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By drawing on protection motivation theory, this study explores consumers' motivation to engage in adaptive behaviour envisioned through a transition from offline to online clothing purchasing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, this paper explores the conditioning effects of consumer resilience and satisfaction with retailers' assistive intent through the consumer well-being framework.

A total of 363 useable surveys were obtained from Croatian consumers. Data were analysed with confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling.

Coping appraisal positively impacts adaptive behaviour by increasing online clothing purchase intention, while threat appraisal has no direct effect on adaptive behaviour. The relationship between threat appraisal and adaptive behaviour is negatively moderated by consumer resilience and satisfaction with the retailer's assistive intent.

Limitations include the convenience sampling method and data collection at one point as well as the focus on consumers from one country.

This study provides a blueprint for designing marketing actions that retail managers should consider to respond to a crisis effectively while maintaining satisfactory buying experiences during health crises and other challenging events.

Given the unique research context, i.e. the COVID-19 pandemic, this study is one of the few and the first in Croatia to unfold the importance of protection motivation theory in providing a greater understanding of consumer's adaptive behaviour (transition from offline to online) in online clothing retail channels during the period of the global health-related crisis. Benefits from understanding consumers' coping and threat appraisal mechanisms while addressing their buying needs in adverse circumstances are revealed. In addition, the theoretical implications regarding the conditional effects of consumer resilience and consumer satisfaction with retailers' assistive intent during a pandemic are also provided.

Although there is an extensive literature on the child's understanding of the intent behind advertising, children's understanding of the promotional nature of advertising and marketing has been neglected. Promotional is defined as making positive claims about the product. Children aged from 4 to 9 years of age were presented with television commercials with different endings and asked which ending should be used when the ad is shown on TV. Results show that 4–5‐year‐olds chose the fun option that shows the product in a bad light but by 5–6 years of age children are rejecting this option in favour of the promotional ending and by 7–8 years less than 10% chose the fun option. These findings should inform the debate about regulating advertising to children as such regulation is based on children being able to distinguish advertising from programming.

A printed advertisement was shown to dyads of mother‐child subjects of Chinese, Malay and Caucasian origins. The analysis showed that after seeing the advertisement the groups differ on several dimensions such as awareness and understanding of the advertisement, reasons for liking the advertisement, and mother‐child interactions on product request.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how an E-retailer's assistive intent impacts the perceptions and behaviours of online shoppers. The paper introduces a model that explains and examines the process through which the perceived assistive intent of an E-retailer leads to improved patronage intentions towards the web site.

A survey on the most recent e-purchase experiences of more than 600 individuals in North America was conducted. Structural equation modelling based on EQS 6.1 was used to assess the measurement and structural models.

Results indicated that customers’ impressions of an E-retailer's assistive intent positively impact web site patronage intentions both directly and indirectly through two key constructs of e-shopping, including web site involvement and web site attitudes.

The student sample is not representative of the population. Students are familiar with internet and feel less need for assistance online. Another shortcoming might be its settings. Since the survey was on the respondents’ most recent online experiences, the data quality depends on the amount and accuracy of the information they could retrieve from memory.

The findings suggest that E-retailers would highly benefit from investing in the development of an assistive image. To do so, E-retailers should leverage the interactive nature of the web and provide supportive tools that facilitate the e-shopping task of clients.

Developing impressions of the site's assistive intent is highly rewarding for E-retailers that are new to the business.

This paper represents the first effort to link the newly developed construct of E-retailer's assistive intent to two fundamental variables of online shopping, including web site involvement and web site attitudes. This work would also be an extension of the past studies that call for further investigation of the link between customer orientation and customer's loyalty intentions.

This study aims to investigate the threat phenomenon as perceived by Internet of Things (IoT) users and examines the role of anxiety, desire and personal innovativeness in the behavioral intention toward the usage of IoT devices.

A unified research model is developed based on the protection motivation theory, theory of reasoned action, theory of self-regulation and the review of relevant theoretical, empirical and practitioner literature. Data were collected from 315 assistive IoT device users and analyzed using partial least squares structural modeling.

The results indicate strong support for the proposed research model. All relationships, except one, were significant at the 0.05 level. Desire was found to play a direct as well as a moderating role between fear and behavioral intention to continue using assistive IoT devices, which was also directly influenced by anxiety and personal innovativeness.

Understanding the security behaviors of IoT users will help researchers and practitioners develop preventive measures and robust security solutions for the IoT devices to avert any threats from cyber-attacks and to boost users’ confidence levels. Future research will benefit from replicating the study using longitudinal data.

This study is one of the first studies that integrate multiple perspectives to present a holistic research model. To the authors’ knowledge, anxiety, desire and personal innovativeness, key factors influencing fear and behavioral intention, have not been studied in the domain of adoption of IoT assistive devices. Additionally, the study offers a new dimension to IoT users’ security behaviors.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate a marketer-sponsored edutainment centre as a consumer socialisation agent by examining effects on preference for the sponsor brands and the degree of socialisation children experience.

