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This study empirically investigates the influence of students' brand attitudes and perceptions of brand fit on their study intention vis-à-vis international brand alliances and individual brands after alliance.

Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used in data analysis, and a questionnaire was administered to a sample of sub-degree business management students recruited from a self-financing higher education institution in Hong Kong.

The results indicate that students' prior attitudes towards the brands of foreign and local institutions and their perceptions of brand fit positively affect their study intention, providing evidence that post-attitudes towards individual brands fully mediate the relationship between attitudes towards international brand alliances and study intention towards individual institutions.

International brand alliances between higher education institutions are becoming increasingly important. In Hong Kong, despite the emerging trend of collaboration between foreign and local universities, an evaluation of the effect of international brand alliances on study intention has been seriously overlooked.

This study aims to examine the effects of celebrity negative publicity on attitude towards brand, corporation, brand reputation and corporate reputation, both directly and through the moderating effects of social media involvement, brand commitment, identification and attribution (both types). Associative network theory has been used to explain these effects.

A quantitative survey of 550 respondents was carried out in London and surrounding areas. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data.

The findings suggest that celebrity negative publicity affects brand reputation and corporate reputation. Further, the moderating effects of social media involvement and brand commitment on attitude towards brand and corporation, identification on attitude towards brand, attribution types on attitude towards corporation were not found.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to examine the effects of celebrity negative publicity on attitudes towards brand, attitude towards corporation, brand reputation and corporation reputation, directly, and through the moderating effects of attribution (both types), identification, commitment and social media. Findings from this study will minimise the gap in the literature on the topic and will help managers and policymakers to understand the effects of celebrity negative publicity in detail.

The present state of the financial services industry suggests the need for banks to appeal to consumers’ emotions with the aim of improving their reputation; this study aims to explore how UK banks are using emotional appeals in their advertisements and how this shapes consumers’ attitudes towards their brands.

Qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis in a two-stage study – Study 1 analysed the content of 1,274 UK bank advertisements to understand how the banks convey emotional appeals, whereas Study 2 elicited consumers’ perceptions of these advertising appeals and how they influenced their attitudes through semi-structured interview with 33 UK retail bank customers in London and Luton.

UK banks are using emotional appeals in their marketing communication strategies. The qualitative findings highlight the bi-dimensional nature of feelings towards the advertisements and how this relates to the brand. There is a lacklustre attitude towards the brands; there was no sense of pride in associating with any bank, even with though there are possibilities of switching; and consumers feel there is no better offer elsewhere as all banks are the same.

Bank brands should present distinct values about their services to the target audience, endeavour to build relationships with existing customers and reward loyalty. Importantly, financial brands need to engage in and highlight charitable activities and any corporate social responsibility as this can help to improve consumers’ attitudes as they often consider bank brands greedy and selfish.

Qualitative research methodology was adopted to better understand consumers’ attitudes towards UK retail bank brands.

The research aim is to investigate the impacts of comparative ads used by retailers to compare the prices of their store brand (SB) products with those of equivalent national brand (NB) products. More specifically, this research examines if consumers perceive retailers as legitimate when they use comparative ads to compare the prices of their SB products to those of equivalent NB products, and how effective are these comparative ads in terms of actual purchases. This research also explores for which SB type (economy, standard or premium) and consumers are comparative ads most effective.

This research investigates consumers' reactions to comparative ads used by retailers to compare the prices of their SB products with those of similar NB products through an experiment within a store laboratory. A between-subject design has been used. The participants of the first/second/third group (n₁ = 93/n₂ = 92/n₃ = 91) were exposed to ads comparing the prices of retailer's economy/standard/premium SB food products with their equivalent NB food products, in the same product category. The participants of each group carried out a shopping trip in the store laboratory.

Consumers consider retailers legitimate when they use comparative ads. This favourable evaluation improves their attitude towards these ads. However, the impact of retailers' legitimacy of (1) means, (2) objectives and (3) historical legitimacy on consumers' attitude towards comparative ads depends on the SB type (economy, standard and premium). By contrast, comparative ads are effective in terms of consumers' attitude towards these ads and towards SBs, along with purchase intention and actual purchases of these brands, whatever the SB type. Lastly, this research highlights that comparative ads for SBs are mainly directed at consumers with high levels of price consciousness and resistance to NBs.

This research only tested the impact of direct comparative advertising and an extrinsic attribute (price). The research experiment was conducted on a convenience sample, which limits its external validity.

