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This paper aims, first, to examine artificial intelligence (AI) vs human delivery of financial advice; second, to examine the serial mediating roles of emotion and trust between AI use in the financial service industry and their impact upon marketing outcomes including word of mouth (WOM) and brand attitude; and third, to examine how political ideology moderates' consumers' reactions to AI financial service delivery.

A review of the extant literature is conducted, yielding seven hypotheses underpinned by affect-as-information theory. The hypotheses are tested via three online scenario-based experiments (n = 801) using Process Macro.

The results of the three experiments reveal consumers experience lower levels of positive emotions, specifically, affection, when financial advice is provided by AI in comparison to human employees. Secondly, across the three experiments, conservative consumers are shown to perceive somewhat similar levels of affection in financial advice provided by AI and human employees. Whereas liberal consumers perceive significantly lower levels of affection when serviced by AI in comparison to conservatives and human employee financial advice. Thirdly, results reveal affection and trust to be serial mediators which explain consumers' WOM and brand attitudes when financial services are provided by AI. Fourthly, the investment type plays an important role in consumers’ reactions to the use of AI.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is one of the first to study political ideology as a potential moderator of consumers’ responses to AI in financial services, providing novel contributions to the literature. It further contributes unique insights by examining emotional responses to AI and human financial advice for different amounts and types of investments using a comprehensive approach of examining both valence and discrete emotions to identify affection as a key explanatory emotion. The study further sheds insights relating to how emotions (affection) and trust mediate the relationship between AI and WOM, and brand attitudes, demonstrating an affect-attitude psychological sequence that explains consumers’ reactions to AI in financial services.

The purpose of this study is three-fold: first, to examine the extent to which service quality (SQ) affects the three components of emotional brand attachment (EBA) (brand passion, brand affection and self-brand connection); second, to investigate the extent to which these three components influence brand loyalty; and third, to test the mediation effect of the components of EBA on the SQ–loyalty relationship.

Survey data were collected from 355 respondents using an online panel in the UK. Smart PLS2.0 was used to analyze the data.

Three key findings emerge: first, compared to staff behavior, physical environment tends to have a stronger and more significant effect on the three elements of EBA. Second, brand passion and self-brand connection fully mediate the SQ–loyalty relationship, whereas brand affection partially mediates the same relationship. Finally, the SQ–EBA–loyalty relationship is significantly stronger for repeat visitors compared to first-time visitors.

Hotel brands need to design their facilities and décor and develop guest experiences based on symbolic values and deep emotional aspects. Offering employees customer care training and adopting a consumer-centric, relational, storytelling approach are particularly important to inspire and captivate hotels’ customers and to build and shape profound and enduring affective ties between the hotel brand and its customers.

The findings offer new insights through examining the symbolic consumption and emotional aspects of a guest’s hotel experience as mediators to the SQ–loyalty relationship. The findings also add to the growing body of knowledge of the antecedents of EBA through identifying physical environment and staff behavior as key determinants of EBA.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of interpersonal relationships (IPRs) in service supply chain integration (SSCI) in terms of strategic alliance, information integration, and process integration.

The research employs an exploratory/investigational approach to multiple case studies and empirically investigates effects of IPRs in SSCI. The data were mainly collected through semi-structured interviews with senior management staff from four service companies and their suppliers or customers in New Zealand. Archival data from the Internet and company documentations were also applied.

The authors find that three dimensions of IPRs influence SSCI in different ways. The effect of IPRs on SSCI is indirect: personal affection acts as an initiator, and personal credibility works as a “gate-keeper” and strengthens the confidence of interactive partners, while personal communication, a facilitator, plays a more important role in SSCI than personal affection and credibility.

The research provides managers in service supply chains the awareness of the importance of IPRs, as well as the characteristics of IPRs, in order to best utilize available resources. Managers should synergize all three dimensions of IPRs’ resources: make efforts to cultivate personal affection to avoid the instinctive isolation modern technology brings; attempt to accumulate positive personal credibility profiles; focus more on the role of personal communication and retain physical contact in SSCI processes.

This study contributes to SSCI literature by extending from the inter-organizational relationships (IORs) to interpersonal level relationships to explore the inner influence mechanism. Also, it explores the role of IPRs on all three dimensions of SSCI simultaneously rather than individual dimensions independently. Finally, it contributes to resource orchestration theory (ROT) by synthesizing three dimensions of IPRs resources, and IORs resources in order to achieve capabilities of SSCI. The study develops the individual-level research in supply chain integration (SCI) to a further depth.

