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When consumers experience a self-threat that calls their self-concept into question, the ensuing psychological discomfort motivates them to restore their self-perceptions on the threatened attribute. Although consumers can restore a threatened self-perception by consuming products and brands that possess the desired symbolic associations, this study aims to propose that word of mouth can serve to resolve self-threat and restore a threatened self-perception when the brand at the center of a word-of-mouth communication is symbolically congruent with the domain of the threat.

Experimental online survey research was conducted, inducing self-threat, manipulating brand and word-of-mouth conditions and measuring self-perceptions. Data for three studies were analyzed using SPSS and Hayes’ (2013) PROCESS macro.

Three studies show that spreading word of mouth can restore consumers’ threatened self-perceptions when the brand is symbolically congruent with the threat domain. Word of mouth about a symbolically congruent brand alleviates psychological discomfort, resulting in higher self-perceptions on the threatened attribute. The restorative effect is amplified for lower self-esteem consumers.

Participants in the focal conditions were required to spread word of mouth, which may not be an organic response for all consumers; although not spreading word of mouth is ineffective, other compensatory consumer behavior options exist. The brand option was provided to participants, which allowed for control but may have reduced some of the realism.

Positioning brands to meet consumers’ psychological needs encourages the development of consumer–brand attachments. Brands that resonate with consumers reap the benefits of consumers’ active loyalty behaviors and enjoy stronger brand equity. The present research implies a new way consumers can form brand attachments: by spreading word of mouth to resolve self-threat. As many consumers post detailed, personal information online, this research suggests firms can align their brand messages with relevant identity-related discrepancies.

This research extends the symbolic self-completion compensatory consumption strategy to the word-of-mouth context, showing that consumers can achieve the same restorative effect as consumption by spreading word of mouth. This research also contributes to compensatory word-of-mouth literature by establishing the role of brand meaning.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the conflict between consumers’ need to spread word-of-mouth about brands to express identity and the motivation to protect identity-linked brands from outside adoption that could dilute the brand’s symbolic associations. Current studies examine the interactive effects of self-brand connection (SBC) and consumer need for uniqueness (cNFU) on intentions to engage in brand-promoting and brand-protecting word-of-mouth behavior to in-group and out-group recipients.

Experimental scenario stimulus-based survey research was conducted, including scales measuring intentions to engage in promoting and protecting word-of-mouth, SBC and cNFU. Data for four studies were collected via online surveys and were analyzed using Hayes’ (2013) PROCESS macro and the Johnson–Neyman technique in SPSS 21.0.

The results of four studies demonstrate that the interaction between SBC and cNFU tempers intentions to engage in brand-promoting word-of-mouth and amplifies intentions to engage in brand-protecting word-of-mouth, when the recipient of the word-of-mouth communication is an out-group, but not an in-group, member.

This work exposes the conflict between identity-expression and fear-of-imitation by demonstrating that consumers’ tempered intentions to spread brand-promoting word-of-mouth and amplified intentions to spread brand-protective word-of-mouth are deliberate strategic mechanisms used to protect brand meaning. In doing so, this research exposes cNFU as a factor that influences self-brand-connected consumers to engage in a negative brand behavior and qualifies work in identity-expressive word-of-mouth that suggests that self-presentational concerns lead consumers to avoid spreading negatively valenced word-of-mouth about identity-linked brands.

This paper aims to explore content-related factors that can foster beneficial consumer responses to one kind of native advertising: in-feed sponsored articles. Specifically, studies examine how informational versus entertaining content interact with the content’s brand image congruity to affect brand attitudes through brand trustworthiness and identify the roles played by advertising value and perceived deceptiveness.

Experimental survey-based research with a between-subjects design was conducted, manipulating the content type (entertaining/informational) and brand image congruity (low/high) and measuring brand attitude, brand trustworthiness, advertising value and perceived deceptiveness. Participants were recruited via Amazon’s MTurk, and data were collected via online surveys in Qualtrics.

