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This study aims to investigate the conditional relationships among sustainability implementation, brand awareness, brand attitude and brand loyalty through the lens of transformative service research (TSR). The research also aims to explain how brand loyalty moderates the mediated effect of brand awareness and attitude in the context of social and environmental sustainability initiatives.

Using both primary and secondary data sources from 31 prominent service companies and their 6,891 customers, this paper investigates the impact of sustainability practices and brand awareness on customer attitude. The paper also examines the moderated mediation effect of brand loyalty, explaining how it alters brand attitudes in the context of sustainability implementation. Finally, the study conducts a comparative analysis of how environmental and social shape brand attitudes in loyal customers.

Sustainability implementation has a negative impact on both brand awareness and customer attitude. However, this negative influence is mitigated for highly brand-loyal customers, resulting in a positive brand attitude. Further, the comparative analysis reveals that social implementation positively influences brand attitude in high-loyalty contexts.

This research uses subjective judgments of researchers regarding companies’ sustainability practices, combining them with customer attitudes gathered through survey questionnaires. Additionally, the data set comprises data from 31 large service companies, potentially limiting the generalizability of findings to large service companies. Nevertheless, this paper extends TSR into the realm of sustainability and branding.

The positive outcomes of sustainability implementation practices are most pronounced when customer loyalty toward a brand is strong. Social implementation has a more potent effect on brand attitude, particularly among loyal customers. Companies can tailor their sustainability efforts more effectively.

With the lens of TSR, this research deepens our understanding of how sustainability affects consumer psychology but also offers a methodological advancement by using advanced statistical models and a variety of data sources. The distinctiveness of this research is also highlighted in the examination of how environmental and social sustainability initiatives influence brand attitude, especially among customers who exhibit strong brand loyalty.

The purpose of this paper was identification and empirical assessment of the differentiation of consumers' attitudes in Ukraine and Poland to Russian brands and other brands offered on the Russian market after Russia’s aggression against Ukraine on February 24, 2022.

The main research methods include a systematic literature review and the authors' own surveys conducted in November 2022. The research sample comprised 950 consumers – 67% of them were Poles, 30% – Ukrainians and 3% from other countries.

A respondents' country (Poland and Ukraine) does not impact attitudes to brands offered on the Russian market after Russia's invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Moreover, it does not affect and differentiate emotional engagement in the conflict and assistance to war victims. Cluster analysis resulted in identifying two groups on the basis of consumers' declared emotional reactions to the war. The first group was smaller (N = 353, 37.2%), referred to as “indifferent consumers”, and was characterized by a greater inclination to purchase brands offered in Russia. The other cluster, referred to as “sensitive consumers” (N = 597, 62.8%), comprises those engaged in offering assistance to war victims, showing strong emotions in connection with the aggression and military activities and characterized by a clearly negative attitude to Russian and other offered brands and an inclination to boycott these brands.

A short time horizon, the study confined to two countries, difficulties in reaching Ukrainian respondents due to power failures in Ukraine in the period of conducting the survey (November 2022), a non-representative research sample – overrepresentation of people aged 18–25 years.

The research study contributes to the knowledge about consumer brand attitudes and preferences under unique social, economic and market conditions. These conditions were created by Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, as well as the international and global character of the war in Ukraine. The significant implications of the study refer to brand communication policies and companies' CSR-related declarations. A number of consumers' errors were recorded, resulting from wrong brand retrieval, which were rectified at a later stage as a result of international restrictions imposed on Russia, harsh media criticism and social international embargoes imposed on brands offered in Russia. The marketing communication of contemporary global brands should give consideration to the informative function of CSR activities, and the communication process should be continuous. Critical attitudes and an inclination to boycott brands point to the possible consequences faced by inconsistent and ethically doubtful brand policies. This implication is clearly confirmed by the results of the study.

