACT. This experimental study investigates the impact of clothing gender labels and consumer gender on purchase intention of clothing in the context of genderless fashion. The results suggest that respondents (N=321) prefer clothing gender labels that align with their own gender identity and that women evaluate clothing labeled as genderless more positively than men. The results provide empirical evidence on the role of gender labels and consumer gender in the context of genderless fashion.

ABSTRACT. E-commerce has seen significant growth since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. This has led to changes in consumer preferences and increased pressure on companies to develop effective e-commerce and social media capabilities to retain customers. This study examines the impact of these capabilities on customer retention and firm performance by collecting quantitative data from 160 small U.S. e-commerce companies in the fashion industry. The study finds that customer retention positively relates to firm performance and that factors, including cross-device shopping, payment methods, page speed, standard delivery time, Pinterest activity, and Instagram activity, significantly impact customer retention. The study suggests strategies for companies to remain competitive in the dynamic e-commerce landscape.

ABSTRACT. Demand for handcrafted goods has been rising in the past years. Consumers value artisanal goods and often celebrate the preservation of tradition and technique. While the market pays a premium on tradition, heritage and handmade, the use of new technologies opens new opportunities to artisan entrepreneurs. They choose different ways to adopt technology, adapt their business model and at the same time protect the distinctive characteristics and value of their offering to stay competitive. This study explores how artisans balance continuity and change and how reconcile innovation and tradition. The findings reveal different patterns of technology adoption and firm development among artisans, depending on identity type and craft/product characteristics. While previous studies have defined artisan entrepreneurs as not aspiring for firm growth, our findings indicate that many do welcome it for economic reasons, however within the boundaries that their identity and business philosophy allow.

ABSTRACT. The main objective of this research is to investigate the impact of brand image fit on consumer’s perceived luxury, perceived symbolic value, perceived authenticity, and perceived novelty towards fashion brand collaboration. This study uses a qualitative approach to test the research hypotheses. The contribution of this study is twofold: (1) it conceptually advances Congruity Theory and Spillover effect into the area of brand collaboration within a fashion domain; (2) it provides insights into the efficacy of each consumer-related factors which can be used in the development of sound collaboration strategies, in addition to branding and pricing strategies of new fashion brand collaborations.

ABSTRACT. please check the attached abstract for details.

ABSTRACT. Implementing chatbots can be a double-edged sword for businesses. Service failures today have become more unpredictable, and customers are likely to encounter a chatbot when seeking online customer service to solve service failures. Little research has focused on how customers perceive chatbots handling their service requests after service failures. The research is to examine how customer forgiveness may vary after service failures when interacting with a chatbot. Perceived justice and chatbot identity were considered. An online experiment shows that customers feel less forgiveness when knowing that a chatbot deals with their service requests. Further, interactional justice mediates the relationship between chatbot identity and customer forgiveness. The results offer suggestions for chatbot service providers that disclosing the identities of chatbots may stop customers from forgiving after service failures happen as customers perceive less justice during online service interactions.

ABSTRACT. As service robots are becoming increasingly ubiquitous, the impact of such technological advancements on privacy has gained much attention. Despite the development, quantitative research on the influence mechanism of privacy concerns on service robot adoption intentions is still limited. This research explores the influencing mechanism and boundary conditions of the interaction between consumer privacy concerns and service types on service robot adoption intentions. Through two situational experiments, it is found that compared with those with low privacy concerns, those with high privacy concerns are less willing to use service robots in credence (vs. experience) services. Compared with those with low privacy concerns, those with high privacy concerns have perceived higher customer data vulnerability in credence (vs. experience) services. The current research also verifies the moderating effect of personalization declaration on the aforementioned effect.

ABSTRACT. One of the main challenges brands face nowadays is the ability to provide a real-life experience through online platforms. The aim of this study is to analyze an AR try-on app versus a website, considering consumers self-concept and testimonials. To this end, an online survey was conducted, in which respondents were exposed to two of four scenarios: AR APP or website experience, and positive versus negative reviews presence. Our findings indicate that ideal self-congruence impacts both, purchase intention and confidence. The present study positively contributes to the AR and self-concept literature, while opening new avenues of research for both academics and practitioners.

ABSTRACT. Technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) or Robotics are emerging as a new way of improving services, readjusting and impacting all business industries and relationships among people. Since very few of the existing studies highlight the robot-human interactions, further studies in the enhancement of human well-being through transhumanistic technologies, close relationship marketing capabilities, and the evolution of the engagement process between humans and AI-enabled machines are needed. With this study, we can claim that a deep human-social robot relationship can be established, being Customer-Robot Identification a positive influence on the levels of Customer-Robot Relationship. Customer-Robot Relationship was also crucial for the development of Customer Well-Being, fact that was reinforced in the mediation analysis, as Customer-Robot Identification, alone, is not enough to promote customers’ wellness.

ABSTRACT. Religious tourism is one of the most important touristic segments nowadays. Yet, the cognitive and emotional mechanisms shaping tourists' intentions, and impacts of technology were not investigated. This study aims to examine how awe influences loyalty towards a religious site and how augmented reality affects the process.

ABSTRACT. The capability for Artificial Intelligence in the beauty industry is enormous, as customers are demanding increasingly customized offers that only these strategies can offer. However, there is still a scarcity of empirical research on customer experiences enabled by AI, which highlights this research's relevance, which we intend to bridge.

ABSTRACT. Consumer psychologists often make inferences about a consumer’s self-control based on observed choices of vice versus virtue foods. In this research, we extend our observation to the post-choice consumption stage and find evidence that self-control implications from choice may be systematically different from those based on quantity consumed.

ABSTRACT. Middle age or midlife is a pivotal period in one’s life course in terms of finding a new or renewed purpose in life, addressing the excesses of youth, reducing work and home stress, and setting up behavioural patterns that influence positive and healthy aging. From a men’s health perspective, a more nuanced social marketing approach is needed to influence men to be more proactive regarding their health behaviours. Moreover, With the rapid development of digital health today, the lack of ehealth or digital health literacy in men is an urgent problem to address to help foster health and wellbeing. This research examines the question: To what extent is eHealth literacy associated with proactive health and wellbeing in midlife men. Implications exist for helping middle-aged men develop a more future-focused sense of themselves, set health and wellbeing goals and foster behaviour change that sets them up for a healthier old age.

ABSTRACT. While researchers have begun to investigate how ambient elements affect choices between healthy and unhealthy food, the role of ambient temperature is relatively unknown. Through one historical data research and six experiments including a field experiment, we find that ambient coldness increases consumers’ preference for unhealthy food. This effect is induced by the energy desire automatically activated in a cold ambiance. Consequently, consumers are more inclined to choose calorie-rich unhealthy food. We also find that the effect diminishes for liquid foods and reverses when the unhealthy food’s temperature is cold. To provide more managerial implications, we further explore the downstream consequences of the effect, namely consumers’ spending amount. We conclude with a discussion of our theoretical contributions to the literature on temperature effects and food consumption. We also offer practical takeaways for restaurant managers and policy-makers.

ABSTRACT. The present study is designed to assess the ethical-moral effectiveness of three levels of AI implementations in the hospitality industry, which include mechanical AI for transactional services (automated service), thinking AI for functional services (algorithms search), and feeling AI for hedonic services (biometric sensors) when compared to consumers’ interactions with human.

ABSTRACT. A virtual reality space that uses internet and augmented reality (AR), the Metaverse is quickly establishing itself as a brand-new environment where people may buy, enjoy entertainment, and take part in events that blur the boundaries between real life and virtual life. By helping brands create a truly seamless shopping experience that is Direct-to-Avatar (D2A) - as opposed to Direct-to-Consumer (D2C) - the Metaverse represents a further step in the evolution of omnichannel.This research consists of a qualitative study (i.e., 10 semi-structured interviews with brand managers) and three experimental studies assessing the effects of the Metaverse experience in influencing purchase intention. This research also investigates the role of brand authenticity as a mediator of the relationship between type of shopping experience and customer engagement. Results show that the type of shopping experience has a significant main effect on purchase intention and confirm the mediation effects.

ABSTRACT. This study examines the impact of digital payment methods on consumer spending, highlighting adoption's moderating role. A two-phase approach, involving 741 survey participants and 166,151 customer records, reveals that digital payments increase willingness to pay and total spending compared to credit cards. Adoption plays a pivotal role, with simple payment users showing significantly higher credit card usage than non-users.

ABSTRACT. Online consumer misbehavior field knows a remarkable increase in the number of studies. However, confusion and fragmentation are to be resolved. This study addresses these issues via a systematic review with the objective to consolidation the field. Thus, we provide a conceptualization and operationalization, and we bridge the existing knowledge.

ABSTRACT. We investigate how the visual cues of nonfungible tokens (NFTs) affect consumer perceptions and preferences. We demonstrate that people favor easy-to-visualize NFTs over difficult-to-visualize NFTs or without NFTs because easy-to-visualize NFTs are perceived as more authentic. The positive effects of easy-to-visualize NFTs are stronger for luxury (vs. non-luxury) goods.

ABSTRACT. Along with the emergence and popularity of NFTs (Non-fungible Tokens), the luxury brand industry has witnessed an increase in the use of NFTs. Due to the novelty of this phenomenon, extant understanding of NFT operation within a luxury context is insufficient. This study adopts a case study method, analyzing 39 luxury NFT campaigns from 2021 to 2022. The analysis adopts a socio-technical perspective, integrating the technical factors of NFTs and social factors of luxury desirability. On this basis, an emergent framework of desirability strategy for luxury NFTs is generated. The framework can help researchers and managers understand or design luxury NFTs in terms of desirability from three domains and seven dimensions. The findings contribute to the currently inadequate literature on NFTs and have important theoretical and managerial implications, further promoting the development of NFTs.

ABSTRACT. We investigate how consumers evaluate a digital product with multiple NFTs. We show that people prefer uniquely fractioned NFTs to duplicated NFTs. This effect is driven by preferences for uniqueness. The effect disappears when an NFT product itself provides unique aspects (e.g., unique serial numbers).

ABSTRACT. This research investigates the impact of blockchain technology on the products evaluation. We find that consumers prefer the product information with blockchain to the same information without blockchain. We further demonstrate. We demonstrate that the positive effect of blockchain is stronger for those who know the blockchain.

ABSTRACT. This paper investigates how consumers evaluate authentic luxury bags based on the visual quality of virtual luxury bags in the metaverse. Two studies have shown that virtual luxury bags with poor visual quality in the metaverse have a negative impact on the evaluation of luxury bags in the real world. However, this negative effect is mitigated in high-quality virtual bags. Furthermore, we found that perceived authenticity mediates the relationship between the visual quality of virtual luxury bags and consumers’ evaluation of authentic luxury bags.

ABSTRACT. To bridge the gap in the existing literature on virtual influencers, this study investigates the attributes of virtual influencers and cognitive processes underpinning the adoption of behaviour induced by virtual influencers. The findings contribute to the literature by exploring the conditions that ensure the persuasiveness of virtual influencers’ communication.

ABSTRACT. Machine learning predicts consumer preferences based on previous search results to ensure that the right ad is delivered to the right person. However, the advancement of machine learning is accompanied by a number of ethical risks, in particular to social media, consumer chose to disable “suggested for you” ads for various reasons. This paper seeks to determine why consumers aged 18 to 40 enable or disable the "suggested for you" ad on social media; to investigate the mere exposure effect of the "suggested for you" ad on purchase intention; and to compare the age factor between millennial and generation Z. At this stage, sensemaking approach is adopted to gather data on consumer actual behaviour towards machine learning in advertising to draw hypotheses on mere exposure effect and purchase intention. A survey will be conducted to examine the above relationships to conclude whether machine learning is perceived as an opportunity or a threat to the consumer.

ABSTRACT. This study examines the impact of others' reviews on consumer responses (helpfulness & buying intention) in an online shopping platform. We propose that review features, such as review message construal and review inconsistency between review message valence and rating, determine review credibility as product-related information, which in turn influences helpfulness of review and buying intention toward the product. Specifically, low-level construal review messages will be perceived as more credible than high-level construal review messages, which affect helpfulness and buying intention. In addition, the effect of review message construal will be moderated by review inconsistency. The effect of the review message construal will be enhanced in the condition of review consistency (positive content-high rating & negative content-low rating), but it will be disappeared or attenuated in the condition of inconsistency(positive content-low rating, negative content-high rating).

ABSTRACT. Research on the application and development prospects of virtual products, there has been a lack of targeted research on the Attributes of virtual fashion products, with different research perspectives, methods, and theoretical frameworks. Therefore, in this paper investigated attributes of virtual fashion products, perceived value and purchase intention, and analyzed the configuration effect of virtual fashion products purchase intention by using fuzzy set qualitative comparison method (fsQCA). This study collected a samples of 280 Chinese men and women aged between 20 to 40 who had purchased virtual fashion products online. This data will help to successfully develop virtual fashion products.

ABSTRACT. Chatbot-based services in online travel agency (OTA) are rapidly spreading in order to respond more agilely to consumers' needs based on the digitalization of the travel industry. Although AI chatbots use anthropomorphism to provide social experiences on behalf of humans, research results on its effects are mixed. Therefore, based on construal level theory, this study suggests the degree of anthropomorphism (low vs. high) of chatbots prime mental representations of different construal levels (low vs. high) and the fit between anthropomorphism and communication context (communication types and conversation types) has a positive effect on use behavior. This research method consisted of setimental analysis for exploring use behavior of AI chatbots and two experimental studies (study 1 and study 2) to examine the hypotheses. The results of this study expand construal level theory and avatar research to provide an understanding of the anthropomorphism of AI chatbots.

ABSTRACT. The recent importance of appearance and the desire for social success is closely related to the growth of luxury brands. This study is to understand the concept of erotic capital of luxury brands and to identify the relationship between brand performance and brand performance on digital platforms. Clarify the components and measurement tools of erotic capital based on a survey of customers who have purchased luxury brands, and measure the attractive capital of luxury brands through youtube fashion show shorts. As a result of the study, erotic capital measurement results showed new characteristics of luxury brands unrelated to brand performance. This study will be helpful for researchers and practitioners to gain insight into the changing luxury market and consumers.

ABSTRACT. To promote the diffusion of environmentally friendly equipment, appropriate measures need to be taken for each target group. This study evaluated changes in the influence of mass media on PV installation intentions by generation, based on over 10 years of consumer awareness survey data and the number of newspaper reports.

ABSTRACT. Agility is one emergent approach to manage challenges like increasing uncertainty or high volatility. Due to its relative novelty, the extant academic literature on marketing agility is narrow, therefore there is yet the need for further refinement of the definition, the construct, terminology, and its dimensions. Similarly, in practitioner circles there is a growing “buzz” about implementing agile in the field of marketing. The main objective of this research is to show through a synthesised content analysis, where the differences and overlaps lie between the two main treatments of the agility construct, namely, marketing agility and agile marketing. The second objective is to provide synthesised bundles of terms that underlie these two constructs to understand their exact building blocks. An implication of the research is to highlight the importance of bringing consistency to the literature by warning against using the terms agile marketing and marketing agility interchangeably.