Based on the stimulus–organism–response (SOR) model, the aim of this study is to explore the impact of brand experience (BE) on brand loyalty, with the mediation effect of emotional brand attachment (EBA) dimensions, specifically brand passion, self-brand connection and brand affection.

The study utilized a sample of 278 smartphone users in Lebanon. A questionnaire was used for data collection and a mediation analysis was employed to test the hypothesized relationships.

The findings revealed that experiential brands promote long-lasting brand loyalty through building brand passion, self-brand connection and brand affection.

To achieve a long-standing brand–consumer relationship, marketing managers should enhance and augment experiential marketing practices as this triggers deep emotional links and builds strong emotional ties with customers.

In contrast to previous studies on BE and loyalty, this research contributes to the literature by deepening the impact of emotions from the EBA perspective, specifically brand passion, brand affection and self-brand connection and posits the latter as mediators to the link between the BE and brand loyalty in the smartphone industry.

This study, which is based on the extended hierarchy of effects (HOE) model, aims to examine whether social media interactions with one or more luxury brands can affect consumers' knowledge of, affection for and purchases of as well as loyalty to luxury fashion brands as a category.

SoJump (a leading data collection company in China) launched an online survey to collect data from Chinese luxury fashion brand consumers. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was conducted to analyze data from the random sample of 308 Chinese luxury fashion brand consumers.

The findings of this study demonstrated that social media interaction had direct positive influences on three stages of the luxury fashion brand decision-making process – knowledge, affection and loyalty – but not purchases. The results also empirically confirmed that consumers' response to social media interaction follows the cognition-affect-conation sequential process presented in the HOE model.

This study not only provides a new perspective for researchers to investigate the impacts of interactive social media marketing on purchase decision-making in the luxury fashion brand category but also underpins the importance of building interactive alliances for luxury brands to increase consumers' knowledge of, affection for, purchases in and loyalty to the luxury fashion brand category.

This study is among the first to investigate whether social media interactions with luxury fashion brands as a category influence consumers' knowledge of, affection for and loyalty to that category. In addition, this study is the first attempt to explore whether social media interactions can directly influence consumers' luxury fashion brand purchases.

The current study aims to examine esports consumers' social needs (inclusion, affection and control) as antecedents of positive eWOM intention. Additionally, the moderating effects of game playing type (individual-based competition vs. team-based competition) were tested to determine whether the inherent socializing opportunities provided by each game playing type have different effects on the relationship between social needs and eWOM communication of esports consumers.

A cross-sectional survey design was applied to 387 responses collected from an online survey platform. After checking several assumptions, a series of regression analyses were performed to test the suggested hypotheses.

The results revealed that the needs for inclusion, affection and control were positively associated with eWOM intention. Furthermore, the relationships between inclusion and eWOM intention and affection and eWOM intention were moderated by game playing type.

The current study extended the fundamental interpersonal relations orientation theory from conventional interpersonal relationships to interpersonal communication in online platforms. This research also suggested that eWOM communication in esports could be supplemental social opportunities, especially for individual-based competition games.

This study aims to examine the relationships between stimuli of website experience (information/content, interactive features and design–visual appeal) and online engagement (cognitive processing, affection and activation) with consumer-generated media and brand advocacy. Furthermore, this study examines if online engagement mediates the relationships between website stimuli of experience dimensions and brand advocacy.

A total of 183 valid online questionnaires were collected, from members of an online forum related to travel and leisure, to empirically test the measurement and structural model using partial least square path modeling. The study sample includes consumers who search for, select and book hotel rooms via Booking.com.

The findings confirm that information/content and design–visual appeal have a significant impact on all three dimensions of online engagement whereas interactive features of a website have significant impact on affection and activation. Furthermore, results suggest that affection and activation predict brand advocacy and engagement mediates the effect of stimuli of experience on brand advocacy.

This is the first attempt to explain the relationships between website stimuli of experience (information/content, interactive features and design–visual appeal), online engagement (cognitive processing, affection and activation) and brand advocacy. Altogether, these variables are not well studied and understood in current literature despite having important implications for managers, academicians and consumers alike.