The authors also wish to highlight the implications for practice and society. As mentioned earlier, Polish consumers involved in providing aid to victims of the war also expressed their opposition to the war by boycotting Russian products and international brands remaining in Russia. Popularization of the research results obtained by the authors can be a form of sensitizing the public to the need for long-term relief, awakening global awareness of the essence and importance of sanctions imposed on Russia, as well as the possibility of expressing opposition through individual purchasing decisions and boycotting brands still present in Russia.

The study allowed for identifying consumers' differentiated brand attitudes in two countries: a country inflicted by war (Ukraine) and a front-line country, strongly supporting Ukraine (Poland). The research contributes to consumer behavior theories and studies of consumer attitudes and preferences from the perspective of international corporations' CSR activities under the unique conditions of war. Also, it contributes to the knowledge of the mechanism of forming attitudes to Russian and international brands offered in Russia among CEE consumers.

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.

This paper aims to reveal the influence of the presentation of online product information (POPI) on consumer attitudes in the context of online buying digital products.

Two main experimental designs are used to collect data. The ANOVA, t-test and Bootstrap methods are applied to check hypotheses.

Findings of Study 1 indicate that if the POPI is combined with different types of celebrity endorsement (CE) (real vs virtual), the self-brand connection will be changed and further influence consumer attitudes toward digital products. Study 2 verifies the diverse moderating effects of the type of virtual CE. The CRP (central-route presentation) online product information with SVCE (super-realistic-digital virtual CE) can decrease consumer attitudes, while the PRP (peripheral-route presentation) online product information with AVCE (anthropomorphic virtual CE) can enhance consumer attitudes.

E-commerce enterprises should optimize the current layout of POPI by considering diverse matchings between POPI and CE to increase consumer attitudes. Moreover, marketers could make various schemes of POPI considering (virtual) CE and self-brand connection.

Findings contribute to understanding the relationship between POPI and consumer attitudes considering the mediation of self-brand connection and the mediations of virtual/real CE. Additionally, this study bridges the gap between research on virtual CE and business practices.

The purpose of this study is to understand the effect of different brand positions (underdog vs top dog) and comparative advertising on consumers’ brand attitudes. Additionally, this study also aims to demonstrate the effects of inspiration, self-relevance and empathy on the relationship between brand positioning and comparative advertising.

A two-by-three factorial design was employed with brand positions (underdog vs top dog) and three types of comparative advertising (noncomparative, indirect comparative and direct comparative) as the independent variables. Inspiration serves as the mediator, while self-relevance and empathy act as moderators and brand attitude is the dependent variable.

The results show that different brand positions significantly affect brand attitudes, with respondents having a better brand attitude toward the underdog brand. Brand attitude is partially mediated by inspiration. Self-relevance moderates the relationship between brand positioning and brand attitude. However, brand positioning, comparative advertising and empathy do not have interaction effects.

This study contributes to a better understanding of the effect of psychological variables on brand positioning and comparative advertising.

The results suggest that the underdog setting requires a real and honest story because consumers will spot a fake underdog story, which will damage consumer trust in the brand and harm the brand image.

There is a lack of research using psychological variables to demonstrate the effect of being the underdog brand. This study contributes to the literature by employing psychological variables to illustrate the effect of underdog positioning. These findings can help brands develop branding positioning strategies.

Brand storytelling is an effective marketing tool. However, when choosing whether to tell more or tell less, it remains unclear which of these two narrative styles is most effective. This study aims to examine whether blank-leaving(less) leads to favourable brand attitudes and compares its effects on consumers’ story immersion, to non-blank-leaving(more).

Two experiments were conducted to test the hypotheses. In Study 1, a single-factorial design was used with 252 participants assigned at random to one of two narrative conditions: blank-leaving or non-blank-leaving. Study 2 replicated Study 1 and investigated the moderating role of implicit mindsets.

The results show that a blank-leaving narrative style increases favourable brand attitudes. Consumers present deeper immersion in the brand story that uses blank-leaving, as compared to non-blank-leaving, leading to a more favourable brand attitude. Furthermore, this effect is stronger for individuals with growth mindsets.