ABSTRACT. In service industries, collaboration among franchisor and franchisees improve innovation performance. The challenge has been finding the balance between standardization and adaptation for franchisors. Restricting franchisee autonomy results in franchisees hiding their innovations. From franchisee perspective, the extent of sharing ideas is a function of success expectancy and valence that help the franchisor select and retain innovative ideas.

ABSTRACT. Cancel culture is a social media phenomenon that targets someone for bad behavior in a process of public shaming, or, being “cancelled”. I use qualitative analysis methods to identify elements of cancel culture’s narrative, and how cancel culture is representative of the end of a parasocial relationship.

ABSTRACT. Four studies show that consumers believe others share their achievements more frequently on social media than they do. This belief occurs because consumers believe that they are more moral than others. In Studies 1a and 1b, participants overestimated others’ likelihood of sharing the same achievement (e.g., winning three awards) in a more frequent manner (three separate social media posts vs. a single post). Study 2 provided evidence for the underlying mechanism. When an agent’s moral character was manipulated to be higher in Study 2, participants thought that the agent would share achievements on social media less frequently. Study 3 showed a managerial implication of the research. Managers overestimated how frequently consumers would engage with a social media campaign involving posting about their donations. The results document a novel belief that people hold about their and others’ achievement-sharing behavior as well as a novel mechanism of moral character judgment.

ABSTRACT. Engaging customers is a critical requirement for sharing economy platforms (SEPs) to sustain and grow their user base. Although the interactions between customers and peer service providers are the primary source of SEPs’ economic value, little is known about the role of interactivity in driving customer engagement. This research investigates the influence of different dimensions of interactivity (two-way communication, participation, joint problem-solving) on customer engagement in SEPs. Results from two surveys among users of ten leading SEPs (total N = 1,654) indicate that different dimensions of interactivity enhance engagement in different ways. Furthermore, contrary to previous studies acknowledging the importance for nurturing heavy users’ engagement in SEPs, we point out the need to attract light users’ attention by facilitating their effective participation in conversations with service providers.

ABSTRACT. While social media marketing opens a variety of new windows for enlightening brand–customer relationships, a gritty puzzle is that brand recognition does not invariably echo with customers’ perceived value. This provokes the need to uncover the missing pieces in bridging the gap between brand recognition and customer perceived value in the digital age. This research falls within the innovative new work in the marketing literature in positing co-creation as a crucial mediator in facilitating the impact of brand recognition on customers’ perceived value. Based on social identity theory, we investigated how co-creation is moderated by virtual communication identification in influencing customers’ perceived value towards a brand.

ABSTRACT. This paper is set to explore Chinese consumers’ fashion disposal practices and in particular the role of personal networks, online platforms and contextual factors in post-acquisition decision making. We conducted 10 semi structured interviews with Chinese consumers and adopted a life story approach. We analyzed the data using thematic analysis and our findings highlight the clear distinction between pre and post lockdown disposal practices. Most importantly the role of digital outlets in shaping both fashion consumption and disposal.

ABSTRACT. In recent years E-commerce platforms recommend some products for consumers based on their shopping history and user persona. However, sometimes, unfamiliar products or styles would be recommended to consumers unintentionally or intentionally. Curiosity drives consumers to try but this idea would be declined with the consideration of product fit uncertainty. Augmented Reality (AR) is the integration of digital information with the user‘s environment in real-time, it can deal with issues related to physical apprehension that hinder consumers’ online shopping, especially for the unfamiliar style. This study aims to investigate whether AR technology could improve consumers' purchase likelihood. Drawn on AR, consumers can easily evaluate the fitness between themselves and the selected products. Thus, we propose AR could reduce product fit uncertainty, and further improve purchase likelihood, particularly unfamiliar products.

ABSTRACT. This research explores cultural antecedents of algorithm support using a mix-method approach. We train an algorithm from 554 candidate predictors and identify respect for authority (a defining component of power distance) as the top predictor. Three lab studies validate that power distance increases algorithm support through heightened perceived algorithms’ fairness.

ABSTRACT. We examine the effect of specific emotions in electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) on monthly donations of a non-profit organization (NPO). We suggest the empathy-helping (empathy–altruism) hypothesis (Batson, 2009) as a theoretical anchor to show that eWOM fundraising appeals should determine by the donation motivation. To this end, we first collected tweets mentioning a charity (n=71,462; users=23,430), which were divided into the type of eWOM (marketer-generated content; MGC vs. user-generated content; UGC). To detect six specific emotions (Ekman, 1972) in texts automatically, we apply the transformer-transfer learning approach to the emotion detection model. We found that emotions that evoke empathy (e.g., sadness in MGC) and positive empathy (e.g., joy in UGC) positively affect the donation amount based on the empathy-helping hypothesis. We present an approach for how social media marketers can utilize our findings to compose and manage tweets to increase donations.

ABSTRACT. This research investigates factors that drive the consumers’ adoption of AI robots. Through two studies, we find that an AI robot’s benefit type and its appearance familiarity jointly influence the consumers’ intention to adopt an AI robot and that their perception of fit about the AI robot mediates this relationship.

ABSTRACT. AI has been studied in different fields with distinct research focuses. However, studies of news-personalization technologies have mainly focused on research engines and filtering mechanisms. Few studies examine news aggregators and the effects of news personalization on audiences, thus demanding further research on this topic. AI is an imminent reality for the future, reshaping the news media. Hence, it is still necessary to investigate the impacts that this technology potentially offers to users. Therefore, the current study seeks to respond to this need to deepen research into the area of news personalization through AI, by analyzing the response of audiences toward current and future technological tendencies. The main aim of this research is to investigate the levels of trust that users have in AI-generated personalized video news.

ABSTRACT. Artificial intelligence (AI) technology is recognized as essential in the 4th industrial revolution (Schwab, 2017), which is capable of interacting with the environment and processing and transforming data information to inform goal-directed behavior (Paschen, Kietzmann, & Kietzmann, 2019). Due to the advances in intelligent systems and the incorporation of AI agents in smart devices, more than eight billion digital voice assistants will be used globally by 2024 (Thormundsson, 2022; Gilkson & Woolley, 2020). For successful and positive consumer-brand relationships, constructs such as trust, satisfaction, and commitment are vital (Garbarino & Johnson, 1999; Nyadzayo & Khajehzadehb, 2016). This study conducted a systematic literature review that allows to uncover the main theories, constructs, methodologies and contexts on the topic.

ABSTRACT. Due to Covid-19, luxury brands saw their contact with consumers greatly diminished and revenues decreased significantly (D’Arpizio et al., 2021). Contrarily, the gaming industry saw its demand and exposure increase. This industry is expected to exceed $200 billion by the end of 2023 (Gilliland, 2020). Thus, in 2020, many luxury brands opted to significantly upsurge their investments in online gaming. The adoption of game advertising also represents a way for the luxury industry to adapt to its current target, as 81% of Gen Z and 77% of Millennials are gamers (Jain, 2021). And, by 2025, both generations are expected to account for 50% of the market. However, there is still little empirical research regarding game advertising in the context of luxury brands. Thus, this research aims to study the impact that brand credibility and the use of game advertising have on the perceived coolness of luxury brands and, subsequently, on their equity.

ABSTRACT. In addition to humanoid and robotic designs, an increasing number of AI-powered services are being represented by non-human species (i.e., zoonotic design). Yet, little is known about the consequential effects of such zoonotic AI on consumer adoption of these services. Drawing on the concept of speciesism and Cognitive Load Theory, the current research seeks to uncover how does using zoonotic (vs. robotic) designs affect consumer adoption. In three studies, results suggest that consumers are more reluctant to adopt AI services when the AI is represented by a species that is far away from (vs. close to) humans due to a heightened cognitive difficulty of imagining the species completing the task. However, such an effect has an important boundary condition when the characteristics of the non-human species are congruent with the task itself. We conclude our study by providing implications and offering avenues for future research.

ABSTRACT. The focus of this paper is on the establishment of a service design model for digital fabrication. Service design processes and tools are used to identify problems of current digital fabrication systems. Augmented reality is deployed to substantiate two-dimensional information by combining with digital fabrication equipment to enforce interaction. A two-dimensional quality questionnaire is used to consult user opinions to optimize the model for increasing overall system satisfaction. The result of this paper will be helpful for the exchange and diffusion of digital knowledge to strengthen people's interaction with information. It could improve the efficiency of entire value chains including product development, marketing and service, which is very important to future innovative design and fabrication practice.

ABSTRACT. Commercial condom advertisements have long been treated as a grey area that may have both beneficial and harmful impacts. This paper examines the impact of commercial condom advertisements on dating application preference and public health. In this paper, we leverage a large-scale quasi-natural experiment in the context of NBA online live streaming on Tencent Sport, a Chinese platform, and use the difference in difference in difference model to investigate this important research question. Utilizing data from application download rank data, we find that condom advertisements can increase demand for dating applications relative to other social applications. We then use Internet search data to measure sexually transmitted diseases, and unintended pregnancy trends, finding that condom advertisements can increase those trends. Overall, our results suggest that commercial condom advertisements can benefit dating application developers but do harm to public health.

ABSTRACT. The current research introduces a novel relationship between consumer attitudes toward time and consumer well-being, connected to organic food consumption based on the findings from 206 American consumers. Consumer motivations to seek nutritional information appears as a mediator impacting organic food purchase intentions. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.

ABSTRACT. Well-being-based management approaches have become increasingly important. Consideration of consumer well-being is one of them. In particular, social demand and interest in health are extremely high. However, because health has a wide range of meanings, even for health-related services that directly contribute to health, the term "health" is still ambiguous. This study aimed to clarify the dimensions of Consumer Health Goals, which is the ultimate goal of what consumers want to become through health. After discussing the characteristics of benefits in health-related services and indicating the significance of this study, a comprehensive analytical framework for capturing Consumer Health Goals was derived from a review of the concepts related to goals and health. Qualitative data analysis of 1,479 open-ended statements revealed a structure in which a wide range of Consumer Health Goals was identified, consisting of 8 dimensions and 35 sub-dimensions.

ABSTRACT. Recent consumer behavior research indicates many consumers overgeneralize the relationship between food energy (i.e., calories) and bodily energy (i.e., physical and cognitive performance). We extend this idea to sport consumers, conducting two experiments among sport fans that demonstrate the imperative role of framing. Our data indicate that rivalry games and vicarious losing both increase fans’ desire to consume high-calorie, nutrient-poor foods (that is, “unhealthy” food) when food is framed as a source of fuel. This effect derives from the overgeneralized belief that the function of food is to provide energy for the body. Conversely, vicarious winning instead results in fans displaying an increased preference for healthy and environmentally friendly foods. Thus, framing, rivalry, and the result of the focal game all play central roles in the healthiness of fans’ behavior. We unpack implications for marketing scholars and consumer managers.

ABSTRACT. Midlife women face multiple co stressors and shifting roles and responsibilities as they age. Maintaining a sense of wellbeing is critical but challenging. Our findings show procrastination and burnout are associated with poor perceived health and eudemonic wellbeing. Social marketers need to develop initiatives to support this group.

ABSTRACT. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the shift toward a more digital world. As a result of this, online shopping sites were popular among customers. This study examines online brand trust and its influencing factors in the specific context of online shopping sites in Sri Lanka. Accordingly, six hypotheses are built and The hypothesis is being tested on online shopping site users in Sri Lanka. The primary data were taken from 300 online shopping site users. Convenience sample techniques were used to select the respondents. According to the findings of the study, security, online experience, quality information, and brand reputation appear to have a significant and positive relationship with online brand trust.

ABSTRACT. Despite the importance of shopping in people's life and evidence that online environments can lead to greater happiness and well-being in consumers, studies on online shopping well-being are limited. Furthermore, few studies focused on the role of emotions on shopping well-being. This research attempts to: (1) gain a deeper understanding of what positive and negative emotions can be felt by consumers in shopping online, (2) understand the role of utilitarian and hedonic motivations and emotions, directly and indirectly, to foster WOM and well-being, and (3) which combinations of positive and negative emotions have to occur for consumer WOM and well-being. The research follows a mixed methods approach with two phases of data collection: in-depth interviews and an online questionnaire. This paper responds to calls for more investigation into online shopping’s benefits and behaviors and a deeper understanding of the role of emotions as a psychological mechanism of technology adoption.

ABSTRACT. This study examined the combined effects of two levels of scarcity appeals (low vs. high) and time, such as how much time remains from the travel date (short vs. long), on attitude toward the advertising and purchase intention. The results showed that when the time remaining from the travel date is close, a high level of scarcity appeal will be more effective than a low level of scarcity appeal in influencing consumers’ positive attitudes toward advertising. When the time remaining from the travel date is close, a high level of scarcity appeal will be more effective than a low level of scarcity appeal in influencing consumers' positive attitudes and purchase intentions. Furthermore, mediation analysis showed that consumers' attitudes toward the advertising mediate the role of time remaining from the travel date on scarcity appeals-purchase intentions relationships.

ABSTRACT. The following is not a conversation with a bank clerk. " Instead, let me introduce you to customized credit loans," "Do you want me to connect you to the screen of using COVID-19 support funds and checking balance?" These are the contents of consultations with AI chatbots at financial institutions. Chatbot, which used to be an additional tool for adding convenience to life, is now at the center of our lives.

However, consumers are still passive in accepting AI chatbots. Consumers obtain information through interaction.

This study aims to examine the effect of anthropomorphism proposed as a way to create social relations. Also, this study investigates the impact of AI chatbots on social reality, perceived anthropomorphism, and consumers' trust in product information. Finally, this study aims to provide meaningful insights that could be used as a reference for designing user-friendly chatbots that increase the utilization of AI chatbots in the financial industry.

ABSTRACT. Even though Mod is a cutting-edge business model that benefits a variety of multi-sided market participants, empirical research on Mod, the value co-creation activity of game users and game developers, is hard to come by. This study intends to look into how the combination of the Mod and the IP from the prior game affects user engagement. An experiment was carried out with Korean university students to examine the hypotheses. User engagement was found to increase with the use of the Mod and the IP from the previous games. On the other side, it was discovered that the impact of mod games on user engagement did not differ significantly from non-mod games when the previous game's IP was absent. The study's findings help establish the framework for afterwards empirical research by showing the effect of mod on user engagement.

ABSTRACT. This paper investigates if beauty premium (visually appealing design) plays a buffer role after product failure or becomes a beauty penalty. The results show that beauty premium continues after product failure for consumers who respond to visual design emotionally, while beauty penalty was observed with consumers’ cognitive response.

