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Considering the ongoing discourse on diversity, equity and inclusion, brands aim to develop marketing campaigns that demonstrate respect for all individuals. Despite these intentions, many advertisements still provoke strong negative reactions from consumers due to brand transgressions in social media marketing campaigns that violate these values. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the repercussions that such social media marketing campaigns have on brands, categorizing these campaigns as brand transgressions in social media advertising.

This research uses a mixed-method design that includes semi-structured interviews (Study 1), a content analysis (Study 2) and an online experiment (Study 3).

This paper clarifies the elements that qualify as brand transgressions in advertising within the diversity, equity and inclusion discourse. The negative electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) associated with brand transgressions in advertising comprises negative emotions (e.g. anger, contempt, disgust and hate) and behavioural intentions to penalize the brand (e.g. negative word-of-mouth, brand avoidance and protest behaviours). The negative e-WOM stemming from these transgressions amplifies the adverse consequences for consumer–brand relationships by negatively influencing other consumers through sympathy towards the offended parties.

This paper offers brand managers guidelines for preventing and managing negative consumer reactions towards brands based on their responses to marketing campaigns that contradict the principles of diversity, equity and inclusion.

This paper contributes to the literature on brand transgressions related to diversity, equity and inclusion values by exploring their impact on consumer–brand relationships and highlighting the pivotal role of sympathy in perpetuating negative consequences.

In recent years, negative spokesperson incidents have raised significant concerns in academia and industry. While several studies have addressed celebrity endorser scandals, comprehensive analyses of current knowledge are lacking. Therefore, this study systematically reviewed the related literature to better understand trends and suggest future research directions for advancing this field.

This study employs the theory–context–characteristics–methodology (TCCM) framework to examine 76 articles on celebrity endorser scandals.

Utilizing the TCCM framework, this study presents a comprehensive research framework, revealing that (1) the celebrity endorser scandal effect primarily includes associative learning, attribution of responsibility, and moral reasoning; (2) entertainment celebrities and athletes have received significant research attention; (3) both individual- and relationship-level characteristics serve as crucial moderators, with focal brand and related brand being the primary outcome variables. Additionally, this study outlines enterprise response strategies, encompassing the reformation of existing spokesperson relationships and the establishment of future spokesperson connections; and (4) quantitative approaches dominate the field.

This study integrates and expands existing research on celebrity endorser scandals while proposing future research opportunities to advance the field.

This systematic literature review presents the state of the field of fashion and crisis communication. The quantitative coding offers insight into dominant and emergent themes in one of the most crisis-prone industries. This review also offers a framework for future research.

This study uses a systematic literature review approach. 205 academic articles were gathered in total using the search term “fashion industry crisis”. Subsequently, they were quantitatively coded using the Diers-Lawson (2016) Crisis Communication Code Book.

Findings show an increase in the fashion industry crisis with clear emergent themes such as sustainability, emphasising the truly global and multidisciplinary nature of the industry. Findings also reveal a genuine lack of theoretical grounding, with over 80% of the articles coded using no crisis communication theory. The findings also suggest value co-creation ought to be a priority for this agenda moving forward, as it overlaps with emerging themes and is a practical tool and concept to support crisis prevention and management through an extension of the Stakeholder Relationship Model (SRM) Model.

As a largely under-researched area in crisis communication, the findings present a new opportunity to explore fashion within its context and contribute. At this point, the research field is lacking, and there is room for theory testing and hypothesis building. The findings and themes from the research present a development of the original SRM model, SRM Val-Co.

As well as research implications, the proposed framework provides practical solutions for the future of the fashion industry.

As a largely under-researched area in crisis communication, the findings demonstrate a new opportunity to explore fashion within its context and contribute because there is a dearth of research and a lack of theoretical development. Therefore, the proposed framework provides practical solutions for the fashion industry’s future. The findings and themes from the research present a development of the original SRM model, SRM Val-Co.

With the increasing use of robots in service scenarios in hospitality industries, service failure frequently occurs during the service process, and consumers may react differently toward humanoid vs. nonhumanoid robots due to different performance expectancies. This study focuses on consumers' reactions to service failures by humanoid vs. nonhumanoid robots and the different impacts on brand forgiveness and revisit intentions through performance expectancy for different genders.

The study used a sample of 280 participants to test the moderated chain mediation model. The participants were instructed to report their performance expectancies for humanoid/nonhumanoid robots and imagine a hotel check-in scenario in which a service failure occurs. Brand forgiveness, brand revisit intention and other demographic information were assessed.

The results show that consumers have higher performance expectancy for nonhumanoid robots. This performance expectancy generates brand forgiveness and revisit intentions for male consumers but does not affect female consumers' forgiveness and revisit behaviors.

This study contributes to the literature by taking a long-term perspective to investigate the outcomes after service failure, providing evidence for pending questions in previous studies and enriching studies of gender differences. Additionally, this study provides practical implications to consider the use of anthropomorphism in robots, advocate for functional confidence in robots and target consumers across genders.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the consumer response to brands offering gendered product differentiation (i.e. products “for her” or “for him”).

Across three experiments, the effect of gendered (vs gender-unrelated) product differentiation on perceived brand sexism and word-of-mouth intention was tested. The moderating effects of feminist identity (Studies 1 and 2), endorsement of sexist beliefs (Study 2) and basis (stereotypical vs biological) for product differentiation (Study 3) were also tested.