This research encourages retailers to use comparative advertising for their SBs (economy, standard and premium) for several reasons. First, this study suggests that comparative advertising is an effective tool for retailers to shape or improve consumers' attitude towards SBs, via their attitude towards comparative ads. Second, this research proposes that comparative advertising contrasting the prices of SB products with those of NB products could increase retailers' in-store sales of their SBs. Lastly, this research underlines that comparative advertising is particularly effective for consumers with high levels of price consciousness and resistance to NBs.

This research supplements previous research in the field of SBs and comparative advertising. Previous research on comparative advertising has examined NBs exclusively (Dianoux et al., 2013; Beard, 2018). Comparisons between SBs and NBs are lacking. This research thus validates the use of this specific form of communication for SBs, given the paucity of studies of the effects of the use of mass media communication on SBs (Nenycz-Thiel and Romaniuk, 2014; Gendel-Guterman and Levy, 2017).

Conventionally, consumers perceive luxury products as a means of displaying their wealth and prosperity. Consumption of luxury products has usually been considered the prerogative of the Western world. Although there are a number of studies capturing the pre-purchase and purchase behaviour of consumers, there is a dearth of quality studies that have been conducted in this field to understand the post-purchase behaviour of consumers towards luxury brands, especially in the context of young shoppers in an emerging market context. Studying the post-purchase behaviour of shoppers is important to understand their experience with the brand. A negative experience could lead to a post-purchase dissonance, which in turn could lead to an unbalanced or distorted attitude towards the brand and other marketing stimuli. Keeping this in consideration, the purpose of this study is to explore the experiences and attitudes of young shoppers in India towards luxury consumption.

The study captured responses from young shoppers of Chandigarh and its satellite cities located in the relatively prosperous northwest region of India. The data were collected from 200 participants through a structured questionnaire that was based on an adapted “Attitude towards the concept of luxury” scale by Dubois and Laurent (1994) and “Brand Experience” Scale by Brakus et al. (2009). The structural equation modeling technique was applied to test the proposed model.

The empirical results indicate that sensory, intellectual, behavioural and affective experience play a significant role in building the attitude of consumers towards luxury brands.

The study selected university students from Chandigarh (India) Tricity region as target respondents, which may limit the generalisability of the results to other target respondents in different regions of India or other countries.

The study is useful for researchers, academicians, marketers and retailers of luxury brands, as it gives fresh insights into understanding the consumer behaviour of a young segment towards the consumption of luxury brands in the post-purchase scenario, especially in the context of an emerging market.

The uniqueness of the study lies in the fact that it examines the post-purchase behaviour of a segment consisting of young, educated and aspirational individuals in one of the world’s fastest-growing major economies.

This paper sets out to examine how social and personality factors influence Chinese consumers' attitudes towards counterfeits of luxury brands and how these two sets of variables influence purchase intention. It provides a profile of buyers and non‐buyers of counterfeits of luxury brands.

A self‐administered questionnaire was designed using established scales. A survey was conducted in downtown Shanghai through the “mall intercept” method. A variety of statistical techniques were used to analyze the data.

Status consumption and integrity are strong influencers of purchase intention, whereas normative susceptibility, information susceptibility, personal gratification, value consciousness, and novelty seeking had weaker influencing relationships. The attitude towards counterfeits of luxury brands is found to influence purchase intention. Collectivism does not influence attitudes nor purchase intentions towards counterfeits of luxury brands.

The findings are limited to Chinese consumers in Shanghai, which cannot be generalized across the whole of China or other international markets. Further, only luxury brands are considered. Other cultural contexts and product categories should be investigated in the future.

The research provides an in‐depth understanding of Chinese consumers' attitudes towards counterfeits of luxury brands. The research findings can be used to formulate strategies for academia, practitioners and, more importantly, policy makers to help eradicate, or at the very least curb, counterfeiting activities.

The majority of previous studies focused on counterfeiting and piracy of music and other optical media, whereas this paper focused exclusively on luxury brands. Status consumption is also added as an antecedent towards attitudes and purchase intention of counterfeits.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influences of parent brand characteristics and brand-extension fit on attitude towards the extension in the context of services-to-goods (SG) brand extension compared with services-to-services (SS) brand extension.

A survey design was used to collect data from 626 individual respondents. The respondents were selected using probability sampling from two cities in India. The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM).