ABSTRACT. In pursuit of competitiveness, brands are critical as they represent valuable intangible assets that contribute to creating and sustaining competitive advantages. The emerging idea of brand competitiveness, defined as a brand’s outperformance of competing brands, represents a promising solution to the problem that existing branding constructs fail to incorporate competition as a relative concept. This article addresses three gaps in the current literature on brand competitiveness. It discusses conceptualizations of the construct, arguing for a customer-based perspective and introducing customer-based brand competitiveness (CBBC). It then explores the construct’s nomological network and suggests CBBC as a mediator of the strategic orientations–performance relationship, thus proposing customer-related and firm-related performance as consequences and several strategic orientations as antecedents. It finally reports on the development of a new measurement scale for brand competitiveness.

ABSTRACT. Digital fashion represents key technologies for the online environment, and it has been used as a new marketing strategy for the fashion industry. As consumer digital experience has been diversified, research on the effect on consumer attitudes and behavior toward digital fashion needs to be investigated. This study examines consumer experiences with digital fashion and textiles using VR technology via in-depth interviews. Consumer experience includes fantasy, feeling, and fun. In addition, the impacts of visual tactile, cyber motion sickness, and presence on reuse intention and e-WOM are discussed. Academic and practical implications for digital fashion are provided.

ABSTRACT. Green product experience has become an important marketing strategy for corporations to tap potential green consumers. Based on the theory of planned behavior, this article explores the influence of attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control on consumers’ green purchasing intentions from the perspective of green product experience with consumers in China, Japan, and Korea as the research objects. Our findings suggest that green product experience of consumers in the three countries can directly affect consumers' green purchasing intentions. Green product experience has an indirect influence on consumers’ green purchasing intention through the mediating effect of attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control. The multiple group comparison shows the external validity of TPB through an examination of green purchasing behavior in different cultural settings, which will help enterprises implement effective experience marketing strategies.

ABSTRACT. This study explores the impact of product design similarity on consumer behavior and purchasing decisions. The study surveyed university students to investigate the relationship between product design similarity and purchasing behavior and focused on backpacks as high-involvement public goods. Results showed that resistance to similarity was highest for jackets, followed by daypacks and mug cups, while products such as rice cookers and air purifiers had a limited impact. The study found that shape was a significant factor in purchasing behavior and overall impression, color, and fastener also influenced purchasing decisions. People with a high interest in design tend to judge similarity based on overall impression, material, and color rather than shape.

ABSTRACT. Humour as a character strength can boost individuals’ ability to cope with job stress. Yet, scant evidence exists to support anecdotal findings that humour use enhances the experiences of both customers and employees. Building on service climate and JD-R framework, this study examined whether different humour use [affiliative (AH), self-enhancing (SEH), and self-defeating (SDH)] and humour endorsing climate (HEC) influenced job stress (JSTRESS) and satisfaction (JSAT). Data was collected from 301 aged care workers. We found that HEC and FLE humour use jointly reduced JSTRESS, thereby increasing JSAT. JSAT was also affected positively by HEC. Employing the latent moderated structural equations, we tested moderating effects of HEC on humour use and JSTRESS. While the negative SEH-JSTRESS relationship became weaker as HEC increases, the positive SDH-JSTRESS association was attenuated as HEC decreases. The findings advance the service literature and have managerial implications.

ABSTRACT. In determining artwork prices, identification of characteristics of the artist is crucial. While the impact of demographic profiles of the artists has mainly been examined in the literature on art pricing, the relationships among artists were highly disregarded. In the current research, the authors focus on the measures of network centrality derived upon the group exhibitions in order to investigate their influence on artwork prices. Analysis results suggest that degree centrality and closeness centrality positively affect artwork prices, whereas betweenness centrality has adverse effect. Moreover, network centrality values play more important role in explaining artwork prices than historical reputation indexes such as gender, nationality, time elapsed after death, and main residencies of the artists. This study contributes to branding literature while it provides art marketers with much insight on artist branding.

ABSTRACT. Hallyu, as a cultural phenomenon affects not only openness for Korean culture, but also influence buying behaviour of fans. Hungarian society is also affected by K-pop and K-drama, therefore significance of K-pop related characteristics of digital space (such as fear of missing out, peer pressure and fandoms) were examined in this study. Authors developed a model how these elements are connected to purchase intension of Hungarian fans.

ABSTRACT. This qualitative, interpretive research deals with service failure and recovery in the French manga market. In particular, it shows how fandom organizes itself to respond to service failures and eventually connect the publisher or distributor to the reader without benefiting from the services of the bookstore.

ABSTRACT. Despite radical social movements adopting market logic in their operations, very little insights exist on their co-existence with commercial spheres. This conceptual article aims to bridge this gap by opening a discussion of the co-creative application of a brand and brand management practices in the context of Burning Man.

ABSTRACT. Research on psychological ownership (PO) is prevalent in Marketing and consumer behavior domain. This research investigates the structure of PO of others and the antecedents and outcomes. Recently, people are more actively engaging in activities that support their favorite celebrities, idols, and animated characters. They invest their time and money in the objects and obtain great satisfaction and happiness. Based on research on PO in organizational behavior, this research tests the SEM that postulates four dimensions of PO of consumers’ favorite public figure, two antecedents, furthermore their positive and negative consequences of PO. The results show that the higher the consumers’ sense of self-efficacy and accountability toward the target, the stronger negative feelings such as territoriality arise. On the other hand, the dimension of identity and belongingness of PO leads to a sense of community with others who share values and enhances their well-being.

ABSTRACT. Anthropomorphism is a prevalent marketing practice that fosters consumer perceptions of a brand as humanlike. In today’s hyper-connected marketplace, firms are increasingly imbuing their brands with human features with the hope that the favorable perceptions of humanlike attributes in nonhuman objects could lead to consumers’ positive evaluation of humanized products. Prior studies that use brand anthropomorphism as a foundation have investigated the impact of brand anthropomorphism on various outcomes such as product evaluations, emotional responses, and intentions to replace a product. However, what is missing from prior work is an understanding of the impact of brand anthropomorphism on the purchase intentions for clearance products that are sold under a retailer’s promotional strategy as an inventory management tool. In this research, we aim to identify the negative effect of anthropomorphism on consumers’ attitudes toward clearance products.

ABSTRACT. Digitally-enriched products are becoming a trend across various retail settings, allowing companies to rethink the user experience of their products. This study aims to contribute to the body of knowledge on the use of AR in product design, particularly its impact on brand equity and repurchase intention. Through AR, consumers have the opportunity to interact directly with a brand, such as when the animated digital content, unlocked by scanning the product, prompts them to take a reciprocal action. If a technology does not arouse curiosity, a consumer will pay little attention. This in turn leads to less interaction and consequently less engagement with the brand. To reflect the strength of this relationship, consumer brand engagement (CBE) is incorporated in our study. Especially in the case of novel technologies, practitioners are often confronted with consumer skepticism or frustration. Therefore, we included consumer irritation as a moderating variable in our study.

ABSTRACT. More and more branded content is being produced by AI. This field of so-called generative AI became particularly popular to the public with the launch of ChatGPT. Furthermore, political correctness has been discussed recent years. Society is becoming increasingly sensitive to certain issues such as racism or gender equality. Therefore, it is important for brands to communicate in a politically correct way. In the past, humans were responsible for negative brand communication. But AI-generated brand communication can also cause such negative feelings. For many years, AI algorithms biases have been discussed. Therefore, the question arises, what is the impact of a negative brand voice if it originates from an AI? In order to approach this question, three theoretical reference points (AI algorithm bias, brand crisis, machine vs. human) are outlined. Based on this, hypotheses are derived and the design of three studies is outlined, which are currently in the preparation phase.

ABSTRACT. Consumer brand engagement (CBE) signals propensity for brand purchase. A scale proposes three dimensions of CBE (cognitive, affective and activation dimensions) but the dimensions prominent and driving brand purchase intentions in an Instagram cosmetic purchase context need examination. In this context, this study tests Hollebeek, Glynn and Brodie’s (2014) 10-items/3 dimensions scale and examines an outcome of cosmetics brand purchase intention on Instagram. Data was quantitatively collected from 203 consumers who were students and non-students using convenience and snowballing non- probability sampling method. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling were used to analyze the data. The results revealed that although the three CBE dimensions were identified in a Cosmetic Instagram purchase context, it was the affective and activation dimensions that positively predicted consumers’ intentions to purchase cosmetic brands after engaging with the brand on Instagram.

ABSTRACT. Consumers are exposed to multiple stimuli and media with attention levels more and more fragmented. Consequently, it is challenging for brands to create meaningful relationships with them that can sustain brand loyalty. Campaigns that convey brand-related messages can be a powerful tool to create emotional attachment and, in last instance, brand love.

ABSTRACT. Will consumers show different responses to human doctors and medical AI of medical AI when a medical AI shows advanced levels of anthropomorphic features in face and speech? We argue that due to the heightened importance of medical service in personal well-being, consumers may still require real human presence in the medical service context. In a behavioral investigation, participants revealed a more positive intention to revisit a human doctor as opposed to a medical AI, even if the medical AI showed a human-like face and facial expressions. The effect of personalized interaction on revisit intention was also significant, but the effect size of the human doctor was greater than that of personalized interaction. In neural investigation, when they have highly personalized interaction with the medical provider, their brains show significantly greater activation in areas including the Anterior cingulate cortex (ACC).

ABSTRACT. In the current study, we directly measure consumers’ physiological responses (i.e., brain waves via electroencephalogram (EEG) to advertising stimuli during the narrative transportation process.

ABSTRACT. This study measured the status of unplanned purchases by having subjects wear EEGs and make purchases at brick-and-mortar stores and online. Based on a depth survey and EEGs of the subjects, we made a new classification of unplanned purchases to account for cognitive bias.

ABSTRACT. There has been almost 26 years since science of marketing has developed in Mongolia and there has been significant progress in acquiring and using its findings. Business companies’ leadership have become aware of the importance of this science and see marketing as business philosophy and understand that analyzing the market, business environment and conditions by consumers is the key to success. Today’s society demands from marketing professionals’ delicacy and taking into account consumers’ needs and creating new needs and new means of consumption. Main purpose of business entities is to be aware of consumer needs, to establish its position on the market and to be successful. In order to provide consumers with the best products and keep them at the center of their attention it is important to establish optimal ratio of marketing factors that would most efficiently influence consumers with different behaviors.

ABSTRACT. Due to the rapid development of technology, the environment is rapidly changing, and new regulations are emerging in the global community. In addition, environmental and social problems such as the pandemic and social polarization have intensified, and the international community and investors have begun to regard ESG as a key factor in decision-making. Given this trend, companies should consider ESG management as their core business strategy, as well as consumer characteristics and regulation. The purpose of this study is to identify brain activation areas as to how companies respond to ESG-related regulations and how they relate to consumer attitudes. Through this study, consumers may be affected by companies and regulations that respond to environmental and social problems. It also shows strategies for how companies respond to ESG management activities and regulations by showing differences in the areas where consumers' brains are activated due to ESG management and regulation.

ABSTRACT. Most gastro tourism experiences deal with gustatory and olfactory. However, pandemic limits people's interactions and direct experiences. In enjoying food, people might highly consider the trade off between health risk vs authentic experiences they would like to get, and it affects the food channel selection. This study aims to answer how Gen Z experiences gastro tourism and the impact of digital technologies to it. Using a combination of big data analytics, neuromarketing technique, and scenario based experiments, this study unravels Gen Z’s opinion on social media to design the hypothetical scenario that could elicit their emotions through the combinations of experience stimuli. We conducted cross-country study between Indonesia and Malaysia since both countries are highly invested in tourism with high Gen Z populations. This study contributes to the studies on tourism technology, specifically on impact of online food delivery apps (OFD) to Gen Z’s experience in gastro tourism.

ABSTRACT. As the popularity of gaming has increased, the importance and effectiveness of in-game advertisements have become more relevant to marketers. However, despite this development, both marketing academics and practitioners do not fully comprehend how consumers respond to in-game advertisements. The present research draws on Privacy Calculus Theory and Self-Reference Effect to investigate the relationships between consumers’ privacy concerns, advertisement relevance expectations, attitude towards in-game advertisements, intention of future engagement in gaming, word-of-mouth intentions and purchase intentions. An online survey was completed by 267 respondents and structural equation modeling was used to test the hypothesized model. Theoretical and managerial insights related to gamers’ attitudes towards in-game ads and behavioral outcomes were generated.

ABSTRACT. In marketing, especially direct marketing, repeat purchases by customers are extremely important. In order to encourage repeat purchases, actions with "the right offer and communication at the right time and to the right target" are considered important. On the other hand, existing studies have not focused much on the dispersion of the timing of repeat purchases. In this study, we focus on how the repeat purchases varies of direct marketing. We discuss the timing of repeat by focusing on customers who repeat immediately after last purchase, specifically within a few days, and present the results of actual data to discuss the quality of customers. As exploratory analysis, the authors check the characteristics of when repeats occur immediately afterward, then, statistically verify the quality of customers who repeat immediately by RFM and other indicators, and further examine the causes of the repeat.

ABSTRACT. Consumers often read and write reviews about their experiences. Do people share and rely on the same type of reviews when making experiential purchases? Two studies show that people believe that subjective (vs. objective) reviews are more persuasive for others than themselves. Consequently, while they are more likely to share subjective reviews to facilitate others’ decisions, they are less likely to rely on the same review for their own decisions. Our work provides insight into the self-other discrepancy in review reliance and how companies should prompt consumers when requesting reviews.

ABSTRACT. This study aims to provide insights into ageing consumers’ content usage, content typology choices, and online brand advocacy. Applying semi-structured interviews, the consumers from Southern Europe aged 55+ were included. The study proposes an online brand advocacy framework for ageing consumers. Also, it contributes to the literature by providing insights into older consumers and offering managerial implications for marketers.

ABSTRACT. This study demonstrates that consumers’ perceptions of voice assistant device (VAD) features promote psychological ownership and interface flow experience with VADs, resulting in satisfaction with, and loyalty toward VADs. To that end, this study collected VAD users in the USA and conducted structural equation modeling to empirically examine the relationships.

ABSTRACT. Drawing on the structural hole-bridging perspective of network theory, this paper examines the adaptative selling strategies of insurance and unit trust agents during health crises. We interviewed 20 agents and found that they undertook arbitrage and collaborative brokerage strategies to cope with business uncertainties. The findings provide practical implications for firms, buyers, and policymakers during crises.

ABSTRACT. Delivering a great customer experience is nowadays a priority for retailers in the post-covid era. In order to succeed, a careful assessment of the journey of the customer is needed to provide a unique experience to the customers and gain their loyalty. This paper, by means of a multimethod approach, analyzes and compares the customer journeys in two different stores of a grocery retailer and identifies the key elements that contribute to a great customer experience. Findings suggest that retailers need to focus on all the three phases of the customer journey and not only on the in-store experience, leveraging on the digital technology to ease every interaction customers have with their touchpoints. Interestingly, results show that customers would like to create their own journey, demanding for a personalized experience. The key challenge is integrating the different components of the experience customers want in an integrated journey that everyone can live in the way they prefer.

