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This research is conducted in the context of beauty salons in India, to investigate how enhanced perceived acceptance in interpersonal relationships through consuming beauty salon services can generate narcissistic brand love among consumers via the mediation of brand happiness. It also investigates the moderating impact of consumer's anxious interpersonal attachment style and cynicism on the relationship between perceived salon brand-interpersonal acceptance goal congruence and salon brand happiness.

To test the hypothesized relationships, a survey was conducted among 225 regular consumers of beauty salon brands. The data were analyzed using Hayes' (2017) process macro in SPSS.

The results suggest that perceived goal congruence between beauty salon brand-interpersonal acceptance positively influences brand happiness, which in turn predicts consumer's narcissistic brand love. Consumer's anxious interpersonal attachment style positively moderates the effect of brand-interpersonal acceptance goal congruence on brand happiness, while cynicism negatively moderates the path.

Value of the study lies in extending interpersonal acceptance and rejection (IPAR) theory to the domain of consumer–salon brand relationship, to posit that if salon brands satisfy consumers' interpersonal acceptance goals, there is a potential for such happy consumers to love the salon brand, albeit narcissistically.

The objective of this study is to explore adolescent girls' knowledge about the types of beauty valued in contemporary American popular and commercial culture.

Eighty girls ranging from seven to thirteen years old participated in a card sorting and collage construction exercise using 47 advertisements that featured models.

Differences were found among girls according to age. Preferred beauty types were more complex with age. Furthermore, older girls made more product and brand associations.

The findings indicate that the beauty match‐up hypothesis holds among young girls.

Advertisers may be overlooking the audience of young women by neglecting to use models who represent their desired type(s) of beauty. They may even be alienating young girls by using anti‐ideals such as nudity and sexiness. Furthermore, advertisers must use models who convey the appropriate personality traits to create persuasive ads.

This study is important because it expands upon previous work that has assessed how and why young girls are affected by highly attractive models in ads. However, instead of conceptualizing physical attractiveness as a simple bipolar continuum from “attractive or pretty” to “unattractive or ugly”, this work considers the complex, multidimensional properties of beauty.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce an affective computing-based method of identifying sleeping beauties and their princes in five educational technology journals.

This study develops an information technology-based methodology to analyze sleeping beauties in the field of educational technology. The authors seek to determine the characteristics of studies which trigger the awakening of sleeping beauties (called “princes”). The keywords and Hirsch index (H-index) are used as two essential analysis indicators.

Between 2000 and 2015, these five journals included 7,864 articles with a total of 77,700 citations and 24,312 keywords. This study identified articles as being in deep sleep (75.7 percent), less deep sleep (14.7 percent), and awakening (5.5 percent) states. According to the analytical results, 431 of 7,864 articles are qualified as “sleeping beauties.” Of the 431 sleeping beauties identified, 232 articles were awakened by trend princes, while 286 were awakened by H-index princes. A total of 128 sleeping beauties were awakened by both prince types. Besides, impact factors (IFs) of journals do not have a significant effect on the number of sleeping articles.

There are two main research limitations in this study. The first one is the amount of target journals. Only five well-known educational technology journals are analyzed in this research. There may be more valuable sleeping publications in other journals not been found. The second limitation is that the authors merely pick up the lead author of citing papers as the indicator to determine the H-index prince. The contributions of the rest of authors are not taken are not taken into consideration. These limitations should be further studied.

To the knowledge, this study is the first one reporting the identification of sleeping beauty and princes in educational technology field. Furthermore, the authors devise an informational method to determine sleeping publications, sleeping beauty, and princes. A systematic analysis of five well-known journals in the field of educational technology field confirms the existence of “sleeping beauties.” It is reported that improvements to a journal’s IF are positively correlated to increased numbers of sleeping beauties being awakened. To reduce the number of such articles, or to reduce the overall sleeping duration, journal editors should not only seek to raise the journal’s IF, but also strategically select keywords for maximum visibility, and promote articles to high H-index authors.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the significant role that brand, beauty and utility play in defining property value.

