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The purpose of the present study is to examine and validate a research model encompassing power distance belief, need for uniqueness, self-monitoring, self-construal, social adjustive attitude, and value-expressive attitude as the causal antecedents for conspicuous luxury consumption.

Survey data was collected from a large consumer panel. The study applied a combinatory partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) approach in examining the research hypotheses and proposition.

The results indicated the effects of power distance belief, need for uniqueness, self-monitoring, and self-construal on social adjustive attitude and value-expressive attitude, which in turn determine conspicuous luxury consumption. In addition, the fsQCA findings revealed three configurations that articulate the complex interactions of the causal antecedents.

This study enriches the literature by providing a comprehensive understanding of the psychological motivation factors that drive conspicuous luxury consumption and assists luxury retailers in developing targeted strategies to appeal to consumers.

The paper delves into the international expansion of luxury SMEs to investigate their internationalization pathways, namely how the internationalization process unfolds in terms of timing of entry into foreign markets, the geographic scope of operations and the scale. The paper examines also the determinants of the internationalization pathways as a set of factors that contribute to developing an asset of foreignness.

The paper adopts a multiple case study approach and reports findings from four cases of Italian SMEs operating in the luxury fashion industry.

SMEs’ specific characteristics at the firm and entrepreneurial levels (i.e. craftsmanship, quality, product creativity, entrepreneurial mindset), country of origin attributes (e.g. Italy’s positive image) and the inherently global nature of the luxury industry, can turn foreignness into an asset of foreignness that allows luxury fashion SMEs to pursue internationalization pathways of born globals.

The paper highlights that the global luxury market is not the exclusive domain of MNEs and sheds light on luxury SMEs, overlooked by extant literature. The paper also contributes to understanding early internationalization by highlighting a potential link between internationalization pathways and foreignness and discussed the asset of foreignness by extending it to SMEs.

While service failures and recoveries (SFR) constitute a well-explored research domain, such negative consumption experiences have been understudied in the luxury context. The current study undertakes a systematic review to capture current knowledge and stimulate research in this vital domain.

This study adopts a systematic literature review methodology and employs the Theory-Context-Characteristics-Methods (TCCM) framework.

Guiding theories, industry and national contexts, relevant constructs and their relationships, and research methods employed in studying SFR in luxury consumption are identified and synthesized.

A comparative analysis of the luxury SFR with broader extant knowledge is offered. Further, hospitality is revealed as the dominant context, meriting its emphasis.

This study aims to explore the attraction, influence and persuasive effect of advertising (with or without metaphor) across different types of hotels (luxury vs. budget hotels).

Two independent variables – namely, the hotel category (luxury versus budget) and the use of rhetorical figures (text with metaphors versus text without metaphors) – serve as the basis for the investigation. The research design is a 2 × 2 within-subjects construct based on eye-tracking methodology complemented by questionnaire-based data collection. Participants were engaged with hotel advertisements under four specific conditions, each reflecting a distinct combination of the two independent variables.

The findings reveal the augmented attention-grabbing prowess of advertisements that use metaphors compared to those that do not. Furthermore, the study findings reveal that the hotel category significantly influences the efficacy of advertising; advertisements promoting luxury hotels were found to stimulate superior impression recall, garner higher customer affinity and prompt a more potent intention to patronize the hotel. Finally, the study shows that neither congruent nor incongruent pairings of visual (budget or luxury hotel) and verbal elements (with or without metaphor) yield additional advertising benefits.

This research addresses the limited empirical guidance available for hotel operators at various levels regarding the design of advertisements incorporating rhetorical devices. It highlights the potential benefits of using figurative rhetoric, especially metaphors, in advertising for both budget and luxury hotels. The study reveals a notable correlation between hotel category, particularly luxury offerings, and customer attention, retention, preference and intention to visit. Furthermore, it encourages hotel operators, regardless of their hotel’s ranking, to incorporate metaphorical language into their advertising designs, underscoring the need for strategic integration in overall advertisement planning.

Using high-resolution online eye-tracking technology, this study innovatively examines the influence of hotel category and rhetorical devices on the effectiveness and attention-grabbing potential of advertisements. Through this approach, the study seeks to offer valuable managerial and advertising insights for those involved in hotel marketing.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought dramatic life changes to consumers. From the perspective of fashion shopping, this study aims to provide an understanding of how consumers have coped with the pandemic to maintain their physical and mental well-being.

Utilizing an observational research method, this study extracted and analyzed text data from Twitter, focusing on fashion consumption-related tweets posted by consumers in May 2020. Content analysis was employed to reveal consumers' coping strategies during the pandemic.

Through fashion shopping, consumers have employed various strategies to cope with the problems incurred during the pandemic as well as the associated emotional stress. Specifically, problem-focused strategies included both active coping and restraint coping. Emotion-focused strategies included positive reinterpretation, acceptance, mental disengagement and seeking social support.

Theoretically, this study provides empirical evidence for the Coping Orientation to Problems Experienced (COPE) Inventory in the context of using fashion shopping as a venue to cope with a pandemic. Managerial implications are also provided for the fashion industry as well as human service providers to better prepare for future public health crises.

This study aims to evaluate the impact of product complexity, product involvement and product diagnosticity on shaping webrooming behavior in emerging fashion retailing, with product knowledge acting as a moderator and information processing, and uncertainty reduction theory contributing as the theoretical foundation.

In total, 371 responses were collected from fashionable consumers who had recently purchased fashion products via a purposive sampling approach, and the data were analyzed using structural equation modeling and PROCESS macro.