Results reveal that high brand image congruity generates more favorable brand attitudes for informational in-feed sponsored articles, and low brand image congruity generates more favorable brand attitudes for entertaining in-feed sponsored articles, through perceptions of brand trustworthiness. Enhanced brand trustworthiness results from increased advertising value for informational in-feed sponsored articles that are high in brand image congruity. Reduced brand trustworthiness results from increased perceptions of deceptiveness for entertaining in-feed sponsored articles that are high in brand image congruity.

While much academic research on native advertising focuses on its negative aspects, the present research identifies content-related factors that foster beneficial consumer responses to in-feed sponsored articles, including enhanced perceptions of brand trustworthiness and more favorable brand attitudes, due to differences in consumers’ perceptions of advertising value and deceptiveness. Managerially, this work can help branded content creators design effective in-feed sponsored articles.

This study aims to follow a rigorous approach to identify, critically analyze and synthesize 75 papers published from 2000 to 2022.

The study presents a systematic literature review on identity expressiveness (IE), clarifying and expanding what is currently known about the concept.

To synthesize current knowledge on IE, the study uses the overarching framework of antecedents-phenomenon-consequences, using this same framework to identify gaps and future research directions. The findings show individual and brand-related factors such as the need for uniqueness and anthropomorphism as antecedents of IE, and eWOM/WOM, impulse purchases and upgrading to more exclusive lines as consequences of IE.

The study contributes to theory by synthesizing and mapping current understanding of the state of knowledge on the concept of IE while highlighting gaps in the extant literature and paving future research directions for scholars in the field.

The study offers useful insights for practitioners, broadening marketers’ actionable options in identity-based marketing. Marketers can use insights from this study to inform marketing strategy and communication campaigns for different types of brands.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first of its kind and offers an integrative review of the current literature on IE, thus enhancing understanding of the concept, its antecedents and consequences. The study also contributes to knowledge by highlighting future research priorities for researchers in this field of enquiry.

In recent developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and especially in robotics we can observe a tendency towards building intelligent artefacts that are meant to be social, to have ‘human social’ characteristics like emotions, the ability to conduct dialogue, to learn, to develop personality, character traits, and social competencies. Care, entertainment, pet and educational robots are conceptualised as friendly, understanding partners and credible assistants which communicate ‘naturally’ with users, show emotions and support them in everyday life. Social robots are often designed to interact physically, affectively and socially with humans in order to learn from them. To achieve this goal, roboticists often model the human‐robot interaction on early caregiver‐infant interactions. In this paper I want to analyse prominent visions of these ‘socio‐emotional’ machines as well as early prototypes and commercial products with regard to the human‐machine interface. By means of this I will ask how feminist critiques of technology could be applied to the field of social robotics in which concepts like sociality or emotion are crucial elements while, at the same time, these concepts play an important role in feminist critiques of technology.

Over the 30 years, public management and administration scholars have crossed disciplinary boundaries to build a body of scholarship on collaboration for public good, services, and values. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Public management and administration researchers need to integrate the scholarship on collaboration through systems thinking. How do we define collaboration? How do we distinguish among the categories of collaborative public management (CPM), collaborative governance (CG), and networks? How do systems and institutional context shape collaboration in these categories? Within these categories, what are our units of analysis: individual leadership, organizations, or groups in collaboration processes? How do we apply what we know to practice and design?

The work requires that the authors examine CPM, CG, and networks in their larger and nested institutional contexts to determine how they are related to and shape each other. The Institutional Analysis and Development framework may inform this work. CPM or networks may be nested in CG processes and structures in inter-governmental contexts.

Researchers need more clarity as to the context within which CPM, CG, and networks occur, and in units of analysis and the roles of individual people as managers and as agents of organizations, as distinguished from organizations as constructs.

Scholars need to apply research to practice related to designing systems and structures in which collaboration occurs.

As humankind faces increasingly complex and multifaceted policy problems that cross inter-governmental and international boundaries and require inter-sectoral work, managers and organizations must improve both the design of collaboration in governance and management and mastery of essential skills to participate in collaboration.

CPM, CG, and network research does not sufficiently incorporate or control for institutional context into research design.