Interviews were undertaken with 16 children in their analytical stage of development as well as one of their parents immediately prior, immediately after, and one week following a part-day visit to the heavily branded edutainment centre Kidzania.

Results suggest that children did experience consumer socialisation. There was a movement in brand preferences towards the sponsored brands. The children also demonstrated advances in transaction knowledge. Specifically, significant increases were found in product and brand knowledge, shopping scripts and retail knowledge, with some children moving beyond perceptual and analytical thought and demonstrating reflective thought. In contrast, most children did not demonstrate an analytical level of advertising and persuasion knowledge.

Findings are constrained by the children’s specific experiences and the aptitude of both the children as interviewees and the parents as observers/interpreters. Although delayed measures were used this does not necessarily confirm permanency of the effects.

This is the first study to date to examine a marketer-sponsored edutainment centre as a socialisation agent. Specifically, the study contributes to the understanding of this new, participatory form of marketing communications by demonstrating its value in achieving brand objectives while fostering the consumer socialisation of children.

The purpose of this paper is to identify trust‐building signals and signaling patterns of commercial and non‐commercial wine bloggers within a trustworthiness framework and assess prominence of balanced versus unbalanced resource‐based or compensatory approaches for the management of consumer trust beliefs and the facilitation of positive trust intentions.

Development and validation of theory‐based signal‐classification scheme and two‐stage content analysis of trust‐building signals embedded in wine blogs.

It is found that wine bloggers manage consumer trust beliefs using an unbalanced signaling approach emphasizing ability over character. Ability sub‐dimension signals vary by commercial orientation. Also, character signaling varies with commercial orientation.

Only English‐language wine blogs were studied. Limitations of content analysis procedures preclude direct evaluation of signal efficacy in absolute or contextualized terms.

Bloggers must secure reader trustworthiness to be effective communicators. Readers are likely to possess latent concerns about the bias of commercial bloggers and abilities of non‐commercial ones. Bloggers recognize the importance of ability signaling but may not be fully exploiting their positions of perceived advantage nor fully compensating for their distinctive inherent perceived weaknesses.

Trustworthiness signaling in wine blogs has implications for bloggers in other contexts, including consumer and non‐consumer information environments and not‐for‐profit and governmental communicators. Blog and blogger trustworthiness must be addressed by these communicators to effect audience persuasion.

The paper discusses deductive development and validation of a novel signal classification scheme applied to trust building by bloggers that, through analysis of signal content, sheds light on behavior of commercial and non‐commercial information sources in emerging product information environments.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate trust in salespersons of direct selling companies. The major purpose of the study is to examine three alternative measures of trust and to assess the effects of consumer trust in the direct selling salesperson on intended purchase behavior in a non‐Western culture, Hong Kong.

The research was designed as a personal interview survey of purchasers and non‐purchasers of product from direct selling companies in Hong Kong. A street‐intercept method of personal interview was used in three major shopping areas. The major measurement was of three different measures of trust in buying behavior from direct selling companies.

Survey results show that the measures of trust are not equally significant in being related to intention to repurchase. Only one measure, “Affect Trust”, is statistically correlated to repurchase intention. This measure is based on emotions which are affective in nature.

Gaining trust is crucial to all salespeople, industrial and consumer alike, as trust facilitates an exchange relationship while mistrust hinders it. Consequently, having valid measures of trust is essential to ensuring that exchange relations are positive. The research to date has been in the context of Western cultures and is dated (ten or more years ago). The paper examines trust in a non‐Western culture. In addition, the sales relationships studied in the past have been non‐direct selling. The paper expands this domain as it looks at direct selling to consumers in a non‐fixed business location.

The blogosphere is an active arena for the communication of topic‐area claims by marketer and non‐marketer sources. Determinants of influence in the blogosphere have not been well documented. The purpose of this paper is to investigate trust in bloggers, in a framework involving characteristics of bloggers and blogs and blog reading outcomes.

Blog‐reader perceptions of bloggers and blogs are derived and tested on a sample of blog readers for their effects on trust formation. Tests of mediation examine the role of perceived personal outcomes of blog reading in trust‐formation processes.

Trust formation is predicted by engagement knowledge of the blogger, unique reading experiences, and belief that the blog improved the marketspace. Blogger authoritative knowledge negatively impacted trust intentions. Positive experiences from blog reading mediate relationships between blog and blogger characteristics and intentions to trust.

Blog readers examined in this initial investigation may not be totally representative of the general population of blog readers. Replications with other populations are needed.

The paper's findings suggest knowledge is an essential characteristic of a trustworthy blogger, but knowledge unrelated to everyday information needs holds little perceived value for readers. Firms operating blogs may wish to de‐emphasize their topic‐area authoritative knowledge and project a voice of topic‐area engagement.

The paper identifies salient trust‐related blogger and blog characteristics and provides an indication of a domain‐specific trust‐development process that is applicable to marketer and non‐marketer information sources.