The results illustrated that product complexity had a significant impact on product involvement and product diagnosticity, and consumer attitude. Attitude, in turn, had a favorable impact on webrooming behavior. Likewise, product diagnosticity and product involvement had a positive mediating association between product complexity and consumer attitude. Product knowledge significantly moderated the relationship between product complexity, product involvement, and consumer attitude, but it exhibited a negative moderation association between product complexity, product diagnosticity, and attitude.

This study represents a novel research endeavor, shedding light on webrooming from the perspective of product attributes in fashion retailing. It contributes to the growing body of literature on fashion marketing by analyzing the rapidly evolving phenomena of webrooming behavior within the multichannel context of the fashion industry.

The objective of this study is to investigate the interaction effect between incentive type (financial and compassionate incentives) and the ethicality of merchant strategy on consumer willingness to post positive reviews, while also examining potential variations in consumer responses based on consumption experience, shopping frequency and social class.

Building upon construal level theory, we hypothesized the moderating influence of the ethicality of merchant strategy and examined the three-way interaction among consumers’ demographic characteristics (i.e. consumption experience, shopping frequency and social class), incentive type and the ethicality of merchant strategy. To empirically test our hypotheses, we conducted four experiments and employed ANOVA for data analysis.

The ethicality of merchant strategies moderates the association between incentive type and consumer willingness to post positive reviews, with compassionate incentives eliciting more pronounced moral judgments toward merchant strategies compared to financial incentives. The moderating effect of the ethicality of merchant strategy on the relationship between incentive type and consumer willingness to post positive reviews is particularly strong among consumers who have favorable consumption experiences, engage in frequent shopping and belong to lower social classes.

This study contributes to the existing literature on online reviews by examining the impact of compassionate incentives on consumer review behaviors, analyzing the ethicality of merchant strategies within the realm of online reviews and investigating variations in consumer responses to merchant strategies regarding consumption experience, shopping frequency and social class.

Although small businesses are important to the economy, few studies have examined how the small restaurant experience influences customer behavior. Thus, the purpose of this study is to develop a model and examine the influence of small restaurant attributes (i.e. authenticity) on customers’ positive attitudes and behavior.

Using 181 responses from customers of small restaurants, this study examines how the dimensions of authenticity (i.e. continuity, credibility, integrity, and symbolism) affect customers’ positive behavioral intentions through emotional attachment.

The results of partial least squared–structural equation modeling demonstrate that customer perceptions of symbolism, credibility, and integrity in their experience at a small restaurant influence their attachment, which in turn influences both their word of mouth and revisit intentions. However, continuity has no significant effect on customers’ emotional attachment to service providers. Also, the effects of authenticity on customer behavior vary across demographic categories.

With increasing competition in the small business context, service providers seek to understand how to create positive customer patronization behavior. This study provides guidelines for small business owners who are developing marketing strategies.

Amidst escalating sustainability challenges, product and brand managers face a pressing need to foster responsible consumption and marketing strategies. Guided by the theory of planned behavior, this paper aims to explore consumers’ motivation to purchase second-hand clothing, a type of product that contributes to Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 12 on Responsible Consumption and Production by democratizing the brand, extending the life-cycle of the product, promoting a circular economy, while reducing economic costs for consumers and environmental costs for companies.

A two-stage study was conducted: 20 consumers were initially interviewed to identify the salient beliefs about second-hand clothing, and following that, a survey was conducted with 449 consumers to statistically analyze consumers’ motivation to purchase second-hand clothing. The data were analyzed using partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and necessary condition analysis (NCA).

From a “should-have” perspective (PLS-SEM), the study reveals that behavioral beliefs, injunctive normative beliefs, descriptive normative beliefs and control beliefs positively shape attitudes, injunctive norms, descriptive norms and perceived behavioral control toward second-hand clothing, whereas attitudes, injunctive norms, moral norms and perceived behavioral control positively influence consumers’ purchases of second-hand clothing. From a “must-have” perspective (NCA), the study shows that behavioral beliefs, injunctive normative beliefs and descriptive normative beliefs are necessary conditions to positively shape attitudes, injunctive norms and descriptive norms toward second-hand clothing, whereas attitudes, injunctive norms and perceived behavioral control are necessary conditions to stimulate second-hand clothing purchases.

The study offers a deep dive into consumers’ motivation to purchase second-hand clothing using a multimethod approach that enables not only the elicitation of salient beliefs (through interviews) but also the empirical examination of these beliefs alongside varying subjective norms in motivating consumers to purchase second-hand clothing (via survey). Given that beliefs are deeply rooted, the rigorous unfolding and validation of consumers’ beliefs about second-hand clothing, including the “should-haves” versus the “must-haves,” provide finer-grained insights that product and brand managers can strategically use to encourage consumers to purchase second-hand clothing.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is shaping the future of the marketing world. This study is the first to examine the effect of AI marketing efforts, brand experience (BE) and brand preference (BP) in light of the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) model.

The data collected from 398 participants by the questionnaire method were analyzed by SEM (structural equation modeling) using Smart PLS 4.0 and IBM SPSS 26 programs.

We find that four SOR elements of AI marketing efforts (information, interactivity, accessibility and personalization) positively impact bank customer BE, BP and repurchase intention (RPI). Further, we find that BE plays a mediator role in the relationship between AI marketing efforts, RPI and BP.

The findings of the study have significant implications for the bank marketing literature and the banking industry, given the limited evidence to date regarding AI marketing efforts and bank–customer relationships. Moreover, the study makes important contributions to the AI marketing and brand literature and helps banks increase customer experience with artificial intelligence activities and create long-term relationships with customers.