Beyond introducing the idea that property value is composed of brand, beauty and utility, the factors that comprise these three components of property value are explored. The relative contributions that brand, beauty and utility make to understanding the source of property value are examined through empirical research evaluating the perceptions of the relative contributions that each of these three factors make to property value, based on the analysis of data on some 55 single family residential properties drawn from throughout the world.

The findings explain reasons why certain properties command premium prices, relative to other properties. As commerce prioritizes branding in merchandising generally – and especially for luxury goods – that brand would assume a growing significant role in property markets is not surprising.

These findings challenge traditional thinking and introduce a new, powerful explanation of the source of property values.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the representations and experiences of beauty amongst fat women to understand how females located outside of the normative ideal consume, express, challenge and resist “straight” beauty.

A netnographic approach is taken to analyse 922 blog posts written by five female “fatshionistas” who play a significant role in the Australian fat activism movement.

The research findings illustrate that fatshionistas (re)negotiate cultural notions of beauty through three performative acts – coming out as fat, mobilising fat citizenship and flaunting fat.

The study demonstrates how beauty is negotiated as a mode of praxis, a performance in the interaction of day‐to‐day life, whereby the possibilities for multiple and provisional beauties are highlighted.

Given the active participation of those outside of the idealised form in “mainstream” beauty consumption, practitioners should make visible multiple bodily representations that are not reduced to an unhelpful construction of what is considered to be “real”.

By emphasising the lived experience of beauty as something subjective, communal and resistant, this research poses a challenge to mainstream marketing that constructs beauty as normative, singular and conformist. The paper further calls for a “queering” of the gender research agenda within marketing to better interrogate the linkages between an individual's fluid and contested identity work, consumption and marginalised or excluded status within the marketplace.

Marketers of beauty products capitalize on consumers’ perception of beauty to enact a price placebo effect through setting high prices to insinuate a superior performing product. Yet, in the context of growing alternative beauty movements emphasizing inner beauty and self-acceptance, little is known on how the effect of price on a product’s perceived effectiveness and satisfaction is bounded by different modes of beauty conceptualization (BC). Hence, this study aims to investigate how distinct perceptions of beauty impact the effectiveness-based and satisfaction-based price placebo effects in Muslim-majority markets such as Turkey compared to markets largely driven by Western values such as New Zealand.

This research is based on a quasi-experimental factorial design based on the manipulation of the level of price for a beauty product and the observation of the extent of BC. The sample included 144 participants from Turkey and 147 participants from New Zealand.

This research finds that the manipulation of the price (low vs high) equally activates the effectiveness-centered price placebo effect in both countries. When expectations are taken into account, the (satisfaction-based) price placebo effect is non-existent in New Zealand, while in Turkey the higher price leads to an opposite effect: a significant decrease in satisfaction. It is also found that the effect of price on effectiveness is moderated by BC. In both countries, the price placebo effect is activated only when consumers narrowly conceptualize beauty, while this effect does not hold for broad conceptualizers. The effect of BC on the price placebo appears to be stronger in New Zealand in comparison to Turkey.

Marketing managers’ awareness of different perceptions of beauty and how these may influence the price placebo effect in different cultures would allow them to decide what strategies are most appropriate for different groups of customers. For example, by pursuing the movement toward inner beauty and its broad conceptualization, high-end brands are likely to compromise opportunities to capitalize on the price placebo effect. On the other hand, this alternative perspective may cultivate profound satisfaction in the long-term.

The price placebo effect disappears when people conceptualize beauty from a broad (inner) perspective. This suggests that public policymakers, to counteract the negative effects of misleading marketing and to create fair exchanges, must promote broad BC in society.

This study contributes to the body of the existing research on price placebo by offering unique insights into the boundary conditions of the price placebo effect underscored by BC in two distinct cultural-religious settings. Also, it proposes two different variations of price placebo, namely, effectiveness-centered vs satisfaction-centered. From a methodological point of view, it is the first project in the Islamic marketing discipline that applies the Islamic perspective on causality.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the interconnection between the corporatisation of K-beauty and Korea’s nation branding exercise and its links with soft power. Through the investigation of the transformation of Korea’s beauty industry, the authors seek to illustrate the inter-relationship of the market systems and national identification practices.

