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This paper focuses on the analysis of fashion blog activity regarding brands under corporate crisis situations and discusses how these opinion leaders may be agents of corporate crisis management.

The authors analyzed four influential Portuguese fashion blogs regarding eight fashion brands that had experienced a corporate crisis situation. In total, five of the selected brands were mentioned in 2.846 posts of blog content, whose discourse was deeply analyzed.

The absence of express reference to brand crisis suggests that fashion bloggers tend to ignore these crisis events or divert the readers' attention to the brands' more positive aspects. This result opens the discussion whether fashion bloggers downplay corporate crisis in brand equity or whether it expresses strategies of brand crisis communication through digital influencers.

Though social media may be a source of negative word-of-mouth, social media influencers have been considered important partners of corporate crisis communication in particularly challenging times. Many studies have focused on the role of social media influencers in crisis management, but there was a dearth of research on the specific case of blogs. This study contributes to the understanding of fashion bloggers as agents of brand communication, particularly regarding crisis management and their role on brand activation and positive electronic word-of-mouth, even under crisis situations. This contribution paves the way for future research on whether this is a spontaneous phenomenon or the reflection of possible partnerships between companies and fashion bloggers for the management of corporate crisis situations in the context of fashion brands.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of blogs in corporate communication and proposes general policies to help corporations effectively and ethically use blogs. Blogs are among the new communication media that are playing an increasingly important role in the corporate world. Most companies, however, are not yet taking advantage of this opportunity, nor do they manage the associated risks. We have developed a series of best practices to help companies address this issue.

We examine the evolution of the blogging phenomena and create a framework for characterizing the potential impact of blogs on the corporation. Policies are derived from data compiled from the literature, case studies, and existing proactive corporate strategies.

Most companies do not have well developed strategies for corporate blogging. As a communication medium, blogs represent a significant opportunity to further corporate marketing goals, particularly in light of the changing face of information consumption. The prevalence of blogs poses risk to corporations as a relatively uncontrolled medium.

This paper illustrates the need to develop proactive strategies for corporate blogging and provides guidelines for corporate blogging policies. Companies should integrate blogging policies into their overall corporate communication strategy as well as develop an approach for addressing the risks they impose.

This is the first paper to consider both the benefits and risks of blogging from a policy point of view.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of a particular form of sponsorship disclaimer in sponsored content by social media influencers (SMIs), namely a sponsorship compensation justification disclosure. A sponsorship compensation justification disclosure explains why influencers and brands engage in sponsorship collaborations by providing a normative reason that justifies the existence and dissemination of sponsored content.

An experimental design was used to compare the effects of a sponsorship compensation justification disclosure made by either an influencer or the sponsoring brand, to a simple sponsorship disclosure and a no disclosure control post, on consumers’ responses to a product-review video by a YouTube influencer.

The paper offers empirical evidence that sponsorship compensation justification generates more positive consumer attitudes toward influencers receiving sponsorship compensation, and increases source and message credibility, compared to a simple sponsorship disclosure.

The hypotheses were tested on one YouTube video, comprising of a single product category, one SMI and one social media platform. Further studies might replicate the experiment on different product categories and on different social media platforms.

This empirical study can offer brand communication managers and influencers important information on how to communicate and design sponsorship disclosures to reach-desired responses from consumers.

The study is the first study to empirically demonstrate the effects of this particular type of sponsorship disclosure.

This paper aims to provide scholars and practitioners with an innovative method of analyzing luxury brand associations in social media (i.e. Twitter). To do so, authors investigated the alignment between luxury brand identity and luxury brand image in online communication, taking into consideration firm- and user-generated content (UGC) in the form of bloggers’ contents. This paper introduces new tools that luxury brand managers could use to manage and adapt the way they communicate and interact with their customers.

The study adopts a qualitative approach based on a content analysis of Twitter posts of six luxury fashion brands (1,334 posts) and the related Twitter electronic word-of-mouth of fashion bloggers (329 tweets).

The results show a match between luxury brand identity and luxury brand image on Twitter. Specifically, the findings indicate that both brands and bloggers stress the same dimensions of luxury (aesthetic, desirable, symbolic, restricted accessibility and hedonistic experience) confirming that the ways they communicate luxury brands to consumers are aligned. Moreover, the results suggest that luxury brands could reinforce their brand value by making more use of words that are semantically related to luxury.

This study approaches the relationship between social media and luxury brands in a novel way and provides scholars and managers with a tool for monitoring the gap between desired and perceived brand associations.

This study aims to present a conceptual model of how blog readers' perceptions of satisfaction generate blog loyalty, which in turn enhances bloggers' power. This study also seeks to investigate the moderating influence of subjective norms on the relationship between satisfaction and loyalty.

The structural equation modelling approach was used to estimate a conceptual model based on survey data from blog readers in Taiwan. After discarding incomplete responses, the final sample consisted of 567 completed responses.

The majority of the results supported the hypotheses. Three types of exchange outcome satisfaction influence blog readers' perceptions of bloggers' power by increasing attitudinal loyalty. Information satisfaction has a direct and positive effect on expert power. Most importantly subjective norms exhibited a positive moderating relationship between exchange outcome satisfaction and attitudinal loyalty. The authors found no evidence to support the relationship between exchange outcome satisfaction and behavioural loyalty.

From the perspectives of exchange outcome satisfaction, loyalty, power, and susceptibility to normative influence, this study contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the process through which blog readers become loyal to their bloggers and are influenced by bloggers' expert and referent power.

