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The “what is beautiful is good” (WIBIG) effect implies that observers tend to perceive physically attractive people in a positive light. The authors investigate how the WIBIG effect applies to user personas, measuring designers' perceptions and task performance when employing user personas for the design of information technology (IT) solutions.

In a user experiment, the authors tested six different personas with 235 participants that were asked to develop remote work solutions based on their interaction with a fictitious user persona.

The findings showed that a user persona's perceived attractiveness was positively correlated with other perceptions of the persona. The personas' completeness, credibility, empathy, likability and usefulness increased with attractiveness. More attractive personas were also perceived as more agreeable, emotionally stable, extraverted and open, and the participants spent more time engaging with personas they perceived attractive. A linguistic analysis indicated that the IT solutions created for more attractive user personas demonstrated a higher degree of affect, but for the most part, task outputs did not vary by the personas' perceived attractiveness.

The WIBIG effect applies when designing IT solutions with user personas, but its effect on task outputs appears limited. The perceived attractiveness of a user persona can impact how designers interact with and engage with the persona, which can influence the quality or the type of the IT solutions created based on the persona. Also, the findings point to the need to incorporate hedonic qualities into the persona creation process. For example, there may be contexts where it is helpful that the personas be attractive; there may be contexts where the attractiveness of the personas is unimportant or even a distraction.

The findings point to the need to incorporate hedonic qualities into the persona creation process. For example, there may be contexts where it is helpful that the personas be attractive; there may be contexts where the attractiveness of the personas is unimportant or even a distraction.

Because personas are created to closely resemble real people, the authors might expect the WIBIG effect to apply. The WIBIG effect might lead decision makers to favor more attractive personas when designing IT solutions. However, despite its potential relevance for decision making with personas, as far as the authors know, no prior study has investigated whether the WIBIG effect extends to the context of personas. Overall, it is important to understand how human factors apply to IT system design with personas, so that the personas can be created to minimize potentially detrimental effects as much as possible.

Many additively manufactured parts suffer from reduced interlayer strength. This anisotropy is necessarily tied to the orientation during manufacture. When individual features on a part have conflicting optimal orientations, the part is unavoidably compromised. This paper aims to demonstrate a strategy in which conflicting features can be functionally separated into “co-parts” which are individually aligned in an optimal orientation, selectively reinforced with continuous fiber, printed simultaneously and, finally, assembled into a composite part with substantially improved performance.

Several candidate parts were selected for co-part decomposition. They were printed as standard fused filament fabrication plastic parts, parts reinforced with continuous fiber in one plane and co-part assemblies both with and without continuous fiber reinforcement (CFR). All parts were loaded until failure. Additionally, parts representative of common suboptimally oriented features (“unit tests”) were similarly printed and tested.

CFR delivered substantial improvement over unreinforced plastic-only parts in both standard parts and co-part assemblies, as expected. Reinforced parts held up to 2.5x the ultimate load of equivalent plastic-only parts. The co-part strategy delivered even greater improvement, particularly when also reinforced with continuous fiber. Plastic-only co-part assemblies held up to 3.2x the ultimate load of equivalent plastic only parts. Continuous fiber reinforced co-part assemblies held up to 6.4x the ultimate load of equivalent plastic-only parts. Additionally, the thought process behind general co-part design is explored and a vision of simulation-driven automated co-part implementation is discussed.

This technique is a novel way to overcome one of the most common challenges preventing the functional use of additively manufactured parts. It delivers compelling performance with continuous carbon fiber reinforcement in 3D printed parts. Further study could extend the technique to any anisotropic manufacturing method, additive or otherwise.

Social media allow for observing different aspects of human behaviour, in particular, those that can be evaluated from explicit user expressions. Based on a data set of posts with user opinions collected from social media, this paper aims to show an insight into how the readers of different news portals react to online content. The focus is on users’ emotions about the content, so the findings of the analysis provide a further understanding of how marketers should structure and deliver communication content such that it promotes positive engagement behaviour.