Consumers perceive brands that offer gendered product differentiation as sexist, which in turn leads to negative word-of-mouth intention. Moreover, consumers with a strong feminist identity are more likely to perceive brands that offer gendered product differentiation as sexist, whereas consumers who endorse sexist beliefs are less likely to do so. Finally, consumers respond negatively when the gendered product differentiation is based on a gender stereotype, but much less so when it seems based on a biological difference between sexes.

Although multiple brands offering gendered products have been denounced by consumers as sexist, no research has examined this phenomenon. This paper pioneers in examining the consumer response to brands offering gendered product differentiation and in demonstrating that consumers perceive such brands as sexist.

Prior research has advanced several explanations for social media influencers' (SMIs’) success in the burgeoning computer-mediated marketing environments but leaves one key topic unexplored: the moderating role of SMIs in service failure and recovery strategies.

Drawing on a social constructivist perspective and an inductive approach, 59 in-depth interviews were conducted with millennials from three European countries (Italy, France and the United Kingdom). Building on social influence theory and commitment-trust theory, this study conceptualises four distinct pathways unifying SMIs' efforts in the service failure recovery process.

The emergent model illustrates how source credibility and message content moderate service failure severity and speed of recovery. The insights gained from this study model contribute to research on the pivotal uniqueness of SMIs in service failure recovery processes and offer practical explanations of variations in the implementation of influencer marketing. This study examines a perspective of SMIs that considers the cycle of their influence on customers through service failure and recovery.

The study suggests that negative reactions towards service failure and recovery are reduced if customers have a relationship with influencers prior to the service failure and recovery compared with the reactions of customers who do not have a relationship with the influencer.

Product rebranding is increasingly popular, but brand managers are sceptical about its implications on brand loyalty (BL). Given the limited empirical literature on the subject, this study examines the interrelational effect of brand attachment (BA), brand distinctiveness (BD) and consumer attitudes (CA) towards product rebranding on brand loyalty (BL).

The study adopted the quantitative survey design and used questionnaire to gather data from 349 consumers of rebranded water, alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data. This study integrates psychology theories into brand management research to propose and test a holistic model.

The study found a significant effect of BA on CA toward product rebranding, and CA toward product rebranding fully mediates the relationship between BA and BL. Furthermore, BD has a significant effect on BL, and further moderates the relationship between BA and BL.

This study offers a fresh theoretical foundation, conceptual clarity and understanding of how rebranding specific brand elements affect the attitudes and BL of consumers who are emotionally connected to a brand. This paper offers practical insights into the implication of product rebranding on CA, BD and BL. It reveals a holistic guidance to brand managers on how to use their unique knowledge about their consumers to create distinctive brands and emotional affection, passion and connections to their brands.

This study aims to investigate the effect of the virtual spokesperson type on the consumers' preference for new products. To meet the consumer needs of Generation Z, virtual spokespeople have become new assistants in brand marketing. However, how virtual spokespersons drive consumer preference for new products is minimally understood.

This research conducts three experiments to investigate the influence of virtual spokesperson type on consumers' preference for new products.

The research shows that, for radically new products, competent virtual spokespersons improve consumers' perception of self-efficacy and thus consumers' preference; for incrementally new products, warm virtual spokespersons improve consumers' perception of social connection and thus consumers' willingness to buy.

This study broadens research on brand spokespersons and virtual spokespersons. This research also enriches and expands research on the consideration of new product types in brand spokespersons.

Service failures usually occur in front of third-party customers. Third-party customers react emotionally and behaviorally to service failure and recovery efforts aimed at focal customers. However, there is a gap in the literature on how third-party customers react to a service failures incident and a recovery over another customer, depending on how socially close or distant they are from. This study investigates the effect of third-party customers' emotions on consumer forgiveness, negative word-of-mouth (WoM) and repatronage intentions in the service recovery process by comparing close and distant third-party customers.

This study utilizes a 2 (social distance to the focal customer: close, distant) × 2 (service recovery: yes, no) between-subjects design. The authors used a scenario-based experiment to test the proposed hypotheses. A total of 576 respondents were involved in the study.

The results from the authors' scenario-based experimental study show that positive and negative emotions felt by distant third-party customers are higher than those of close third-party customers. In addition, the effect of positive emotions on customer forgiveness is more substantial for distant third-party customers. Third, moderated-mediation analysis indicates that social distance has a moderator effect only on the relationship between positive emotions and customer forgiveness.

This study contributes to the service literature by comparing socially close and socially distant third-party customers' reactions to service failure and recovery attempts.

The recent livestreaming commerce has magnified the role of influencer marketing, where the influencers are partnering with brands for product promotion. This study examines the impact of influencer attributes, interaction strategies and parasocial relationships on impulsive buying in livestreaming commerce.

A survey with 368 livestreaming commerce users was analyzed using the symmetric-thinking approach – partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and asymmetric thinking approach – fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA).

The results of PLS-SEM indicate that influencer trustworthiness, influencer interactivity and self-disclosure determine parasocial relationships, which in turn influence impulsive buying. The fsQCA finding returned three configurations with various combinations of the causal conditions (i.e. influencer attributes, interaction strategies, parasocial relationships, perceived fit uncertainty and perceived quality uncertainty) explaining the formation of impulsive buying.

These findings provide unique linear and nonlinear insights to explain the combinatory effects of influencer attributes, interaction strategies, parasocial relationships, perceived fit uncertainty and perceived quality uncertainty on impulsive buying in livestreaming commerce.