Adopting the theory of parasocial interaction (PSI) and schema theory, this study proposes that a brand’s personalized response and brand familiarity on a corporate blog will lead to higher perceived brand similarity, credibility and blog recommendation intention.

A 2 (brand familiarity: high, low) × 3 (brand responses: none, automated and personal) experimental design was developed to test the hypothesized relationships. A total of 474 qualified data were collected using an online survey. ANOVA was utilized to test the research hypotheses.

Study results revealed that personalized messages lead to stronger perceived brand similarity, credibility and blog recommendation intention than those exposed to automated and no response. Brand familiarity also significantly influenced perceived brand similarity, brand credibility and blog recommendation intention. Further, the study analysis revealed an interesting interaction effect between brand awareness and brand response on recommendation intention.

The study provides meaningful implications and suggestions for the effective corporate blogging strategy to influence consumers’ attitudes and image toward brands and establish strong brand equity and relationships with customers.

The purpose of this study is to explore the comparative effects of mainstream celebrities and social media influencers on consumer advocacy and relationship intentions. The study also examines the direct and serial mediation effects on those relationships.

The survey questionnaire was used to collect data from 718 respondents throughout Malaysia, with convenience and snowball sampling techniques employed. The data were analyzed based on the structural equation modeling (SEM) approach through the AMOS version 24. The PROCESS MACRO v-4.20 was applied to evaluate mediating effects in the model.

The results reveal that celebrity endorsers' involvement in social media significantly influences the uses of social media, which also impacts the attitudes and, subsequently, consumer relationship and advocacy intentions. The study found that mainstream celebrities and social media influencers effectively promote brands, and it discovered insignificant differences in their effects on the analyzed relationships.

This study has been conducted on consumers in Malaysia; it may have different effects on consumers in other countries.

Brand managers and policymakers may benefit from following the study's guidelines for making consumer relationship and advocacy intentions by celebrity endorsers and uses of social media.

The brand community can benefit from tightening their social bondage by sharing and managing crucial information from celebrities and using social media.

The study explores the effects of mainstream celebrities on consumer relationship and advocacy intentions using social media networks and managing consumer attitudes.

Understanding the influences in the decision-making process of prospective students when choosing a university is crucial in student recruitment. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of perceived source credibility on attitudes and intentions towards taking advice from significant others (e.g. parents, peers and teachers) on university choice.

In total, 626 samples from eight government-subsidised secondary schools were collected and tested using the component-based structural equation modelling of partial least squares.

The findings verified factors of source credibility that determine prospective students’ attitudes towards taking advice from others. Attitudes and subjective norms explained 49 per cent of the variance in intention to take advice from others on university choice. The findings of the present study provide practical marketing insights for enrolment and recruitment managers.

While most studies focus on students’ university choice in the recruitment process, studies on perceived source credibility of significant others in the university choice decision-making process are limited.

As blogs have become an important information communication medium, selecting blog types that are appropriate and effective for the products they are to promote is now an important issue in corporate advertising. However, the impact of different blog types on consumers and their advertising effectiveness are issues seldom addressed in the existing literature. The purpose of this paper is to view product information that consumers post on blogs as advertisements and compares advertising effectiveness between different blog types to help enterprises properly employ blogs in their marketing campaigns.

An experimental design was adopted, and 12 experimental contexts were designed. A valid sample of over 2,000 responses was collected to study between-group differences in advertising effectiveness.

The analytical results showed between-group difference in advertising effectiveness, which indicated that blog advertising effectiveness varies with different combinations of product constructs and blog types.

The limitations of this study related to the price factor was not incorporated into the experimental model, and shopping channels were not limited. There might be a gap between the prices of the experimental products and the average expense of online shoppers.

The study proposed a framework which can help enterprises to evaluate the type and brand awareness of a product to be promoted and to select the blog type that maximizes advertising effectiveness (perceived risk, ad attitude, brand attitude, and purchase intention) in diffusing product information.

While research has shown that corporate social responsibility (CSR) can enhance a company's reputation, less is known about the effects of CSR communication on nonprofits. Hence, the current study seeks to understand how corporate reputation, message credibility and message source may impact consumers' attitudinal and behavioral intentions toward nonprofits.

A 2 (corporate reputation: low vs high) × 2 (CSR communication source: newspaper blog vs nonprofit blog) between-subjects online experiment was conducted. Real-world corporations (Toyota and Volkswagen) and a nonprofit (World Wildlife Fund) were chosen based on a pretest.

Nonprofit reputation increased after reading a CSR message, especially when it involved a partnership with a low-reputation corporation. Nevertheless, CSR partnerships with high-reputation corporations evoked higher volunteer intentions. Message credibility mediated the relationship between corporate reputation and nonprofit reputation. When the communication source was the nonprofit and the partnership involved a high-reputation corporation, positive evaluations of nonprofit likeability and competence resulted.

Nonprofit communication managers should understand the merit of communicating CSR partnerships with their constituents, regardless of medium. Additionally, the choice of a corporate partner is important for certain nonprofit outcomes. Lastly, message credibility is another important factor that should be considered.

The study bridges literature in communications that typically examines CSR by focusing on its effects on corporate outcomes with literature in nonprofit management that looks at nonprofit outcome measures. This study demonstrated that nonprofit–corporate alliances can also influence nonprofit reputation and donation/volunteer intentions based on the reputation of the corporate partner.