Telling the brand story using a blank-leaving narrative style is more effective in catching consumers’ attention than non-blank-leaving. In particular, a blank-leaving narrative is a good approach for targeting consumers who have a growth mindset.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to investigate and compare the effects of blank-leaving and non-blank-leaving narrative styles on brand attitudes in the context of storytelling marketing.

This study aims to explore the impact of women empowerment and gender-stereotypical advertising exposure on consumers’ attitudes and purchase intents.

The quantitative research approach was used to assess the women-empowerment and gender-stereotypical advertising on consumers’ attitudes and purchase intentions, explicating the most effective approach in marketing communication in the Arab context, specifically Egypt. Administrated questionnaires were distributed online cross-gender through the use of convenience sampling. The targeted average sample size sought was minimum of 370. Once the data was acquired, partial least square path modelling of structural equation modelling was conducted to test the hypotheses.

Results show that male consumers and female consumers react to a certain extent differently to women-empowerment and gender-stereotypical advertisings. For instance, gender-stereotypical advertisings effect attitude for both genders; it effects male consumers’ purchase intentions, but not female consumers. Women empowerment advertising is insignificant on brand attitude and purchase intention among male consumers; among female consumers, it has significant impact on brand attitude, but not purchase intention. Nevertheless, both categories of advertising contribute to male consumers’ and female consumers’ perception and attitude towards gender role portrayal.

This study provides noteworthy insights and perspectives on women-empowerment (Femvertising) and gender-stereotypical advertising effects on cross-gender consumers in the Arab region (a region of strong masculine culture values). The emerged conclusions aid as a reference and guide for scholars and practitioners to develop effective advertising that create prospect depictions and build inspired female customer base.

The purpose of this study has to conduct an integrated effective evaluation system to discover consumers' travel attitudes of the culinary experiences or cuisines and establishing an optimal mutual relationship of a brand equity evaluation model.

Based on a sample of 624 participants, the results support that social media engagement has indirect effects on culinary brand equity development through travel attitudes and information sharing.

The study finds that values are expressed as foundational attributes that have indirect effects on brand equity through hedonic function, perceived quality, brand awareness and brand image. In contrast, the social interaction mechanism strengthens subdimensional relationships. These findings extend the customer brand equity literature and the nature of tourists' perspectives in the context of Taiwan's culinary destination brand equity.

It is a suggestion for tourism and hospitality managers to identify the different characteristics of attitudes towards visits and the customers' desert of participation in food-related activities when it derives to the classifications of food and culinary tourism.

The current study extended the findings and asserted that social interaction leads to and strengthens the relationships between memorable culinary hedonic experiences and perceived quality and improves tourists' positive awareness and image compared to other tourism experiences.

This study aims to assess both internal and external factors that impact consumer attitudes and intentions with regard to the purchase of non-deceptive counterfeits. More specifically, this study examines the impact of integrity, brand consciousness, performance risk and social risk on the attitude and in turn on the purchase intention of consumers towards non-deceptive counterfeits.

A total of 679 valid responses from the university students in two different Gulf countries, namely, Oman (264) and Qatar (415) were gathered through a self-administered structured questionnaire and analysed through partial least square‐structural equation modeling.

All the predictors of consumer attitude appeared significant in both country samples except integrity. However, brand consciousness appeared insignificant in the sample of Oman. In addition, Purchase intention towards the non-deceptive counterfeits was significantly predicted by attitude and subjective norm in both samples.

In the domain of non-deceptive counterfeit literature, the findings of the study will substantially add value. Particularly, in the Gulf country context, the impact of internal psychological and external risk factors on the attitude and purchase intention of non-deceptive counterfeits will enhance the insights of existing literature and extend and proof the robustness of the theory of reasoned action.

This study aims to analyze the relationship of mass versus niche brand coolness on consumers’ brand loyalty, mediated by attitude toward the brand and moderated by conspicuous consumption; test the moderating role of conspicuous consumption and the mediating role of attitude between mass versus niche cool brand and brand love; and analyze whether results are stable when categorizing the luxury brands as niche versus mass cool brand.

