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In the online marketing context, virtual reality (VR) has been used to display products and shopping environment, which effectively enhances the consumer experience. VR technology can not only recreate scenes similar to the real world (virtual authenticity, VA) but also create fictitious and desirable scenes that do not exist in the real world (virtual ideality, VI). The differences between VA and VI in influencing consumers' responses have not been fully understood. In addition, social signals have appeared in VR apps. However, the role of social signals in a VR context has rarely been studied. To fill the gaps in the literature, this study investigates the roles of VA and VI in shaping consumers' responses, as well as whether and how their effectiveness in shaping consumers' responses is influenced by social signals.

A VR real estate service platform was selected as the experimental platform, and two experiments were conducted to test the hypotheses. The ANOVAs and regressions were used for data analysis.

Results show that VA leads to a higher level of perceived diagnosticity than VI, whereas VI leads to a higher level of inspiration than VA; perceived diagnosticity and inspiration positively affect visit intention. Furthermore, the relationship between consumers' perceived diagnosticity, inspiration and visit intention is moderated by the presence of social signals.

The study revealed the differences between VA and VI in shaping consumers' responses, as well as the effect of social signals in VR environment, which provide a new perspective for future VR research in the context of interactive marketing.

Consumers nowadays are no longer bystanders in the process of production but are proactive collaborators with the power to co-create value with brands. This study aims to explore the impact of social commerce on the co-creation process of brand value in a social commerce setting.

A questionnaire survey was conducted online to gather 300 eligible responses. The data were empirically validated using the partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) method.

The results indicated that brand engagement (BEN) is vital to brand co-creation (BCC) in social commerce, which could be driven by social-hedonic value (SHV) and social information sharing (SIS).

This study stresses the influence of consumer autonomy in the process of BCC by probing the role of SIS. Moreover, by considering the prevailing trend in social media, this study offers a nuanced perspective on the values of social commerce from the viewpoint of SHV.

This study may serve as a useful guide for practitioners to improve their digital outreach strategy on social commerce to forge stronger relationships, encourage further engagements and promote value co-creation within their brand community.

This examines the effect of relationship quality (RQU) and BEN on BCC through a relational viewpoint.

Given the limited literature on depression as a contributing factor to compulsive social media use, the present research examines the role of perceived depressive mood (PDM) in developing compulsive social media use behavior. The authors also identify and hypothesize channels such as contingent self-esteem (CSE), social interaction anxiety (SIA) and fear of negative evaluation (FNE), which may explain how PDM affects compulsive social media use.

The research model was empirically tested with a survey of 367 Chinese university students using structural equation modeling by drawing on the escape and self-presentation lenses.

The findings indicate that PDM contributes to compulsive social media use behavior both directly and indirectly through CSE. Furthermore, the impact of CSE on compulsive social media use is mediated by the FNE, whereas SIA fails to mediate this effect.

The results can advance the authors’ knowledge of the role and process by which depressive mood impacts compulsive social media use. These findings may add insights into psychological treatment and help in, for example, developing counseling programs or coping strategies for depressed people to protect them from using social media excessively.

This research identifies the pathway mechanism between PDM and compulsive use of social media. It also increases the understanding of how CSE and social interaction deficiencies contribute to compulsive social media usage (CSMU).

The recent proliferation of social media platforms has witnessed a growth in social commerce by using social media to facilitate interactivity between customers and vendors. While emergent studies on social commerce are growing, their focus tends to be on millennials and cross-age groups. Given the growth of digital natives in shaping the online shopping experience of the future, we deemed an application to Generation Z necessary and overdue.

We draw on the existing literature and develop a framework to understand social commerce dynamics for digital natives. We employ PLS and CB-SEM to test our proposed model.

Our findings demonstrate the importance of social commerce information sharing activities in facilitating social support, a sense of warmth and belongingness, and online trust for Generation Z platform users. We also investigate the roles of online trust and perceived risk on intention to purchase and find support for both relationships. Finally, we discuss the findings in terms of theoretical and managerial contributions and conclude the study with limitations and future research directions.

This research is unique by using social commerce theory to explore Gen Z platform users. The finding will contribute to information system literature by expanding the social commerce research stream.