This study employed the qualitative case study approach to examine the latest development of Korea’s medical tourism. Through analysing a variety of secondary data that associated to the latest development of cosmetic tourism, this paper presents the impact of the transformation and reconfiguration of Korea’s beauty industry on the country’s nation branding strategy and the development of Korea’s soft power in the global marketplace.

The findings highlight how Korea’s new cosmetic tourism industry contributed to the renewal of Korea’s nation brand in the global market. The findings also illustrate the interconnection of the emerging Korean popular cultural products (K-pop and K-beauty) in the regional and global marketplace.

The findings demonstrate the role of market in re-defining a nation’s brand and identity. The findings also illustrate how market-driven strategy influences the development of a nation’s soft power in the regional and/or global marketplace.

The study shows that practitioners can be active agents in nation branding. Through highlighting strategies to develop soft power within and beyond the country boundary, this study shows how market agents, governments and other stakeholders can co-create a market system that transform and reconfigure the nation brand in the global marketplace.

In additional to explore the transformation of the beauty industry in Korea, this paper also presents the history and transformation of the beauty standards in Korea and other Asian cultures. Such dialogue invites marketing and consumer researchers to further explore the role of history and culture in guiding the production and consumption of new (consumption) standards.

This is the first paper that connects the theory of soft power in nation branding and country-of-origin literature. The case analysis of the socio-historical development of K-beauty also demonstrates how non-Western cultural goods enter the international marketplace. In summary, this paper provides new conceptual framework that illustrates a new collaborative mechanism that engages government and practitioners to co-create new cultural norms and standards to the local and international markets.

This research aims to draw on social identity theory (SIT) and social comparison theory (SCT) to examine how social and cultural contexts influence the construction and pursuit of beauty ideals.

Sixteen Lebanese women aged between 18 and 45, from a range of backgrounds, were recruited for the purpose of this research. Interview questions probed the respondents’ female beauty ideals in relation to themselves and others. Photo-elicitation was used to facilitate and enrich each discussion.

The pursuit of beauty involves rich processes and is motivated by the search for an authentic self. Participants construct and pursue beauty ideals by mirroring views of their national identity through conformity, identification and subversion.

The pursuit of beauty is influenced not only by global media and celebrity culture but also by how respondents conceptualize their national identity. Beauty consumption serves two opposing functions in identity construction: social membership and distinction. Beauty, like fashion, serves as an indicator of taste that simultaneously includes the singularity and subjectivity of individual tastes.

This study extends research on the pursuit and consumption of beauty in several ways: it is situated in a non-western cultural context, it illustrates the usefulness of SCT and SIT in understanding beauty consumption and it highlights the role of mirroring processes in identity construction and beauty consumptive practices.

Uses a qualitative research method (depth interviews) to examine the multidimensionality of beauty and then uses a quantitative research technique (factor analysis) to propose a scale to measure beauty. Based on the results from these procedures, concludes that beauty is certainly more than skin deep. Physical attractiveness may be the initial criterion on which people evaluate beauty but the evidence indicates that values, habits, personality, and behavior are the “soul″ of beauty – essential ingredients in the creation of a truly beautiful person.

The impact of image is widely investigated in various research fields. However, its effect in online health communities is rarely studied. In this research, the authors develop a theoretical model to assess the impact of physicians' image on patients' choices in online health communities.

The authors developed a web crawler based on R language program to collect more than 40,000 physicians' images and other related information from their homepages in Haodf.com–a leading online health community in China. The features of physicians' images are computed by Face++ Application Programming Interface (API) through the following variables: beauty, smile and skin status.

The empirical results derive the following findings: (1) physician's beauty or physical attractiveness has no significant effect on patients’ choice; (2) Smile has a positive effect on patients’ choices; (3) Physician's skin status also positively affects patients' choices; (4) Physician's professional capital strengthens the effect of beauty, smile and skin status on patients' choices; (5) Beauty and skin status are the substitutes for each other, and smile and skin status are the substitutes for each other too.

Also, this study provides implications for both physicians and online health community platform managers.

This study provides new evidence in understanding the impact of physician's online image and contributes to the literature on signaling theory, impression management theory and patients' choices.