ABSTRACT. Since the recovery from Covid-19 crisis, luxury brands are stepping up to attract consumers back to their stores. Consumers on hte other hand are all eager to return to offline stores to splurge themselves with luxury goods. This paper explores the convergence and divergence between what luxury shoppers are expecting from brands and what luxury brands are offering their customers in their offline stores. In-depth interviews of a random sample of luxury consumers from around the world are used to collect data. The findings show that in most of the times, luxury brands are investing in new technologies such as Virtual Reality or Augmented Reality glasses, or smart mirrors to seduce their customers. However, those strategies seem to be less effective for the conversion rates. Luxury shoppers are still expecting some very basic services and high quality human interactions with sale associates. New technologies can be the cherry on the cake, but cannot replace the cake itself.

ABSTRACT. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, it drastically changed the way that many consumers conducted their shopping for almost all their needs. This created a dramatic increase in online purchases, causing global e-commerce sales to skyrocket to 26.7 billion dollars, up four percent from the previous year (UNCTAD, 2021). This surge in sales caused an increase in certain customer segments, resulting in many retailers re-thinking their marketing and branding strategies. To many retailers’ surprise, elderly adults aged sixty-five and older began to adopt e-commerce shopping during the pandemic at an overwhelming rate.

The purpose of the study is to discover how retailers can better improve their ecommerce strategies to retain the elderly demographic of customers aged 65 and older beyond during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. The study discussed main barriers and benefits of e-commerce for elderly adults.

ABSTRACT. This paper focuses on the importance of rethinking the functionality of the fashion retail store and suggests transforming the retail store into a space to educate consumers regarding important societal and cultural issues. In-store communication is very effective and moments of knowledge acquisition have proven to allow customers to experience an increase in self-confidence and self-consciousness. When such moments are provided by a brand, a stronger bond is created with the customer and a deeper sense of loyalty is formed. This paper contributes to the existing literature on consumer education and brand communication in the fashion retail store environment. Based on an interpretive qualitative case study approach, this paper suggests purpose-driven fashion brands to redefine the functionality of their retail stores by considering dedicating space for cultural and societal conversations as a way to strengthen the relationship with their consumers.

ABSTRACT. Luxury brands are increasingly embracing intrinsic values in their advertising campaigns. This paper reports an exploratory study examining the adoption of value-laden advertising focusing on intrinsic values. Through a content analysis of ads from 9 top luxury fashion brands, the depiction of internal values was examined. Research results are discussed and academic and managerial implications are presented.

ABSTRACT. This study aims to investigate how attitudes towards femvertising affects brand credibility, brand authenticity, and purchase intention. Further, the mediation of femwashing on these relationships was investigated. And lastly, the impact of brand credibility and authenticity on purchase intention was examined. The results show that a favourable attitude towards femvertising positively affects brand credibility and authenticity but is not significant for purchase intention. Likewise, the mediation of femwashing on these relationships was not significant. In addition, brand credibility and brand authenticity had a positive impact on purchase intention.

ABSTRACT. This study investigates the role of consumers’ value orientation on their attitude towards assertive green advertisements. We find that biospheric value orientation improves attitudes towards assertive ads and hedonic value orientation positively affects consumers’ perceived threat to their freedom. Besides, the study supports the role of assertiveness in persuasive communication.

ABSTRACT. In today's fast-evolving technological environment, the growth of mobile devices has provided businesses with additional knowledge on how to effectively communicate with their targeted audience. As big data generated by mobile users has become a valuable source for improving communication, users’ location data has provided an additional parameter to take into account while trying to enhance the effectiveness of digital marketing campaigns. This paper presents a comparative study of the location-based marketing field and tools. It provides an overview of different exploitation methods of location-based mobile services and data for effective digital marketing campaigns and guidelines for future research.

ABSTRACT. This study investigates how zapping behavior is affected by television-viewing motives, classified into two broad categories: goal-directed instrumental motives and process-oriented ritualistic motives. We examine how such an impact varies among individuals with different degrees of advertising skepticism, opinion leadership, ongoing search, program involvement, and advertising involvement. By combining the television-viewing information of 1,162 individuals with survey data, we empirically analyze the effect of motivation on viewers’ zapping likelihood. The results suggest that zapping probability is lower when television-viewing is driven by instrumental motives than by ritualistic motives. The negative impact of instrumental motivations is more evident for individuals with higher ongoing search tendencies. Individuals who are more skeptical toward advertisements, have higher opinion leadership, or have higher program involvement are less vulnerable to such viewing motivations.

ABSTRACT. This study tests the influence of multi-visual dimensions and textual features of electronic word-of-mouth (EWOM) on its perceived helpfulness on a sample from Saudi Arabia. This investigation is conducted in the context of Twitter through an online factorial experiment. The design incorporates a 3 (visual inclusion to text: with product-only photo, with product and face photo, without product photo) × 3 (EWOM valence: positive, positive and negative, and negative) between-subjects experiment (n = 540). It is concluded that when evaluating EWOM helpfulness, pictures do in fact contribute substantial value. For females, this effect is more pronounced when the EWOM is two-sided at the product-only photo level, and when EWOM is negative at the product with a face photo level. Thus, this study adds to the body of existing theories by arguing that EWOM helpfulness largely depends on how the textual and visual features of EWOM are communicated.

ABSTRACT. In this conceptual paper, we use the multiple agency theory to explain the governance issues in cross-sector partnerships. We identify five typologies of cross-sector partnerships, each distinct from one another in terms of the governance structure. We also discuss three problems that occur in these relationships, mainly differences in institutional logic, temporal differences, and free-riding and opportunistic behaviour, as well as how these problems affect each type of cross-sector partnership. This paper is one of the few studies to use agency theory to examine the governance structures and problems in cross-sector partnerships. Our study further contributes to solidifying our understanding of the agency problems arising in cross-sector collaborations. Lastly, our study confirms their presence in other types of cross-sector partnerships as well and we maintain that these problems do not affect each type of cross-sector partnership in the same way.

ABSTRACT. The current study attempts to identify how ESG strategy is integrated into firms' core competencies, and the possible ESG embeddedness drivers. Adopting market orientation and absorptive capacity, the study explains possible drivers for ESG embeddedness and firm innovation. The findings provide significant implications for academics and managers by clarifying how firms can enhance their value through ESG with firms' core competencies.

ABSTRACT. In ethical consumerism, the issue of ethical attitudes not translating to ethical behaviors has been highly debated. We propose a novel approach of applying Moral Foundation Theory (MFT), which identifies two dimensions of morality: individualizing MF (INDI) which focuses on justice and harm, and binding MF (BIND) which emphasizes authority and loyalty. Using responses from more than 4,000 consumers from four markets, we investigate the differing roles of MF in response to a scenario on a sweatshop issue of a supplier whose factory is in a developing country. We use the mediator-moderator model of MFT-anticorporate attitude-boycott intention sequence to examine the differing role of INDI and BIND. Our results show that INDI and BIND are both positively related to anticorporate attitude; However, BIND is negatively related to boycott behavioral intention. That is, consumers with a strong BIND may show an attitude-behavioral mismatch although they are highly ethical.

ABSTRACT. An attitude-behavior gap in ethical consumption presents a global challenge to socially responsible marketing. In response, the current research draws samples of consumers across national contexts to develop a novel tool measuring consumers’ implicit ethical consumerism. Through rigorous development, findings show that our implicit measure (based in the Affect Misattribution Procedure) predicts consequential ethical consumption beyond explicit attitudes.

ABSTRACT. In a marketplace that emphasises environmental sustainability, eco-certifications for products and services – provided by independent organisations to certify the environmental performance of products and services – have proliferated across industries. From a business perspective, eco-certifications are resource and cost-intensive investments and a key question for managers is: Do eco-certificates provide a competitive advantage and positively affect firm performance? Existing research only provides limited guidance for managers on this crucial question. By estimating a difference-in-difference model using a unique and rich observational data set with daily sales data over a period of seven years from two hotels, the current research demonstrates the positive short and long-term effects of eco-certificates on sales. The novel insights pertaining to the effect of eco-certitificates on sales have important theoretical, managerial and societal implications.

ABSTRACT. We adopt a novel metric to analyze the disruptive values in marketing articles advancing business research. The results show that conceptual and theoretical research, despite their fewer publication counts, rated higher disruption scores compared to empirical papers.

ABSTRACT. In this research, we would introduce a new methodological framework to identify refined, key sentimental dimensions (i.e., groups of correlated attributes) for measuring service quality assessment using both traditional survey and unstructured online reviews (natural survey). For the online reviews, the proposed framework includes a novel, practical preprocessing step to compute attribute-level sentiments (i.e., for independent variables) from the unstructured reviews. In our empirical application study with the reviews from a major online Game review website, Steam platform, we found that the proposed framework provided a significantly reduced number of key dimensions which were surprisingly efficient for predicting and explaining the service quality. In particular, with reviews of 2,825 games, three refined dimensions of mechanical playability, fun and price issue were identified, and especially the mechanical playability was an important driver of the game popularity.

ABSTRACT. The replication crisis in marketing, caused by the misuse of frequentist statistics (especially null hypothesis significance tests and p-values), has affected the reproducibility of marketing research. This study aims to evaluate the most-cited published papers in marketing and analyze the role of the misuse of statistics in undermining reproducibility. The research discusses potential solutions to these issues.

ABSTRACT. The assumption that more-is-better doesn't hold when consumers want to limit the amount they consume. High calorie meals frustrate dieting plans, food with high salt content may lead to bad health outcomes and large quantity purchases may not fit within available storage spaces. The assumption in economics that marginal utility is always positive may not apply in situations when purchase quantities take on a wide range and when consumers have ideal points and unobserved constraints on their choices. In this paper we develop a model and estimator for locally-rational demand that identifies unobserved constraints on choice by allowing marginal utility to be negative. The model is applied to conjoint data of buy-one-get-one (BOGO) promotions and a scanner panel dataset of milk purchases where the effect of locally-rational demand is prevalent.

ABSTRACT. While machine learning has gained popularity in choice behavior modeling, most machine learning models are often complex, difficult to interpret, and even considered as black box. This study investigates machine learning methods for choice behavior modeling that provide interpretability of models’ output. We explore various approaches including (1) explicitly descriptive models such as tree-based models, (2) interpretation of predictive models through feature importance measures, and (3) recent advancements in prediction explanation methods such as LIME and SHAP (Shapley Additive exPlanations). We demonstrate the methods on consumers’ airport choice behavior in Seoul metropolitan area. Through the comparative analysis with traditional discrete choice models, we discuss advantages as well as limitations of machine learning models in consumer choice behavior modeling.

ABSTRACT. In this study, we mainly explore the impact of drip pricing on consumer resistance and how to reduce consumer resistance while ensuring merchant and consumer benefits. Through five experiments, our study reveals several significant findings. First, compared to partitioned pricing, drip pricing increases consumer resistance. Second, perceived value and perceived deception mediate this relationship. In addition, the descending presentation of surcharges diminishes the positive effect of drip pricing on consumer resistance. Finally, the lump-sum payment method weakens the positive effect of drip pricing on consumer resistance. In addition, compared to partitioned pricing, drip pricing decreases purchase intention by increasing consumer resistance. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first paper to study the effect of drip pricing on consumer resistance, which enriches the theory related to drip pricing as well as resistance.

ABSTRACT. As online reviews become a major factor in the consumer decision-making process, firms have started seeking ways to help consumers make informed decisions. To avoid potential information overload, most online retailers provide review helpfulness features by allowing consumers to cast a vote on the (un)helpfulness of a review. Previous research has extensively focused on identifying the drivers of review helpfulness while little attention has been paid to review unhelpfulness. Using an empirical analysis of a large review dataset from a major online retailer, this research investigates the drivers of both review helpfulness and unhelpfulness. By revealing the asymmetry between the consumers’ review helpfulness and unhelpfulness voting behaviors, this study provides practical implications for review platforms.

ABSTRACT. Managers often use authoritarian leadership style (AL) with the intent to press for superior Frontline employee (FLE) performance. However, using AL may not always yield positive outcomes. Using data collected from 564 FLEs and their managers, our study examines the role of creativity and coping styles (active vs. avoidance) in the AL – FLE performance relationship. The results reveal that AL negatively affects FLE performance by impeding employee creativity. The results also shows a high level of active coping would eliminate the negative effect of AL on FLE performance via employee creativity; in contrast, a high level of avoidance coping exacerbates the adverse effect.

ABSTRACT. This study unveils the intellectual structure of mindfulness research in the business studies domain. Using citation and co-citation analysis, the study identifies the most influential articles, annual growth, and three key research clusters constituting the intellectual foundation. Findings show great potential of mindfulness for marketing and management researchers and policymakers.

ABSTRACT. The economic harm and survival fear caused by environmental conflicts are most likely to become the psychological lever to drive individuals to adopt environmentally friendly behaviours. From the perspective of environmental conflict, this paper will explore the transmission mechanism of environmental conflict on individuals’ pro-environmental behaviour through three experiments.

ABSTRACT. Given the conundrum of moral wishing in CSR communication, this research examines the effectiveness of narrative richness using storytelling in marketing. In the process, the moderating role of moral imagination is further explored. An online experiment with a 2 (Narrative Richness: High vs. Low) x 2 (Moral Imagination: High vs. Low) between-subject factorial design was conducted. Two well-known companies (Shell vs. Facebook) suffered from a reputation crisis were identified. The results (N = 287) indicated that the effects of narrative richness on consumer responses, including positive emotion, negative emotion, and behavioral intention, were significant for Facebook while the effect of narrative richness on positive emotion was significant for Shell. Most importantly, the two-way interaction between narrative richness and moral imagination on attitude toward the brand was significant for Shell. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

ABSTRACT. Please Note: This article (attached) has already been accepted for the conference (article number 586). I am submitting it again at your request - no corrections needed. Please send me a confirmation of receipt - thanks in advance

ABSTRACT. This paper investigates algorithmic dynamic pricing (ADP), the focal form of algorithmic pricing in online markets. Drawing on price fairness and range-frequency theory, five studies (one real-life ADP-encounter and four incentive-aligned experimental studies) explore the effects of ADP on consumer trust and price search behavior.

ABSTRACT. The costs of law enforcement have increased due to rising personnel costs and demand for policing services. Scholars suggest new crime control technologies can help police "do more with less" (e.g., Roach, 2022; Weisburd & Neyroud, 2011). COVID-19 increased demand for police oversight, leading countries like Singapore and China to employ service robots for compliance tasks. However, we lack an understanding of how customers perceive service robots and what factors enhance their effectiveness. Our qualitative study aims to explore what robot design and service contexts affect customer compliance. We're conducting in-depth interviews with Chinese citizens and security officers, using snowball sampling to recruit consumers who have interacted with the service robots and officers who have worked with them in various contexts. Our findings will contribute to research on service robots and have practical implications for manufacturers and law enforcement agencies.