The study indicated that context (SS or SG) moderated the influence of factors on attitude toward brand extension. A favorable attitude towards the parent brand had a greater positive influence on SS brand extension compared with SG brand extension. Quality variance among service types under the parent brand had a higher negative impact on attitude towards SG brand extension than on attitude towards SS brand extension.

Managers may prefer extending a service brand to another service rather than a good when consumers have a favorable attitude towards the brand. Furthermore, when the perceived quality of service types under a service brand varies substantially, extension of the brand to a good requires greater concern than extension to a service.

The unique contribution of this study is the examination of the moderating influence of the characteristics of an offering (SS vis-à-vis SG) on the link between brand extension attitude and its influencing factors.

The purpose of this article is to analyse the impact of the internet, as a new information channel for the consumer, on business results, and in particular, the consequences of attitude towards the web site with regard to customer behaviour and web site sponsor brand.

A survey instrument was used to gather data to test the relationships in the research model.

The paper shows the importance of attitude towards the web site and attitude towards the internet in explaining attitude towards the brand and consumer e‐behaviour, and identifies the hierarchy of effects operative among these three concepts of attitude: attitude towards the internet; attitude towards the web site; and attitude towards the brand.

This study only looked at one category of web site – free‐content sites. Future research could apply the conclusions of this study to other types of web sites, e.g. the e‐commerce web site and the corporate web site.

The main practical consequence of the study lies in the need to take into account that the profitability of an e‐business should not be measured solely in terms of direct profitability. Profits generated indirectly should also be considered, given the proven positive relationship between attitude towards the web site and attitude towards the brand. This conclusion is of vital importance since very few e‐businesses obtain direct profits. Brick‐and‐click firms eliminate their e‐businesses without bearing in mind the positive consequences they may be having on the brand itself.

The study aimed to take a more in‐depth look at the value of e‐businesses for brick‐and‐click firms. It analysed sources of indirect profitability for the e‐business that should be taken into account when looking at web site value.

This paper aims to examine the importance of celebrity brands in influencing consumer perceptions of celebrity authenticity, which drives positive consumer attitudes and intentions. In addition, the notion of low-celebrity investment is investigated as a factor that diminishes the positive outcomes associated with celebrity brands.

Study 1 examines the effect of brand situation (endorsement versus celebrity brand) on consumer attitudes and intentions. Studies 2 and 3 investigate the role of celebrity authenticity in explaining the effects observed in Study 1. Study 4 examines celebrity investment as a bound of the phenomenon.

Study 1 demonstrates that consumers report heightened attitudes and intentions towards celebrity brands when compared to endorsements. Studies 2 and 3 provide evidence that authenticity explains the effects observed in Study 1. Results of Study 4 show that when consumers are aware of low-celebrity investment, the celebrity is viewed as inauthentic regardless of brand situation.

This research is limited as it focuses only on known celebrity endorsers who were matched with products that had a high level of fit. In addition, purchase intentions were measured as opposed to the study of actual purchase behaviour.

This research has important implications for the development of endorsements and celebrity brands by demonstrating that consumers view celebrities as authentic when they are involved with brands for reasons other than monetary compensation.

This research shows that consumers have heightened attitudes and intentions towards celebrity brands compared to endorsements. This research identifies celebrity authenticity as the process underlying the observed phenomenon. However, celebrity investment is identified as a boundary condition demonstrating that knowledge of low investment results in a celebrity being viewed as inauthentic.

The study aims to demonstrate the impact of social media users’ positive attitude towards the social networking sites (SNS) on the generation of a positive attitude towards social networking advertisements (SNA). A favourable attitude towards the SNA thus generated can positively influence brand attitude and purchase intention.

An online survey was conducted to collect relevant data using a structured questionnaire. Structural equation modelling was conducted using the statistical software AMOS 18.

Empirical analysis revealed the importance of brand advertisements on the social networks in inciting a positive attitude as well as a purchase intention for the brand in the SNS users’ minds.

The study has been conducted in the Indian context using Facebook as a model social networking site.

Social media being one of the most popular and user-friendly platforms for regular communications, marketers are suggested to allocate a sizeable share of the advertising budget for social media advertisements and customer engagement so as to help build a positive attitude towards the advertised brand in the SNS users’ minds.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the impact of users’ positive evaluation of SNS as an effective communication medium, on the generation of a positive attitude towards the SNA, has been dealt for the first time here.