本论文旨在检验网站体验卖点（信息/内容、互动功能、设计-视觉吸引力）、对消费者自发媒介（CGM）的在线参与（理性思维方面、情感感性方面、和行动力方面）、以及品牌拥护的关系。此外, 本论文还检验在线顾客参与是否从中调节了网站体验卖点和品牌拥护的关系, 从而变成了中间变量。

本论文采用在线问卷采样形式, 一家在线旅游网站的成员为问卷样本, 有效样本数量为183份。本论文采用偏最小二乘回归的样本数据分析方法来分析数据。其中样本是从Booking.com搜索、选择、预定酒店的消费者。

信息/内容和网站设计-视觉吸引力对三种在线顾客参与的维度都有显著作用。而网站的互动性只对在线顾客参与的情感感性维度和行动力维度上有显著作用。此外, 研究结果还证明感性参与和参与行动促进品牌拥护, 因此, 在线参与成为网上体验卖点和品牌拥护的中间变量。

本论文是仅有几篇解释网站体验卖点（信息/内容、互动功能、和设计-视觉吸引力）与在线参与（理性思维方面、情感感性方面、和行动力方面）和品牌拥护之间关系的文章之一。总而言之, 这些变量还处在研究前沿阶段, 现有文献尚未全面研究这些变量, 尽管它们对于管理者、学者、以及消费者有着很重要的意义。

信息/内容、互动功能、设计-视觉吸引力、在线参与、品牌拥护

研究论文

The potential outcomes of social media-facilitated customer–brand relationships have prompted many firms to develop strategies that would enable them to connect with as many customers as possible through social media. Nevertheless, the marketing value of these artificial connections is questionable. Therefore, this paper aims to identify determinants of customers’ intention to connect with a brand on social media (i.e. Facebook) in the absence of “pull-strategies”.

In this paper, the concept of customer–brand engagement (CBE) is applied to the intentions to “Like” a brand’s Facebook fan page using structural equation modelling.

The results show that the three dimensions of CBE collectively explain about 50 per cent of the intentions to “Like” a brand’s Facebook fan page. Additionally, the results show that the influences of two of the CBE dimensions on the two “Like”-intentions are conditional effects of brand trust.

Because of the novelty of the CBE construct, further investigation of its application in a social media setting is lacking. To address this gap in the literature, the purpose of this paper is to investigate how CBE influences customers’ intention to “Like” a brand’s Facebook page.

Within the organizational setting of the school, the extant literature revealed five empirically‐determined variables to be manifestations one way or another of authentic behaviour, namely, Halpin's thrust and esprit on the Organizational Climate Description Questionnaire; Willower's pupil control ideology on the Pupil Control Ideology Form; Rockeach's dogmatism on the Dogmatism Scale, Form E; and ambivalence on Socman's Ambivalence Scale. On the other hand, Schutz's Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation Scale (FIRO‐B) determined an individual's expressed behaviour toward others as well as his wanted behaviour from others in three areas of interpersonal relationships: inclusion, control and affection. In other words, Schutz had demonstrated empirically that inclusion, control and affection parimoniously explained how two actors related to one another. The research question, therefore, posed was: Do an individual teacher's expressed as well as wanted behaviours of inclusion, control and affection, as predictor variables, predict (p <.05) his own esprit, thrust, pupil control ideology, ambivalence and dogmatism, the latter thus being the criterion variables?

Hospitality managers face constant challenges in promoting hotel service principles such as innovation and flexibility to their new employees, as such knowledge is usually tacit in nature and hard to formalize. This study aims to suggest that this problem can be addressed by using a knowledge sharing group intervention. Specifically, the authors propose that knowledge sharing groups can enhance a newcomer’s job clarity and positive work attitude by encouraging a stronger sense of perceived importance of and affection toward the hotel service principles.

The authors designed a three-month knowledge sharing program in a five-star hotel chain in Hong Kong. Newcomers were randomly assigned into an experimental group (knowledge sharing group) (N = 235) and a control group (N = 233). The authors tested all the hypotheses via path analyses using Mplus 8.0.

The results revealed that employees of the experimental group showed a stronger sense of importance of and affection toward the service principles, which in turn resulted in higher levels of job clarity, satisfaction and commitment and lower levels of turnover intention.

This research provides hotel managers with practical knowledge regarding sharing programs as key socialization intervention mechanisms. By triggering the employees’ deeper understanding of hotel policy, this program can help hotels fortify high-quality service and develop realistic and useful materials for their future training activities.

Although hospitality scholars have consistently acknowledged the positive influence of knowledge sharing, field experimental research on the outcomes of knowledge management for the newcomer socialization process has been scanty. This study seeks to fill this gap by designing and testing a practical knowledge sharing intervention program in the hotel industry.