More than 5.5 million user comments to posted messages from 15 worldwide popular news portals were collected and analysed, where each post was evaluated based on a set of variables that represent either structural (e.g. embedded in intra- or inter-message structure) or behavioural (e.g. exhibiting a certain behavioural pattern that appeared in response to a posted message) component of expressions. The conclusions are based on a set of regression models and exploratory factor analysis.

The findings show and theorise the influence of social media content on emotional user engagement. This provides a more comprehensive understanding of the engagement attributed to social media content and, consequently, could be a better predictor of future behaviour.

This paper provides original data analysis of user comments and emotional reactions that appeared on social media news websites in 2018.

In this paper, two studies examine the effects of Hispanic-targeted ads on three consumer-brand relationships (i.e. brand love, brand attachment and attitude toward the brand) and their behavioral outcomes. Additionally, this paper aims to examine how product involvement moderates these effects.

Study 1 demonstrates the linkages between three consumer–brand relationships (i.e. brand love, brand attachment and attitude toward the brand) and their antecedents. In Study 2, by testing the nomological network of the antecedents and consequences of brand love, the authors extend the results of the previous study.

Study 1 provides evidence that ethnic advertising has the strongest effect on brand love in comparison with other alternative consumer-brand relationship constructs. In Study 2, results show that only for low-involvement products, the perceived similarity of customers with Hispanic models in ads could lead to a higher positive attitude toward the ad. However, in the high-involvement condition, perceived similarity did not mediate the relationship between those constructs, which is in line with Elaboration Likelihood Model.

From the practical and managerial perspective, this paper proposes that managers should concentrate on ads with ethnic cues, especially for low involvement products. Hence, it would be worthwhile for companies to consider ads with ethnic cues to effectively develop deep consumer–brand relationships.

This paper investigates the effects of targeted ads on deeper relationships (e.g. brand love) and its behavioral consequences. Therefore, the authors show how Hispanic targeted ads could lead to deep consumer–brand relationships which encompass both the mind and heart of customers.

En este trabajo, dos estudios examinan los efectos de los anuncios dirigidos a los hispanos en tres relaciones entre el consumidor y la marca (el amor por la marca, el apego a la marca y la actitud hacia la marca) y sus resultados conductuales. Además, examinamos cómo la implicación del producto modera estos efectos.

El Estudio 1 demuestra los vínculos entre tres relaciones consumidor-marca (el amor a la marca, el apego a la marca y la actitud hacia la marca) y sus antecedentes. En el Estudio 2, al comprobar la red nomológica de los antecedentes y las consecuencias del amor a la marca, ampliamos los resultados del estudio anterior.

El Estudio 1 aporta pruebas de que la publicidad étnica es la que más influye en el amor a la marca, en comparación con otros constructos alternativos de relación entre los consumidores y la marca. En el Estudio 2, los resultados muestran que sólo en el caso de los productos de baja implicación, la similitud percibida de los clientes con los modelos hispanos en los anuncios podría conducir a una mayor actitud positiva hacia el anuncio. Sin embargo, en la condición de alta implicación, la similitud percibida no medió en la relación entre esos constructos, lo que está en consonancia con el Elaboration Likelihood Model.

Desde el punto de vista práctico y de gestión, este trabajo propone que los gestores se centren en los anuncios con señales étnicas, especialmente para los productos de baja implicación. Por lo tanto, valdría la pena que las empresas tuvieran en cuenta los anuncios con señales étnicas para desarrollar eficazmente relaciones más estrechas entre el consumidor y la marca.

Este trabajo investiga los efectos de los anuncios dirigidos en las relaciones profundas (i.e., el amor a la marca) y sus consecuencias conductuales. Por lo tanto, mostramos cómo los anuncios dirigidos a los hispanos podrían conducir a relaciones profundas entre el consumidor y la marca que abarcan tanto la mente como el corazón de los clientes.