ABSTRACT. Service encounters increasingly feature AI-powered inputs such as add-ons recommendations or aftercare solutions. These novel forms of customer service, provided by AI rather than humans, can shape customers’ sense of agency throughout the customer journey. Customers find themselves in a form of competitive collaboration with AI, sharing tasks, resources, inputs, and decisions. This research conceptualises and develops a scale to measure shared agency power during customer-AI interactions. Understanding the role of agency in AI-customer interactions is important, as agency represents a source, mechanism, delimiter and effect of a human’s or a machine’s actions. Agency may differ across various service encounters and with it, the type of perceived risks associated with human-AI interactions. Future research may use the shared agency power scale to better understand the nature and impact of customer-AI interactions in a service context on traditional marketing factors.

ABSTRACT. Whether a back-end service robot or a front-end delivery robot, the implementation of robotics and service automation in restaurants has been on the rise. This study explores customers' resistance to adopting robotics and automatization in restaurants. The framework adopted considers innovation resistance as a primary driver of innovation rejection, related to adoption barriers driving this negative attitude formation. The model was tested using data surveyed from 232 Chinese respondents who have been to a restaurant that uses robots and service automation. The results of partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) show that usage, value, and tradition barriers significantly affect consumers' future recommendation intentions of automatized restaurants. Interestingly, the risk barrier has not shown a significant relationship with either intention to use or to recommend.

ABSTRACT. We identify which stimuli in such goal-directed motivational promotions induce customers to participate in the program. We use the data from 71 stamp-collecting promotions in which retailers and manufacturers collaborated. As a result, we derive three findings: (1) the goal potentiality indicator, which also considers the purchase interval of the focal brand, explains the relationship with the number of participants more strongly than the length of promotion period, (2) the goal potentiality indicator using both the first and the last phase explains the relationship with the number of participants strongly, and (3) large appeal to the maximum number of reward points offered is not an incentive to participate, but on the contrary, suggests a barrier to participation. These findings also present the managerial implication that the goal of the first and last phases should be set within a "not too difficult, not too easy" range, considering the purchase interval by customers.

ABSTRACT. Franchise encroachment(new store entry close to incumbents) has been a contentious issue in the marketplace. Prior studies on the encroachment effect focus mainly on the store-level, lacking the understanding of customer-level outcomes. The authors investigate individual-level transaction data from a cluster of franchise stores to quantify the encroachment effect both at store- and individual-levels. Our results show that incumbent stores experience a decrease in sales, and it is attenuated by the distance between incumbent and new stores and the size of product assortment. The individual-level analysis reveals that there exist different customer segments based on their shopping behaviors. And we figure out that each segment contribute different effect on franchise and franchisors. Our findings offer managerial implications of how to manage franchise encroachment with context-dependency and customer segmentation in terms of maximizing overall franchise performance.

ABSTRACT. To reduce food waste at the retail and personal consumption stages, which accounts for the largest proportion of food waste in the supply chain, discounts are offered in retail channels to encourage consumers to buy goods that are less attractive or close to their expiry dates to prevent food from being discarded. This study demonstrates that consumer attitudes and purchase decision-making toward suboptimal foods are shaped by original prices and discount presentation modes. It employed a full factorial between‐subjects experiment designed with 2 original prices (High and Low) × 2 discount presentation modes (Discount percentage and Discounted price). Consumers are price-sensitive but once a food item belongs to the category of suboptimal foods, their perceptions of discounts become different. Consumers’ attitudes toward that food and their willingness to buy may be moderated by the high or low original price of suboptimal food with the levels of discount presentation mode.

ABSTRACT. Since time immemorial company’s interaction with its customers plays a vital role in co-creation of values and shared lifestyle. Similarly, for Japanese department stores passing through the declining stage of the life cycle, strategy based on maintaining relationships is important for renovating their business models. This study examines the importance of “Retail Brand Community” for Japanese department stores, considering from the perspective of Brand community and Social Identity Theory.

Specifically, through the Daimaru Matsuzakaya Department Stores’ community-driven approach, this study presents the implications of renovating the business models to escape the decline stage of the life cycle. This case depicts a well-developed conception of companies as co-creative exchange partners that both brand community and service-dominant logic lacks.

ABSTRACT. Green consumption behavior (GCB) is desirable for a better world. This study aims to investigate the direct effects of both autonomous and controlled motivation, and the moderating effect of trait mindfulness on GCB. Results show that both motivation variables significantly affect GCB. Furthermore, trait mindfulness negatively moderates controlled motivation-GCB relationship.

ABSTRACT. This study explores the role of self-identity and materialism in teenagers’ susceptibility to advertising influence. A survey of 320 Chinese teenagers aged 11-14 found that the positive relationship between adolescents’ materialism and their attitudes toward advertising is amplified when both need for differentiation and need for assimilation are high.

ABSTRACT. The growing concerns about sustainable consumption encourage more consumer research on determinants that influence consumers’ green behavior. This study aims to provide a conceptual framework with propositions on the role of evolutionary psychology in consumer decision-making in the green product context. The study proposes that viewing a family-focused stimuli will induce buying intention on green products. However, this effect may be moderated by costly signals.

ABSTRACT. This study explores the effectiveness of marketing data analytics learning and outcomes for marketing students in courses with data analysis components at a U.S. business school. The study considers various moderating factors, such as software adaptability, grades, class type, data interest, statistical analysis method, and perceived time- and cost-effectiveness. The findings have implications for marketing education in data analytics.

ABSTRACT. The Corona crisis has led to serious changes in teaching in MBA programs in recent years. Within a very short time, teaching at business schools was changed from face-to-face to online. While younger undergraduate students have sometimes had problems with this form of teaching, it has been very well received by typical MBA-students, , which are older, some of whom are working and often have families. This paper shows how the MBA market in Germany is developing and how Darmstadt Business School is positioning itself for the future in this challenging market environment.

ABSTRACT. Synced advertising has been increasingly implemented recently, but its effectiveness has been questioned. The study investigates how consumer responses are affected by the accuracy level of the synced ads, focusing on the mediating effects of the consumer paradox between perceived relevance and privacy concerns. The results suggest that consumers put more weight on the relevance of the ads. Identical synced advertisements are intrusive but relevant, better than other somewhat accurate ones that can be equally intrusive but not relevant.

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ABSTRACT. The objective of this research is to redefine advertising creativity, to understand how advertising creativity shapes consumers' evaluation, and how these effects are moderated by the different types of boundary conditions, such as industry category, by analyzing more than 100,000 advertising images and copies using a cutting-edge transfer learning technique. The results of the transfer learning algorithm indicate that both cognitive dimensions (e.g., novelty of image) and affective dimensions (e.g., awe and coolness) simultaneously affect the consumers' perception of the advertising creativity, and the current algorithm enables to detect of creative advertising image with 92% accuracy rate.

ABSTRACT. Recently, there has been increase in human casualties and property damage caused by large-scale disasters. The importance of citizen protection and emergency evacuation is growing, emphasizing the expanding role of civilian responses, including civil defense. To enhance the citizen protection capabilities of civil defense personnel, it is necessary to protection duties and guarantee their safety. Particularly, the current civil defense uniforms are vulnerable to fire and waterproofing, and the safety is threatened when civil defense personnel perform field activities such as fire and flood damage. Therefore, there is an urgent need for research and development of civil defense uniforms that can ensure both functionality and safety. In this study, we aim to understand the duties of domestic civil defense units and the characteristics of on-site situations, analyze overseas civil defense uniform replication cases, and derive safety criteria for civil defense uniforms.

ABSTRACT. Civil defense originally protected civilians during war-related disasters. Today, it includes a wider range of activities to address natural and man-made disasters like wildfires, typhoons, and floods. Civil defense uniforms are worn by volunteers who receive training from practitioners, government officials, and military personnel. Over 3,350,000 individuals (6.5% of the Korean population) should wear these uniforms, so their functionalities need improvement. Design and materials should differ based on safety hazards, similar to other countries. Our research surveyed current Korean civil defense uniforms, analyzing design, materials, water repellency, pressure resistance, and flame resistance. Compared to workwear, improvements are needed. This research enhances the functional design of civil defense uniforms to protect personnel and serve citizens better. It provides guidelines for developing protective workwear and government uniforms.

ABSTRACT. The fashion industry has been criticized for its significant environmental impact, and workwear is no exception. As the demand for sustainable fashion grows, workwear brands are adapting to meet the expectations of consumers who prioritize environmentally conscious products. This study proposes a marketing strategy for workwear brands that take sustainability into account. The research will use a qualitative research design, consisting of case studies of sustainable workwear brands and a review of existing literature. The study will focus on three key features: retail, product design, and marketing strategies. Through the analysis of these features, the research will identify the most effective marketing strategies for promoting sustainable workwear brands. The results will inform workwear brands on how to effectively market their sustainable products, contributing to the growth of the sustainable fashion market.

ABSTRACT. Although influencers establish their reputation and gain popularity by demonstrating expertise toward a specific topic, there is a huge potential to extend their market by tapping into different topics. According to the match-up hypothesis, it is unlikely that the influencer can successfully promote different product categories. However, Stereotype Content Model (SCM) suggests that influencers might be perceived as competence that overgeneralized to other domains. Using a survey, this study revealed the primacy of match-up hypotheses, even when the influencers are perceived as competent, it does not mean that consumers are willing to follow their recommendation if it is outside their expertise domain. Only when there is an influencer-product fit, consumers are willing to accept their recommendation. However, perceived competence of the influencers can promote acceptance to follow recommendation on different product categories only when it established trust on the influencer.

ABSTRACT. The purpose of the present research is to investigate whether the effectiveness of product placement is influenced by the emotions depicted in the scene, and whether the ethicality of the product matters. We draw the theoretical rationale based on emotion contagion theory and emotion-as- information perspective and propose that a positive emotional scene, as compared to negative one, would increase favourable consumer responses. The results show that a positive emotional scene increases favourable brand attitudes and purchases. This effect is driven by mood, which is consistent with an emotion-as-information perspective. Moreover, when a controversial product is promoted (in Study 2), we also found that participants reported higher levels of engagement when the product was placed in a positive (vs. negative) emotional scene, leading to increased brand attitudes and purchase intentions.

ABSTRACT. Compulsive buying is a problematic behavior that could lead to negative outcomes (e.g., debts and negative relationships with relatives). Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, people changed their shopping behavior and experienced various life events. This research aims at exploring the relationship between life events and compulsive buying in Indonesia. A qualitative approach using in-depth interviews was employed. Nineteen participants who faced changing course of life, either positive (e.g., give birth) or negative (e.g., sudden death of family), during the pandemic were interviewed. We found that positive life events cause people to feel over-excited and over-grateful and shop compulsively. Negative life events that result in self-doubt and lower self-esteem also lead to a compulsive behavior. The study contributes to the compulsive behavior literature by exploring the antecedent of compulsive buying from the live events perspective and provide implications for policy makers and marketers.

ABSTRACT. The subscription model, prominent within the ‘subscription economy’ (SE), is now a popular form of business within many industries. In this paper we summarise the findings from a systematic literature review that we undertook to review where customer engagement value had been assessed within the SE.

ABSTRACT. Companies’ attempts to become more sustainable is framed in terms of transitioning towards sustainable business models (SBMs) whereby the central logic of how the company offers value to customers is challenged. However, nuanced mechanisms enabling the transition towards a SBM are still a black box. In this study we aim to discover 1) how value-related processes change in transitioning towards SBMs and 2) what and how mechanisms influence this transition. The study is carried out as a qualitative multiple case study from three industries: mining, shipbuilding, and paper production. We find several mechanisms of transition. At the level of value creation these include aligning new value components, value transpositioning, value re-designing; at the level of value capture – cost reformulating, price revisiting, sustainable branding; at the level of value delivery – reshaping value supply, changing value communication, modifying customer satisfaction.

ABSTRACT. This study develops and tests a conceptual model examining the effects of organizational ambidexterity and organizational co-creation on organizational performance. Findings reveal a positive effect of organizational ambidexterity on organizational co-creation. This relationship is higher in large companies than in SMEs. The effect of ambidexterity on performance is mediated by co-creation.

ABSTRACT. Extant studies investigating service innovation in the luxury service sector remain scarce, despite the importance of service innovation and its spurs in recent years. This study aims to provide insights into how perceived service luxuriousness is a critical consequence of service innovation, which leads to consumers' willingness to pay more. This study also examines how the type of service and level of brand equity moderate the relationship between consumers' perceived service innovation and service luxuriousness. Results indicate that service innovation positively influences service luxuriousness, which in turn positively influences willingness to pay more for that service. However, service innovation does not directly affect the willingness to pay more. Hedonic service has a stronger moderating effect than functional service. Low brand equity has a stronger moderating effect than high brand equity.

ABSTRACT. The rise of superstar firms has gained attention in the economics and policy literature studying their impacts on economies. Understanding the drivers of superstars requires input from management researchers. This paper brings the question of what helps firms achieve superstardom to the management literature and offers some insight. Economists contend intangible capital is the central resource driving superstars' success. Management researchers maintain that firms need to combine key resources with matching capabilities to unlock their potential. We build on these two arguments in order to offer a better view of the rise of superstar firms. We offer new ways of calculating marketing capability and identifying superstar firms. We find that marketing capability and intangible capital drive superstar firms, marketing capability predicts the level of firm intangibles, and the complementarity between marketing capability and intangible capital is crucial to the superstar status of firms.

ABSTRACT. Consumer studies mainly take a cross-sectional approach to understand leisure and home consumption. This paper takes the mundane workplace as a unit of consumption and adopts a processual view to understand what and how cultural capital for impression management is acquired and changes over career trajectories. Integrating the theories of Goffman and Bourdieu, the study explores how embodied habitual practices (habitus) enables and shapes impression management to build desirable work identity. The walking-with approach is used to seek conversations with senior executives in Hong Kong along their work routes. The accumulated knowing about a repertoire of meanings in dining is found to evolve at different career stages, which extends our conceptual understanding beyond ‘we are what we eat’. Overtime, to enact desirable work identities, professionals mobilize their constituted habitus to make distinct dining choices so as to achieve situational socializing purposes.

ABSTRACT. With the pandemic of the early 2020s coming to a close, city politicians and planners around the world seek to bring in more tourists and entrepreneurs to assist their local businesses and domestic economies in the return to pre-pandemic levels. There exists a myriad of ways city officials attempt to attract visitors from festivals and fireworks displays to citywide initiatives and awareness programs. This study takes a look at a destination’s perceived coolness, how it is manifested through destination service quality and tourist app use, and how it affects an individual’s revisit intention based on structural and interpersonal constraints.