Study 1 uses a panel sample to establish the mediating role of attitude toward the brand between perceptions of brand coolness and brand loyalty. Study 2 is an experimental survey study to describe the moderating role of conspicuous consumption on the relationship between mass/niche brand coolness and brand love and between mass/niche coolness and attitude toward the brand. Study 3 is a conjoint analysis that delineates the distinct factors that consumers attribute to mass versus niche cool brands in the luxury fashion arena.

This study demonstrates that attitudes mediate the relationship between brand coolness and brand loyalty. Conspicuous consumption only moderates the relationship between brand coolness and attitudes in the case of niche cool brands. In a realistic field experiment, the authors confirm the mediating impact of attitude and the moderating influence of conspicuous consumption. The authors also attempt to provide coolness dimensions that tend to be more associated with mass luxury brands and those more related to niche luxury brands.

These studies provide a fresh look at the concept of brand coolness, mass and niche cool brands in the context of luxury fashion brands.

Esta investigación pretende (1) analizar la relación entre el atractivo de las marcas de nicho y de masas y la lealtad a la marca de los consumidores, mediada por la actitud hacia la marca y moderada por el consumo conspicuo, (2) comprobar el papel moderador del consumo conspicuo y el papel mediador de la actitud entre el atractivo de las marcas de nicho y de masas y el amor por la marca y (3) analizar si los resultados son estables al categorizar las marcas de lujo como de nicho o de masas.

Demostramos que las actitudes median en la relación entre el “coolness” y la fidelidad a una marca. El consumo ostentoso sólo modera la relación entre el “coolness” de la marca y las actitudes en el caso de las marcas “cool” de nicho. En un experimento de campo realista, confirmamos el efecto mediador de la actitud y la influencia moderadora del consumo ostentoso. También intentamos proporcionar las dimensiones del coolness que tienden a asociarse más con las marcas de lujo de masas y las que están más relacionadas con las marcas de lujo de nicho.

El primer estudio utiliza una muestra de panel para establecer el papel mediador de la actitud hacia la marca entre las percepciones del atractivo de la marca y la fidelidad a la misma. El segundo es un estudio experimental que describe el papel moderador del consumo ostentoso en la relación entre el atractivo de las marcas de masas/nicho y el amor por la marca, y entre el atractivo de las marcas de masas/nicho y la actitud hacia la marca. El último estudio es un análisis conjunto que delinea los distintos factores que los consumidores atribuyen a las marcas de moda de masas frente a las de nicho en el ámbito de la moda de lujo.

Estos estudios aportan una nueva mirada al concepto de “coolness” de marca, marcas “cool” de masas y marcas “cool” de nicho en el contexto de las marcas de moda de lujo.

本研究旨在：（1）分析大众品牌酷与小众品牌酷对消费者品牌忠诚度的关系, 以对品牌的态度为中介, 以显性消费为调节; （2）检验显性消费的调节作用以及态度在大众品牌酷与小众品牌酷与品牌喜爱之间的中介作用; （3）分析将奢侈品牌分为小众品牌酷与大众品牌酷时, 结果是否稳定。

第一项研究使用小组样本, 以确定对品牌的态度在品牌酷感和品牌忠诚度之间的中介作用。第二项研究是一项实验性调查研究, 目的是描述显性消费对大众/小众品牌酷感与品牌喜爱之间以及大众/小众品牌酷感与品牌态度之间关系的调节作用。最后一项研究是一项联合分析, 旨在界定消费者对奢侈时尚领域中大众与小众酷品牌的不同评价因素。

研究结果 我们证明, 态度是品牌酷感与品牌忠诚度之间关系的中介。只有在小众酷品牌的情况下, 显性消费才会调节品牌酷度与态度之间的关系。在一个真实的现场实验中, 我们证实了态度的中介作用和显性消费的调节作用。我们还试图提供与大众奢侈品牌更相关的酷感维度, 以及与小众奢侈品牌更相关的酷感维度。

这些研究以奢侈时尚品牌为背景, 重新审视了品牌酷度、大众和小众酷度品牌的概念。