本文的两项研究考察了以西班牙裔为目标的广告对三种消费者-品牌关系（即品牌喜爱、品牌依恋和对品牌的态度）及其行为结果的影响。此外, 我们还研究了产品参与是如何调节这些影响的。

研究1展示了三种消费者-品牌关系（即品牌喜爱、品牌依恋和对品牌的态度）与其前因之间的联系。另外, 通过在研究2中测试品牌热爱前因后果的法理网络, 我们扩展了之前研究的结果。

研究1提供的证据表明, 民族广告对品牌喜爱的影响强于其他的消费者品牌关系建构。研究2的结果显示, 与西班牙裔模特的相似性只有在低介入产品中被感知, 才会让顾客产生对广告的更高积极态度。然而, 在高介入条件下, 感知相似性并没有调解这些建构之间的关系, 这与细化可能性模型是一致的。

从实践和管理的角度来看, 本文建议管理者应该把注意力集中在有民族线索的广告上, 尤其是低介入产品。因此, 为了有效地发展深层次的消费者-品牌关系, 企业考虑带有民族线索的广告是值得的。

本文研究了目标广告对深层关系（如品牌喜爱）的影响及及其行为后果。因此, 我们展示了以西班牙裔为目标的广告是如何能够导致一个深层次, 顾客思想与心灵上的消费者-品牌深层关系。

The purpose of this study is to develop and empirically test a lovemark measure that can be used to identify how brands of wireless-enabled computing devices are classified based on customers’ respect and love toward them.

On evidence drawn from 1,016 consumers of wireless-enabled computing devices (e.g. netbooks and tablets) in Greece, partial least squares method is used to test the validity of the proposed hierarchical model.

Results show that a lovemark measure can be conceptualized as a third-order reflective construct having respect and love as its second-order dimensions. In turn, respect reflects on brand performance, trust and reputation, and love reflects on brand commitment, intimacy and passion. The proposed measure presents a very good external validity as it can explain big portions of variance in consumer responses including repurchase intentions, positive WOM and willingness to pay a price premium. Finally, the proposed measure is used to classify eight well-known devices as products, fads, brands and lovemarks and identify the love styles associated with brand relationships.

This paper provides empirical evidence for measuring and identifying lovemarks using a hierarchical model, which can be further used to develop a more effective strategy for managing the functional and emotional aspects of brands to strengthen consumer-brand relationships.

El objetivo de este estudio es el desarrollo metodológico y validación empírica de una escala para clasificar las marcas de productos tecnológicos en base a las dos dimensiones que caracterizan a las marcas Lovemark: el respecto y amor.

Con una base de datos recogidos de una muestra de 1.106 consumidores de productos tecnológicos (e.g., tablets y portátiles pequeños) en Grecia, se usa PLS para testar la validez del modelo jerárquico propuesto.

Los resultados ponen de manifiesto que el concepto Lovemark puede ser conceptualizado como un constructo reflectivo de tres dimensiones siendo el respeto y el amor hacia la marca las dimensiones de segundo orden. A su vez, el respeto hacia la marca refleja el desempeño, la confianza y reputación de la marca mientras que el amor queda reflejado en conceptos tales como el compromiso, la intimidad y la pasión. La medida propuesta presenta una aceptable validez externa pues es capaz de explicar mayor porcentaje de la varianza de las intenciones de compra, la comunicación boca-oreja positiva y la disposición a pagar un mayor precio por la marca. Finalmente, se demuestra la utilidad de la medida propuesta para clasificar ocho marcas conocidas según los niveles de amor y respeto que los consumidores manifiestan hacia las mismas así como identificar los estilos de amor asociados a la relación que los consumidores mantienen con estas marcas.

Este trabajo ofrece evidencias empíricas para medir e identificar las Lovemark usando un modelo jeráquico que puede ser utilizado posteriormente para desarrollar una estrategia más efectiva en la gestión de los aspectos funcionales y emocionales de las marcas como medio para fortalecer las relaciones marca-consumidor.