ABSTRACT. This research examines the moderating role of seat arrangements and social distancing signs in the provision of comfortable, connected, and safe 3rd places. The relevant phenomena were examined in three typical hospitality 3rd places - a restaurant, café, and sports stadium. Through the deployment of the quasi-experiment, this paper proves that connectivity is significant for securing satisfactory experiences across the three scenarios; seat arrangements can moderate perceived connectivity either positively or negatively, depending on the chosen mode; there is little evidence of perceived physical distance impacting connectivity. The findings progress the 3rd place theory into the post-pandemic era and provide insights into how 3rd places could be better managed if pandemic restrictions.

ABSTRACT. With the raise of artificial intelligence (AI), a new form of influencers has entered the proposition of marketing strategies for brands. Virtual influencers (VI’s) have shown their potential for brands in general, fashion lifestyle, or fashion luxury, even being more impactful in specific aspects than traditional influencers. Zooming in on sports, the VI space has been discovered by some brands already, yet for lifestyle sports products only. The performance sports products environment is still untouched. This study aims to identify the potential goals to be achieved for sports brands creating human-like virtual influencers to implement in their performance range of products strategy.

ABSTRACT. As in its early development, the metaverse has become a popular marketing topic with broad participation among marketers and consumers. Whether metaverse advertising follows its mechanism of it in the real-world remains unanswered. This quantitative research aims to address this gap by analysing the relationship between metaverse advertising and consumers’ attitudes based on the dual-process model.

ABSTRACT. We study a firm's strategy for introducing its new product via a social media influencer. First, the influencer exerts an effort to promote the product to her followers, who can spread the product information to non-followers via word-of-mouth (WOM). Then, the firm sells to the non-followers. We show that the firm's decisions depend on the influencer's incentive-independent excess payoff from the promotion and on the difference between the WOM effect of followers who do or do not make a purchase rather than the WOM effect of each group. As the marginal WOM benefit increases, the firm tends to reduce its marginal profit from promotion. When the influencer-product match is uncertain, there exists a threshold for the probability of match, above which the firm faces zero demand if a mismatch occurs. The firm may charge followers a lower price than non-followers. Finally, the firm may not be better off employing an influencer with a larger follower base.

ABSTRACT. With the evolution of Artificial intelligence (AI), emotional artificial intelligence service agents (AISA) have become common in service industry. This study draws on Customer AI Experience Theory to examine whether and how artificial empathy has influence on customer acceptance of AISA. Evidence from four experiments (N=1260) shows that: (1) artificial empathy including perspective-taking, empathic concern and emotional contagion has a positive impact on customer acceptance of AISA (study 1); (2) customer AI experience mediates the relationship between artificial empathy and customer acceptance of AISA (study 2); (3) artificial empathy for hedonic (vs. utilitarian) services leads to a stronger effect on customer acceptance of AISA (study 3). (4) elderly (vs. young) customers have a higher customer acceptance of AISA with high artificial empathy (study 4). This paper enriches our understanding of artificial empathy and provides practical guidance for practitioners managing AISA.

ABSTRACT. This study proposes a new collaborative filtering model that integrates Restricted Boltzmann Machines. The proposed two-stage model is applied to household-level supermarket purchase data. Results show that our model fits the data better and provide improved prediction. Beyond the fact that our framework outperforms existing collaborative filtering methods for predicting shopping patterns, it also improves interpretations of market complexity and common causes of coincidence associated with customers’ multi-category purchases.

ABSTRACT. This research explores a new theoretical and practical application of humour in marketing to improve human-AI interactions and relationships. From a managerial point of view, humour is already integrated in some conversational AIs and computer science has had a separate field of study (computational humour) since the 1990s. However, humour in conversational AI is rarely if ever explored in marketing and other managerial sciences. This paper provides an overview of recommendations and results of 19 expert interviews conducted as well as results on a benchmark of 50 virtual agents and a thorough literature review. Overall, results show humour in AI can provide tremendous benefits if well implemented.

ABSTRACT. This research aims to explore the potential benefits and drawbacks of generative AI (e.g., ChatGPT, Dall-E, and Steve AI) for content marketing. Data were collected through a netnography study on YouTube. There were three videos with 999 comments altogether being analyzed. The results reveal that the advantages of generative AI for content marketing include higher efficiency and impressive digital content quality—as if the texts, images, and videos are created by humans, not machines. Opposite of this, generative AI can have possible negative effects on content marketing because it creates incorrect, unhelpful, and spammy content. AI-generated texts, images, and videos are also perceived as unethical and eerie. All in all, our novel insights offer significant contributions to the literature on content marketing and AI in marketing.

ABSTRACT. Drawing on theories of anchoring effects and automatic cognitive processing, this paper examines how overall images of product quality, selection, and price affect lead category formation. We find that positive overall product quality and selection images facilitate lead category formation and that an overall low-price image hinders formation of lead categories.

ABSTRACT. Cross channel integration (CCI) has been pointed out as a key concept to achieve and succeed in the omnichannel model. Nevertheless, due to the wide scope and complexity of CCI, most retailers are still struggling in achieving the level of CCI that their consumers desire. Still, no review study derives comprehensive implications concerning CCI by reviewing previous empirical studies from both firm and consumer perspectives and by including determinants and moderating variables relevant to it. Thus, by answering 3 research questions, this study aims to thoroughly review previous empirical studies of CCI and derive theoretical and practical implications of it. To eliminate biases that could arise from the review procedure, and to provide high-quality evidence, this study adopts a systematic review procedure. As a result, 79 empirical research papers are extracted and reviewed, and 3 practical implications and 4 future agendas are derived.

ABSTRACT. This paper aims to investigate the suitability of retail third places for educating children about sustainability and evaluate whether sustainability awareness can be optimised through third places and improve children’s attitude towards it. Research was undertaken through secondary sources and a multi-methods qualitative research design using non-participant observations and focus groups. Thematic coding analysis was conducted. Children - 4 to 14 years old - tend to have a high level of awareness of the concept of sustainability and express positive attitudes and intentions towards it, yet these are not translated into sustainable shopping behaviours. Children showed very little consciousness of the concept of third places, despite still exhibiting positive reactions towards educational third places. A Theoretical Model is proposed: Children’s sustainability awareness stages infused by educational third places.

ABSTRACT. Africa's millennials constitute at least 30% of Africa's population, making them a key attraction for marketers yet their interests are often treated as a homogenous segment similar to global millennials from advanced economies. To date, no large-scale extant study investigates the evolving shopping behaviour of African millennials in the different retail contexts they live under, focusing on their interaction with formal and informal distribution channels and the impact of digital technology on this interaction. A cross–country study in Africa comprising ten cities was conducted to address this gap. Key findings from the study across the ten cities indicate critical insights on retail options used by African millennials citing drivers for channel selection and influence of digital technologies on this interaction. Practical implications are then outlined.

ABSTRACT. Numerous studies suggested that generation Z (Gen Z) is an age group that seeks individuality more than other generations. Their aesthetics, identity, and belief must represent their self-value. The consumption of fashion was selected as a focus of this study. The evolution and development of style stress the symbolic meaning of what we put on our body over the functionality of a garment. As a result, our consumption of fashion represents our value, and we construct and present our identity with physically what we wear when we face society daily. Looking at the fashion styles of Gen Z, this study aims to examine Gen Z's expression of individuality against the subconscious conformity in their fashion consumption behaviour. Moreover, within the Hong Kong Design Institute (HKDI), a leading design institution in Hong Kong, it is observed there is a distinctive fashion style within the fashion department of the institute, where conformity to fashion consumption behaviour is practiced.

ABSTRACT. This study examines the motivational factors that influence Generation Z consumers' attitudes and purchase intentions towards fashion rentals in China. Based on the theory of reasoned action, the findings suggested that economic benefits, ego defence, fashion orientation, experience value and sustainability affect Chinese youngsters’ purchase intention to rent fashion-clothing.

ABSTRACT. This paper introduces "bilingual typography" and discusses its relationship to international brand consistency. It proposes a theoretical framework detailing the different ways typographic forms signify. Three empirical studies show that bilingual typefaces that signify through motivated (versus arbitrary) semiosis can maintain brand consistency, both visually and in terms of content.

ABSTRACT. Today, the ability to engage customers in the digital channels is a key factor of brand competitiveness in global markets. Current study utilizes consumer investment in trademarks perspective, suggesting that consumers proactively use global brand’s signs to express themselves, affirm values, communicate, and experience pleasure in digital platforms. The brand owners deploy trademarks to protect the symbols, which are capable of distinguishing the goods or services of a brand owner from those of other enterprises. We demonstrate that by registering and prosecuting trademarked signs in the host markets, global brands may facilitate customer engagement and achieve superior performance. We examine the role of trademark consistency as a measure of the extent to which similar signifiers are used in international branding activities.

ABSTRACT. We investigate the incremental predictive power of three consumer dispositions – xenocentrism, cosmopolitanism and ethnocentrism – on domestic and foreign product purchase intentions, after taking the impact of consumer demographics and product category-specific variables into account. Using data from an online survey of 201 Turkish consumers, hierarchical regression analysis reveals that widely used demographic variables (namely, age, gender and education) do not significantly influence consumer intentions to buy either domestic or foreign clothing products. Of the consumer dispositions, xenocentrism exerts a significant negative effect on domestic product purchase intentions, cosmopolitanism has a positive effect on foreign product purchase intentions, while ethnocentrism shows no effect on either domestic or foreign product purchase intentions. Implications of the findings are considered and future research directions identified.

ABSTRACT. Dong and Sivakumar (2015) have proposed an updated classification for customer participation based on “output specificity”. How output specificity of customer participation influences service satisfaction still lacks of empirical examination. The current study suggests that the relationship between output specificity of customer participation and service satisfaction is moderated by regulatory focus and shopping value. The empirical results showed that prevention-focused individuals are less (equally) satisfied for generic (specific) output when compared with promotion-focused ones. In addition, this study also found that for specific (generic) output, individuals are more (equally) satisfied with the service under hedonic when compared with utilitarian shopping orientation. Based on the findings, practical implications for sercice providers to improve service satisfaction are suggested.

ABSTRACT. The adoption of chatbots in the luxury retail industry has exposed many innovation opportunities and significantly impacts the customer experience. As a result, luxury retailers deploy chatbots on their websites to enhance the customer experience. However, previous research indicates that customers are reluctant to use chatbots as they can also fail to meet expectations, potentially leading to detrimental effects and negative emotions. Yet there is a lack of understanding of what are the negative sides of chatbots and how they impact customer experience in order to address such problems. Therefore, this study fills the gap by aiming to explore the dark sides and detrimental effects of chatbots on the online customer experience in luxury fashion retailing. Grounded in technology paradox theory, this study conducted 25 semi-structured interviews to better understand chatbots' impact on the online customer experience in luxury retailing.

ABSTRACT. When planning sustainability initiatives related to a brand (BSI), its impact on brand evaluation is a managerial issue as it affects both business performance and environmental sustainability. From this view, this study discusses the effect of brand-sustainability-self-congruence (BSSC) as the triad image congruence between brand, BSI, and self-concept. Based on this concept, former surveys showed the BSSC effect on consumer psychology based on the overall image congruence; whereas, this approach did not specify the impactful attribute item on the congruence level. Hence, with this approach, adjusting the BSI strategy is not easy in practice. This study focuses on this gap and proposes a strategic BSI planning process including additional BSSC assessment with the brand personality scale approach. The purpose is to specify the attribute item influencing BSSC to adjust the BSI strategy for brand equity improvement, leading to companies’ proactiveness toward environmental contribution.

ABSTRACT. This study examines how Generation Z consumer copes with dissatisfied body image in the real world via their avatar’s ideal body image in the metaverse. The findings suggest that dissatisfaction with actual body image positively influences avatar-manifested ideal body image, leading to enhanced self-esteem in the metaverse through self-congruence with the avatar.

ABSTRACT. Based on positive technology, this research explains how perceived control, flow, and happiness lead to the formation of brand loyalty under the moderating influences of brand image and VA’s voice congruency. A 2 (locus of agency: high, machine-centric vs. low, human-centric) by 2 (brand image and voice congruency effect: incongruent vs. congruent) between-subjects experimental design was conducted. A total of 316 participants were recruited via Prolific. MANOVA, a follow-up ANOVA, structural equation modeling analysis, and mediation analysis were conducted to test the hypothesized model. The overall findings indicate that, when designed to promote individual’s control over environment and matched with voice that is coherent to brand image, brands’ AI-powered VAs could be an effective tool that enhances consumers’ happiness, allows self-growth, and thereby offers personal resources for building a committed relationship with brands.

ABSTRACT. This study investigated how spatial and human crowdedness affect consumers' emotional and behavioral responses in a virtual apparel store. The findings of two experiments showed that high crowdedness (spatial and human) in a virtual apparel store leads to a higher level of positive emotional arousal, which, in turn, enhances attitude and satisfaction.

ABSTRACT. Conspiracy theories are simplified explanations of events that help people understand why something happened. People who tend to endorse conspiracy theories use them to cope with a crisis in their environment. But it can also become a tendency to analyze one’s environment in a way where the plot is central, a mechanism that literature describes as conspiracy thinking. In our study, we identify whether conspiracy thinking is essential for adhering to conspiracy theories. We used Response Time Testing (RTT) as a measurement method to quantify the level of conviction. This methodology is validated and institutionalized in related scientific disciplines. We use Social Network Analysis (SNA) to reveal conspiracy thinking patterns. SNA enables the disclosure of interdependences amongst variables and complex direct and indirect relations. The network of conspiracy convictions is plotted and analyzed to identify the clustering of variables, thanks to the greedy-modularity algorithms.

ABSTRACT. Mental distress has been consistently reported to be highly prevalent after collective traumas, alongside physical and personal damages. Our study aims to identify a clustered-dimensional approach to people’s experiences after a massive urban violence apart from traditional categorical psychopathological assessments. This cross-sectional study of 1305 Lebanese 4 months after the Beirut Port explosion. Emotions, attitudes and needs were assessed using iCode software, measuring explicit answers and implicit reaction time. People who experienced the most intense emotional distress and intrusive thoughts had higher country dissatisfaction and job worries. Faith and community resilience buffered the negative emotionality of those affected in spite of avoidance and intrusion. The last group was less distressed by the trauma with a marked sense of community and an overall reduced country and job dissatisfactions. These findings provide insight onto hard-wired attitudes and needs post-trauma.

ABSTRACT. As both Generation Z and Millennial, who grew up with the Internet, have become important target consumers for fashion brands. With increased competition on social media platforms, it has become more important for companies to understand which Brand-Generated Content features can bring in more likes (i.e., consumer engagements). Thus, we collected a data set of brand-generated Instagram posts from ten fashion brands between 2019 and 2020. Based on the collected data, we develop a predictive model that estimates the number of likes based on design variables, including semantic text meanings, color scheme and background of photos, and facial expressions, etc. The research offers several managerial implications for fashion brands and marketers. It is always beneficial to include more images in a single post, colorful images, and images with higher contrast to induce higher engagement. Luxury and non-luxury fast-fashion brands should apply distinct strategies to attract engagement.

ABSTRACT. Counterfeiting is a global challenge with severe economic and societal consequences (Gilgoff, 2004). In the current economy, counterfeiting is on the rise and doesn't seem to be slowing down (Zhang et al., 2012). In 2022, it is anticipated that counterfeiting and piracy will cost USD 2.3 trillion (Samaddar & Menon, 2020). Previous studies on counterfeiting have worked on the determinants like person-related, product-related, social and cultural context, situation and mood-related factors that motivate consumers to opt for counterfeits (Eisend & Schuchert-güler, 2006). This study will fill that void and explore the possible social media factors influencing consumers' purchase intention towards counterfeit products and the consumers' attitude as a mediating variable between them.

ABSTRACT. Digitalization and the emergence of online video platforms changed the way people communicate and made new marketing opportunities. As mobile short-form video has unique characteristics, more people tend to consume and produce diverse content in the digital environment. The purpose of this study aims to better understand the influence of short-form videos from a fashion marketing standpoint and delineate the driving factors through story types. Specifically, by adopting common traits of short-form video content and story types based on Greimas’ narrative theory, this study explores customers’ intention toward fashion purchases and electronic word of mouth between two groups: firm-generated content(FGC) and user-generated content(UGC). In this context, this paper contributes to activating short-form video content as a tool to promote fashion brands and products but also opening up the possibility to further study short-form videos.

ABSTRACT. The growing trend of companies using digital platforms for internationalization has raised the important issue of how companies on such platforms develop unique abilities, but few academic studies have focused on this field. This study develops a theoretical framework of the drivers and outcomes of multinational corporations’ organizational generativity on digital platforms. This study explores how companies effectively convert and integrate resources for generativity, and further improve firm performance during the process of internationalization. Our empirical results show that companies’ big data analytics capability, customer agility, platform openness, and network centrality have significant positive effects on organizational generativity. Furthermore, organizational generativity has a significant positive effect on firm performance. This study ultimately discusses theoretical and practical implications.

ABSTRACT. This study examines the impact of price transparency, specifically the disclosure of cost breakdown and level of explanation, on consumers' brand attitudes and purchase intentions. The findings suggest that transparency in pricing can have a positive effect on attitudes and purchase intentions for low-priced products. However, it may negatively affect the perception of luxury and high-value goods. The results also indicate that the benefits of price transparency are greater for low-priced products manufactured in countries with low brand equity, while it may be detrimental to the perception of high-priced products produced in countries with strong brand equity, where exclusivity is a key aspect of their reputation.

ABSTRACT. Crowdfunding – obtaining funding from a large pool of investors, where each one provides a small amount of money, usually through the Internet – has become an alternative channel for project funding. Despite the critical role played by artists as first users of crowdfunding, research dedicated to the role and impact of crowdfunding in the culture sector remains limited. To address this gap, the current study discusses the potential of crowdfunding to become an innovative digital way to finance and promote artistic projects. Crowdfunding incorporates advantages going beyond the financial ones. It gives the possibility to leverage the power of social networks, e.g., by providing increased exposure, word-of-mouth, and user-generated innovation. However, it has a number of challenges (e.g., fear personal embarrassment in case of failure). This study generates new knowledge about the challenges and opportunities associated with technological and economic changes in the culture sector.

ABSTRACT. With the rapid development of China's theme park industry, crowding and visitor flow management have become important issues for operators. This study examined the effects of human crowding on visitors' emotions, satisfaction, and behavioral intentions using the M-R model as a framework. The research was conducted on Shanghai Disneyland and Zhuhai Chimelong Ocean Kingdom, 295 and 410 valid questionnaires were collected, respectively. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the research model, and the two case sites were compared by multi-group analysis (MGA). The results revealed that human crowding evokes visitors' negative emotions but has inconsistent results on positive emotions. Positive emotions significantly affected visitors' satisfaction and behavioral intentions, but negative emotions did not. Additionally, the results also support some differences between the model path results between both theme parks.

ABSTRACT. Arguments today deemphasize marketing strategic planning (MSP). Drawing on contingency theory we propose that planning is relevant. We examine its effect on international performance and explore contemporary organizational conditions that change the MSPperformance relationship. Findings show that international MSP should be emphasized. Specifically, the MSPperformance is amplified by market sensing but surprisingly decreased by tolerance for failure.

ABSTRACT. Recent research calls into question whether global brand positioning strategies are invariably beneficial (Mandler et al. 2021). In many Western markets, the political environment becomes increasingly tense, with nationalism on the rise. Against this background, we seek to answer the question: How does political ideology influence the effectiveness of global brand positioning strategies? To answer this question, we analyze a unique dataset that combines real purchasing data related to 63 brands sold in stores across 343 U.S. American counties with political election results in these counties between 2006 and 2020. The results support the notion that brand globalness has a non-linear effect on brand equity, in that increases in brand globalness yield diminishing returns. The diminishing returns of brand globalness are particularly pronounced in liberal counties, relative to conservative counties.

ABSTRACT. Companies are increasingly offering algorithm-based recommendations that target specific consumers and help them find the products or services they need, mitigating choice overload. However, while algorithm-based recommendations may facilitate consumer choice, it can also constrain customers’ autonomy to influence their own decisions (Hyman et al., 2022), is often perceived by customers as intrusive (Smink et al., 2020), and even evokes a fear of AI replacing humans (Vorobeva et al., 2022). This research draws on temporal self-appraisal theory to understand the negative effects of AI on consumers’ wellbeing. We also argue that the fear of being replaced by an AI may harm a person’s self-continuity perception, because AI replacement of human skills (e.g., making decisions, or recommendations) (Vorobeva et al., 2022) provokes a threat to self-continuity. Implications for theory and practice are discussed, contributing to the growing body of knowledge of AI applications in marketing.

ABSTRACT. Our work employs an exploratory qualitative analysis to unravel how global brands become peace activists, as disclosed in their social media channels across different platforms. Our findings unpack the concept of peace brand activism, its forms, types and characteristics, and inform managers and policy makers alike.

ABSTRACT. This study focused on the characteristics of promotional information provided by companies on their Internet shopping sites and analyzed their impact on consumers’ intention to purchase products. The results reveal that consumers’ preferences change depending on the product type. That means, for hedonic products, the consumers preferred to purchase when the attribute of the promotional information was monetary than nonmonetary; while for utilitarian products, it was the opposite. That is, the preference to purchase was when the promotional information attribute was nonmonetary than monetary. We believe that our study makes a significant contribution to the literature because our analysis has shown that the positive impact of sales promotions on consumers' Purchase Likelihood is stronger in the case of hedonic products than in the case of utilitarian products.

ABSTRACT. This study investigated the impact of sustainable perceived value (SPV) on fashion consumers. The results revealed that SPV significantly affects customer satisfaction, loyalty, and the positive relationship between satisfaction and loyalty were confirmed, implicating SPV as a valid approach in measuring consumption value of sustainable fashion products.

ABSTRACT. Previous research has compared still images employing the actor's perspective to those employing the observer's perspective and found that the former increases service evaluations if the consumers are promotion-focused, whereas the latter increases service evaluations if the consumers are prevention-focused. The research compares three kinds of vlogs, i.e., vlogs employing the actor's perspective, vlogs employing the observer's perspective without the actor's face, and vlogs employing the observer's perspective with the actor's face. The results show that the highest service evaluations are induced by the actor's perspective in case of promotion-focused consumers, whereas they are induced by the observer's perspective without the actor's face in case of prevention-focused consumers.

ABSTRACT. The integration of Live streaming and E-commerce, also known as Live commerce, has been widely used in Asia. This study investigates impacts of live commerce on customer engagement based on a concept of IT affordance and Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) model. Through an analysis from 477 Chinese live commerce consumers , the result shows that visibility affordance, metavoicing affordance, and guidance shopping affordance not only directly influence customer engagement, but also indirectly influence engagement through customers’ perceived trust and satisfaction. The findings indicate theoretical and practical implications toward customer engagement generation in live commerce.

ABSTRACT. Some leading manufactures vertically integrate wholesale functions in order to control those functions. Based on transaction cost analysis (TCA) and capability approach, this research proposes a conceptual framework why manufactures integrate wholesale functions or not. Specifically, it is suggested that human asset specificity and teachability positively related with vertical integration, while outside wholesaler know-how negatively related with vertical integration. Empirical analysis shows that decision on integration of wholesale functions are influenced by TCA and capability factors.

ABSTRACT. This research analyzed League of Legends viewership factors' differences between the three leagues(LCK, LCS, and LEC) where viewership factors influence esports viewership demand through LOL’s live and highlight streaming video. Data (N=1581) of regular season matches from three leagues (2020 spring to 2021 summer) were collected and analyzed. This study analyzed the average number of visitors per minute of Twitch live streaming and the number of views on YouTube highlights. Five main viewership factors, and seventeen independent variables were verified by multiple regression analysis using STATA 15. As a result of the analysis, the model with the number of real-time audience ,and the number of highlights views as the dependent variable show different results as well as same results from main viewership variables. Findings from this research expand and apply the variables derived from the demand determination theory of traditional sports to e-sports demand research.

ABSTRACT. Sports commentators play an important role in providing viewers’ information and entertainment. Previous research on sport broadcasts indicate that color commentary can provide viewers with a greater level of enjoyment than objective commentary. Thus, this study aims to conduct a content analysis to assess the prevalence and degree to which color commentary influences online streaming viewership ratings. By using natural language processing techniques, we aim to analyze commentary transcripts from a total of 65 matches played in the 2022 FIFA World Cup; then examine the relationship between the content of sports commentary across the three main national television networks in Korea (KBS, MBC, and SBS) and online streaming viewership ratings. Findings are expected to provide sport broadcasters useful information to better understand which type of commentary is most effective in attracting higher viewership ratings. Theoretical and managerial implications will be further discussed.

ABSTRACT. This study aimed to investigate the viewing experience of Taekwondo competitions, compare and analyze the viewing experience according to the type of Taekwondo competition, and confirm the potential of Power Taekwondo as a sustainable content. This study was conducted thourgh two stages. First, MANCOVA and t-test were performed to examine the differences in viewing experience such as gamification, enjoyment, flow, and repeated viewing intention between different types of Taekwondo competitions. Second, the structural causal relationship of viewing experiences was verified through CFA and SEM. The results showed that the viewing experience of the Power Taekwondo group was statistically higher than that of the General Taekwondo group, and that the independent variable at a high level in the viewing experience structure had a positive effect on each dependent variable. In addition, the effect of gamification on enjoyment with flow, which acted as a mediator, was found to be significant.

ABSTRACT. The growth of OTT video streaming services is a major development in consumption of media sport. The online streaming of sporting events has become the important way of copyrights holders to engage sport fans, especially young fans. At the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022, NAVER's live streaming service reached 121,173,945 cumulative viewers in 64 matches. Based on suspense theory, this study aimed to examine the factors that influence sport fans’ watching intention to stream online sport. The current study collected the number of cumulative viewers of live streaming from NAVER, a total of 64 matches. The results suggest that a measure of the unfolding nature of suspense is a stronger predictor of watching intention than those used previously. The additional measures of suspense that take into account the unfolding events of the contest will be stronger predictors of watching intention than either disposition toward the winning team or closeness of final score.

ABSTRACT. Fashion companies develop initiatives in the Metaverse, especially through Gamification, Non-Fungible Tokens or Shopping experience. Through a Systematic Literature Review in Metaverse and Fashion Communication and Systematic Content analysis in Vogue Business and The Business of Fashion we highlight the best actions in the metaverse and their future application.

ABSTRACT. In this research, given the recent spurt of luxury brands featuring their products in the metaverse, we examine if the use of luxury brand items to enhance one’s virtual avatar augments the gamer’s sense of confidence, empowerment, and actual performance.

ABSTRACT. The metaverse comprises of different areas related to marketing theory and practice: retail channels, media channels and communication channels and can be approached from a consumer and an industry perspective. This exploratory research investigates Metaverse Marketing practices, specifically the use of the metaverse as a communication/promotion channel and how it can be a way to a) promote sustainability communication in a way that is appealing and consistent with other channels b) use digital technologies and an immersive environment to promote sustainable behaviours.

ABSTRACT. Environmental pollution has become extremely severe due to the fast fashion trend in modern society. In this context, rental services that introduce the concept of environmental friendliness and sharing economy have emerged, and they are gradually moving into the fashion market. Therefore, this study aims to identify the consumption motivation of fashion rental services. To this end, this study uses text mining, LDA topic modeling, and network analysis using Python to explore customer and public perceptions of fashion rental services online. As a result, this study aims to help identify consumption motivation for fashion rental services and discuss marketing measures to revitalize fashion rental services.

ABSTRACT. This research examines how voluntary simplicity lifestyle can mediate the tourists’ COVID-19 anxiety and the tourism motivation during the COVID-19 pandemic and demonstrates how resilience can moderate the effect of the anxiety and pull motivations. The results show the effects of mediation and moderation on the relationship between anxiety and tourism motivations.

ABSTRACT. The Covid-19 pandemic has caused unprecedented crises to societies and economies around the world and has brought drastic changes in the way consumers behave . Fashion business is one of the industries that has been significantly affected by Covid-19 as many consumers reduced their discretionary spending during the pandemic. While the world is entering the post-pandemic era and recovering from the pandemic, it is important to uncover and reflect on the reasons behind varying patterns of consumers’ coping behaviors associated with fashion shopping. Drawing from the Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) framework, this study aims to investigate how cognitive appraisal of threats affects the affective/emotional state of consumers and consequently their intention to engage in various coping behaviors in the context of fashion shopping.

ABSTRACT. This study aims to integrate the protection motivation theory (PMT) model and attitude to explore the factors influencing consumers’ usage behavior toward online food delivery platform services (OFDPSs) during the COVID-19 pandemic. The utilitarian value and hedonic value of OFDPSs, which may influence consumers’ attitude, were also included in the integrated research model. This study collected a total of 384 participants in Taiwan for analysis. Structural equation modeling analysis results indicated that utilitarian value and hedonic value contribute to consumers’ positive attitude toward OFDPSs. Among the four components of threat appraisal and coping appraisal, only perceived self-efficacy can strengthen people’s protection motivation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Protection motivation and positive attitude toward OFDPSs encourage consumers’ usage behavior, which promotes their continued use of such service if their usage experience is positive.

ABSTRACT. Using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC), we explore how cognitive, affective, and social drivers of loyalty differ between 10,044 Trustpilot reviews before, during and after the Covid-19 pandemic. Cognitive drivers dominated before the pandemic, social drivers during the pandemic and affective drivers after the pandemic.

ABSTRACT. We can be expected that the experience of damage caused by COVID-19 has had a negative impact on consumers' perceived quality of life. This study identifies factors that governments can positively impact the lives of consumers facing financial difficulties. We consider policy proposals to improve the quality of life of consumers at financial risk when situations like COVID-19 reoccur in the future.

ABSTRACT. We study retailer app use and shopping behavior by investigating whether and how app adopters’ preferred store registration (PSR), a voluntary enrollment of store loyalty program, can lead to changes in purchase behaviors among the adopters in offline stores. A panel dataset from a large bakery franchise chain was studied using difference-in-differences with propensity score matching for causal inference. The results show that customers who participated in PSR increase their spending, compared to customers who did not. In addition, the results confirm that the PSR-spending relationship is moderated by customer and store characteristics; customers who visited infrequently and spent less prior to PSR participation increase their purchases, and they spend more at stores with better service quality.

ABSTRACT. Extant studies assessing determinants of peer-to-peer (P2P) accommodation prices have mainly focused on individual listing-level analysis, with a less attention to inter-regional dynamics between cooperation and competition. This paper provides macro-models P2P accommodation prices from spatial coopetition perspectives by exploring three determinants of Airbnb coopetitive pricing – market commonality, resource similarity, and supply commonality – across clustered communities. We used geographically weighted regression and visualization techniques toward census-tract level data of 2,311 Airbnb listings in Miami-Dade County in Florida. The results demonstrate coopetitive pricing dynamics – cooperation-dominant, competition-dominant, and balanced coopetition – across communities. Spatial coopetitive pricing suggests the importance of regional pricing strategies that help accommodation owners and tourism policy makers to manage local resources within and across communities.

ABSTRACT. In this research-in-progress paper, we formalise the behavioural sequence prediction problem to tackle and clarify these two challenges within the exhibition context, which is very natural setting without any external treatment such as marketing purpose but can be easily transferrable to actual business scenario. To resolve the formalised prediction problem, we suggest the novel analytic approach by utilising the information extracted from the IoT generated data - frequent sequences, association network among exhibition booth, and geo-network. With these models, we will try to investigate the economic natures of the prediction model by examining the relationship among ‘economic variables in learning-based approach’ such as size of training data, size of input for prediction, and depth of prediction, thereby expecting to verify the existence of trade-off relationship among the variables and the phenomena of diminishing marginal accuracy under the training size and depth of prediction.

ABSTRACT. Using data focused on a multiscale-based nested geographic structure, we not only examined spatially heterogeneous interactions in the association between sport industry and consumer spatial behavior in affecting consumer resilience but also identified what effect spatial interaction has on cross-level relationships. To address spatial interaction and heterogeneity, we used a comprehensive analytical model for global and local spatial analysis, including a spatial multilevel mediation model and a multiscale geographically weighted regression model. The findings of novel analyses indicated considerable spatial non-stationarity appeared in the spatial interaction, indicating interregional interactions in the cross-level effects of sport industry on consumer resilience within a county. The current study calls for spatial management planning and strategy in sport industry for enhancing consumer resilience through spatial sport consumption.

ABSTRACT. This study empirically verified the endorsement effect of a restaurant platform as a reliable third-party organization on changes in customers’ attitudes toward restaurants by measuring big data-based consumption values using customers’ reviews and applying difference-in-differences. The results indicated that endorsement effects are effective when specific cues are provided and under unusual circumstances such as the pandemic.

ABSTRACT. This study focuses on the knowledge transfer projects in the digital government and smart cities that the Korean government and major public institutions carried out and analyses the status of digital knowledge transfer or official development assistance (ODA) projects over the last decade (2011-2020). In doing so, the study looked into establishing public sector systems such as digital government and smart cities and analyzed the current status and research results of domestic and foreign studies related to assessment and diagnosis. Through this, major factors that determine the performance of digital government knowledge transfer projects were identified, and an analysis framework was derived for the analysis of existing cases of digital government and smart city knowledge transfer project implementation. The 58 digital government cases and 30 smart city projects are used in this study.

ABSTRACT. Digital entrepreneurship refers to the pursuit of business opportunities based on the utilisation of digital media and other information and communication technologies. The use of digital technologies provides an avenue of unleashing female entrepreneurs from the hierarchical and practice of obedience in a high cultural context. In this sense, the potential of digital entrepreneurship in promoting female entrepreneurship can be examined in terms of entrepreneurship as emancipation. Our research contributes to the women entrepreneurship literature on the use of digital technologies in the context of a very hostile environment such as in the case of Yemeni civil war. A semi-structured interview format will be used to gather information on a common set of questions focusing on how digital technology enabled the entrepreneurial activities. The researchers will adopt a qualitative interpretive methodology. This approach focuses on the participants’ own reflections on their experiences.

ABSTRACT. Digital marketing as a business construct has created various electronic platforms to facilitate consumer-business exchange. One of such platforms is the electronic commerce (e-commerce) which has changed how consumers shop due to an introduction to a global range of products all located in one place and available from the comfort of any location. The 2020 Statista report showed that 84% of worldwide consumers have shopped online more than ever before, and this represents a significant increase. There is a prediction that more growth is to come in the e-commerce business sector as businesses are increasingly integrating e-commerce platforms to its existing models.

ABSTRACT. The rise of social media has led to SMEs adopting some of these platforms into their day to day activities i.e. Facebook, Instagram, twitter, YouTube. Studies on social media adoption and SMEs firm performance are relatively new and fragmented in their focus, however there is an increasing interest from academia and practitioners for further research and investigation within this area. This study’s aim is to understand the factors that influence social media adoption in SMEs; taking into consideration how they apply entrepreneurial orientation, and absorptive capacity plays a role.

ABSTRACT. As emerging markets exist in VUCA, two institutional angles have been added to the conceptual model, the role of industry regulation and role of formal contracts. The results of empirical testing confirm the main causal chain of effects, with the service solutions and products being the main mediating innovation mechanism.

ABSTRACT. The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) is a widely-used model in social psychology that seeks to explain how individuals make decisions and take actions based on their attitudes, beliefs, and perceived behavioral control. When it comes to environmentally-friendly behaviors, such as purchasing "green" products, the TPB model has been applied to understand consumers' intentions and behaviors. However, the TPB has not been extended to account for cultural values (i.e., Hofstede’s cultural framework), which can play an important role in shaping consumer attitudes and behaviors. Therefore, this research investigates the application of the extended TPB model in the context of green food products with a quantitative surveys (N=387). It was found that cultural values, particularly those related to individualism-collectivism, influence both green purchase intention and behavior.

ABSTRACT. The research aims to estimate the role of SMAs (sustainable marketing activities) implementation in impacting event image, commemorative product perceived value, and TBIs in the context of sports tourism events. Additionally, this study analyzes the effects of perceived value and event image on TBIs. The data collection was done during the Beijing Winter Olympic Games to address the research goals. The study examines the data from 315 valid questionnaires from tourists in the Chinese market by SEM (structural equation modeling). This research contributes toward extending the SMAs as a component of the sustainability concept and its implementation in the marketing and management disciplines in the tourism event field. Specifically, the study adds to customer behavior research by investigating the relationships between SMAs and TBIs. Analysis of the sports tourism event image and commemorative product perceived value further contributes to brand management theory.

ABSTRACT. this study investigates the Egyptian context contributing to a more nuanced and contextualized explanation of body image and body change behaviors. Results provided empirical evidence to the basic tenets of objectification theory and consumer culture impact model in women’s willingness to consider cosmetic surgery.

ABSTRACT. Consumers sometimes see brands as relationship partners and expect that they conform to certain expectations, or relational norms. However, there is no valid and universal operationalization of these norms for the specific context of consumer-brand relationships. We address this gap by developing and validating a new scale in four studies.

ABSTRACT. Following the Antecedents, Methods, and Outcomes (AMO) framework, this paper contributes to a better understanding of corporate activism (CA) in an international context. Through an in-depth review of publications over 33 years, we shed light on the rising trend of CA and identify its most important antecedents, manifestations, and consequences.

ABSTRACT. This abstract summarizes an early-stage research proposal examining the benefits of storytelling in marketing green brands. Getting exposed to these exciting stories, consumers want to join and be part of them by purchasing green products. Therefore, we hypothesize that this involvement and participation should lead to higher brand engagement and can manifest in the co-creation of content in forums and social media. We can argue that a storytelling approach and getting consumers involved in creating the story would lead them to engage psychologically with the sustainable brand to develop a sense of belonging. We posit that using a storytelling approach and enabling consumers to co-create stories would lead to higher consumer engagement with sustainable brands and faster diffusion of sustainable technologies.

ABSTRACT. Sinnlfuencers are a new popular type of endorsers who focus on societal relevant issues. Against this backdrop, the question arises whether their success factors are the same as for traditional influencers or whether new success factors become relevant. In this work, we build up a case of Sinnfluencers for healthy nutrition and examine the five characteristics attractiveness, fitness, expertise, benevolence and obesity. Based on an online experiment involving 1332 data sets analyzed in SmartPLS we find that the traditional criteria fitness and attractiveness are most important. Based on these surprising results we propose implications for research and management.

ABSTRACT. As an introduction to the GMC track "conversational marketing", the intention is to present a corresponding research framework that first accentuates the interaction of dialogue approaches in the fields of transaction, reputation & relationship as well as context management and then elaborate relevant prerequisites for a promising implementation in the interest of realizing a comprehensive, society-oriented target system of companies.

ABSTRACT. The popularity of live streaming is driving the emergence of a new business model, known as live-streaming commerce (LSC). We identify two types of social interactions behind danmaku, the real-time commentary that scrolls across the screen: transaction-oriented and relationship-oriented. Viewers in the first category focus on products and transactions and tend to use non-emotional words. In contrast, relationship-oriented viewers might treat broadcasters as friends and are more likely to post emotional words. We discuss the implications of heterogeneous social-interaction strategies across different broadcasters.

ABSTRACT. The popularity of live streaming is driving the emergence of a new business model, known as live-streaming commerce (LSC). We collect a rich live-streaming dataset and identify different portraits for broadcasters in both static profile introduction and dynamic behaviors. Based on the topic modeling results, we show three static portraits for broadcasters: Interaction-Focus, Reputation-Focus, and Product-Focus. Meanwhile, broadcasters’ dynamic behaviors could be classified into three classes including Interaction and Popularity Pattern, High Price and Quality Pattern, and Products Diversity Pattern. Broadcasters behave differently in each portrait and achieve the highest sales in the High Price and Quality Pattern. Our paper contributes to the literature by providing a systematic understanding of broadcasters in LSC in both static and dynamic dimensions. Our paper also has important managerial implications for live-streaming platforms and broadcasters.

ABSTRACT. Artificial intelligence generated content (AIGC) refers to content produced by artificial intelligence that represents the perspectives of its users, and a new technique of content Generation. Continuous development in deep learning and algorithms have facilitated the adoption of AIGC. This research summarizes literature published under the topic of AIGC using bibliomteric analysis method, aims to provide insightful research directions for future studies. 342 documents were collected from Database of Web of science, network visualization analysis among authors and citation analysis over publications are presented to scholars who wish to further research into this area.

Keywords: Bibliometric analysis, Artificial intelligence, Network visualization

ABSTRACT. NFT, as a digital artwork credential, protects the artist's welfare and motivates the artist to create. NFT platforms exhibit different user sizes and royalties. So, for the artists, how to decide the value and quantity of artworks across NFT platforms is worth exploring. We build an analytical model to study the impact of user differentiation on artists' decisions about the value and quantity of artwork. We identify two types of users with different preferences for NFT, collectors, and connoisseurs. Collectors are forward-looking and care about the transaction value of NFT; connoisseurs are myopic and care about the ornamental value of NFT. We show that the higher the proportion of collectors, the greater the revenue for the artists and the social welfare of the platform ecosystem. Our results indicate that artists may prefer to create artwork on NFT platforms with a large proportion of collectors, and the platform should expand the size of collectors to attract artists.

ABSTRACT. In recent years, advances in the digital and live streaming economy have led to exponential growth in the number of self-employed streamers who have become an integral part of the self-driven digital labor force. However, previous research on the impact of streamers' work time arrangements on their virtual gifts remains scarce. To fill this gap in the literature, using large-scale data from Kuaishou live streaming platform, we demonstrate that several features of streamers' work time have an important impact on their virtual gifts. Specifically, our results suggest that work time duration and timing improve streamers' virtual gifts; meanwhile, work time tempo has an adverse effect on streamers' earnings. Taken together, our results provide novel and actionable insights for millions of self-employed streamers, agencies, platforms, and policymakers.

ABSTRACT. Innovative payment methods, such as Bitcoin, may exhibit effects on consumer behavior besides known pain of paying effects. This study sheds light on spillover effects of innovative payment methods by giving evidence for an increase of consumers’ purchase intention caused by payment method innovativeness and mediated by perceived store innovativeness.

ABSTRACT. This study examined the effects of user interactivity with VR in a digital retail setting on mental imagery and sensory brand app experience and its consequential impacts on perceived enjoyment, perceived usefulness, attitude toward using VR, and behavioral intent. Mental imagery is understood in relation to quantity, vividness, and valence. The user involvement with the device is employed as a moderator to fully understand the impact of VR in connection with consumer engagement. An IKEA VR application was utilized for this study. A convenient sample of college students was recruited from a large research university in the US. The findings of the study show that user interactivity impacts mental imagery, and it subsequently influences sensory brand app experience, perceived enjoyment, perceived usefulness, attitude toward using VR, and behavioral intent. Overall, this study provides meaningful and practical information to academicians and practitioners.

ABSTRACT. Over the last decade, a wide range of scholarly research has contributed to fashion sustainability. However, many research studies are disconnected and fragmented simply because every study has its specific research objective(s) and focus(es). Through a systematic literature review, key research themes, trends and developmental patterns can be identified, and the complexity can also be unpacked and illuminated. The overarching objectives of this study are threefold: (1) provide a comprehensive report of scholarly articles (2010 - 2021) focusing on fashion sustainability research, (2) discover research trends of fashion and sustainability, and (3) identify salient (non-)sustainable attributes in clothing selection, evaluation, and consumption processes.

ABSTRACT. The purpose of this research is to examine the effectiveness of egoistic and altruistic claims in organic cotton apparel advertising. We examined how those advertising claims can influence consumers’ attitudes toward the product, attitudes toward the brand, and purchase intentions. Four types of organic cotton apparel ads were created (i.e., control ad, altruistic ad, egoistic ad, and altruistic and egoistic combined ad) and participants were randomly assigned to one type. The results showed a significant effect of advertising claim type on brand attitudes, product attitudes, and purchase intentions. Organic cotton apparel ads were the most effective in persuading consumers when they contain egoistic claims including information about low price and personal health benefits. The findings suggest that altruistic claims alone may not be effective in promoting purchase behaviors and thus should be combined with egoistic claims.