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Harmonizing religion and economic pursuits is treacherous because mixing the two rarely resonate with consumers, often resulting consumers’ greed perceptions. This paper aims to explore the antecedents and consequence of consumers’ greed perceptions in the context of for-profit religious-affiliated companies (FPRCs) and how they can harmonize religious and commercial missions by using different ad types (direct vs indirect appeal).

The authors conducted two experiments: Study 1 was an online experiment with participants from the USA collected through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (n = 410) to reveal the overall mechanism. Study 2 was a field experiment (n = 292) to corroborate Study 1’s findings. The authors analyzed the data using a multigroup structural equation model.

First, consumers perceive greed against FPRCs’ dual identities incurred by their commercial activities. Second, when FPRCs obscure their religious identities by using third-party organizations (TPOs) as its promoter (i.e. indirect appeal), consumers’ greed perceptions decline, but this does not increase consumers’ future patronage intentions. Finally, in online and field experiments, consumers enhance their purchase intentions and behavior, respectively, under indirect appeal.

First, further investigation of the cognitive dissonance mechanism when consumers face seemingly contradictory identities of organizations is crucial to identify bottlenecks in promoting FPRCs’ commercial offerings. Second, examining boundary conditions of indirect appeal is important to enhance our understanding of FPRCs’ advertising, such as consumers’ awareness of TPOs’ intentionality. Lastly, not every type of indirect appeal brings the same effects. Future studies may explore diverse forms of indirect appeal, such as using artificial intelligence-based algorithms without TPOs.

Despite heightened interest in supporting dual missions (i.e. purpose and profit), this study shows why doing well while doing good is inherently challenging in practice creating marketing liability. To deal with this, the present findings suggest that, first, rather than exposing an FPRC’s religious (or communal) identity upfront, providing subtle cues through a TPO of its religious affiliation can be persuasive to win the hearts of target customers. Second, given the short-term effectiveness of indirect appeal, FPRCs need to use both direct and indirect appeal flexibly, as each type of ad delivers a distinctive advantage. Lastly, indirect appeal is particularly effective in offline promotional activities in the context of FPRCs.

First, by meshing paradox theory, the authors show that dual identities of FPRCs expose them to a marketing liability that single-mission enterprises rarely face. Second, when FPRCs use indirect appeal, they face a tradeoff between mitigating greed perception and securing future patronage. Third, results from the online experiment and field experiment show when consumers’ intention and actual behavior align.

The study employs two independent experimental studies to collect data. It focuses on the matching effect between advertising appeals and product types. The Elaboration Likelihood Model serves as the theoretical framework for understanding the cognitive processing involved in consumers' responses to these advertising appeals and product combinations.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of advertising appeals on consumers' intentions to purchase organic food. We explored the interaction between advertising appeals (egoistic vs altruistic) and product types (virtue vs vice) and purchase intention. The goal is to provide insights that can enhance the advertising effectiveness of organic food manufacturers and retailers.

The analysis reveals significant effects on consumers' purchase intentions based on the matching of advertising appeals with product types. Specifically, when egoistic appeals align with virtuous products, there is an improvement in consumers' purchase intentions. When altruistic appeals match vice products, a positive impact on purchase intention is observed. The results suggest that the matching of advertising appeals with product types enhances processing fluency, contributing to increased purchase intention.

This research contributes to the field by providing nuanced insights into the interplay between advertising appeals and product types within the context of organic food. The findings highlight the importance of considering the synergy between egoistic appeals and virtuous products, as well as altruistic appeals and vice products. This understanding can be strategically employed by organic food manufacturers and retailers to optimize their advertising strategies, thereby improving their overall effectiveness in influencing consumers' purchase intentions.

Built on the socioemotional selectivity theory, the purpose of this paper is to analyze elderly female consumers’ consumption of environmentally sustainable apparel (ESA) according to their time perspective (TP) (expansive vs limited) and different types of advertising appeals (emotional vs rational and positive vs negative emotional appeals).

The study conducted a survey and experiments with 154 US female consumers who were 65 years of age or older. Data were analyzed through regression and ANCOVA.

The results showed that older female adults with an expansive TP tended to consume ESA, with their fashion consciousness moderating the results. Rational and either positive or negative emotional advertisements with environmental messages were found to encourage the higher purchase intentions of elderly consumers more effectively than advertisements with no environmental messages.

Apparel retailers are recommended to consider the factor of TP when encouraging environmental consumption. Environmental messages containing rational information and eliciting positive and negative emotions are suggested to promote purchase intention toward ESA among elderly consumers.

This study addressed an under-studied segment in ESA consumption – elderly female consumers – built on the socioemotional selective theory, and confirmed that this group’s ESA consumption can be explained by their perspective on time. In addition, this study confirmed which advertising appeals would effectively encourage their ESA consumption, and provided theoretical explanations for these findings.

This paper aims to examine the effect of face consciousness on purchase intention of organic food, to test whether this relationship would be moderated by purchase situation (group vs individual) and advertising appeal (altruistic vs egoistic), and to explain the mediating role of perceived social value in these moderating effects.

Four between-subjects experiments were carried out (N = 123, N = 126, N = 130, N = 123) by using online questionnaires. Measured variables were introduced to assess participants' face consciousness, perceived social value and purchase intention. Two manipulated between-subjects variable were introduced to test how purchase situation (group vs individual) and advertising appeal (altruistic vs egoistic) moderates the relationship between face consciousness and purchase intention of organic food. SPSS Statistics 24 was used for the analysis of all experimental data.

Consumers with high face consciousness were more willing to buy organic food. Compared with the individual situation, face consciousness had a stronger impact on the purchase intention when the individual was in a group situation. Compared with egoistic appeals, face consciousness had a stronger impact on the purchase intention when the advertising appeal was altruistic. Perceived social value partly mediated the moderating effect of purchase situation and advertising appeal.

This study validates previous contributions on the effect of face consciousness on purchase intention of organic food and extends them by introducing two moderating variables. Additionally, it introduces perceived social value as a mediating variable to explain the mechanism of this effect.

This paper aims to explain a celebrity’s deep resonance with consumers by unpacking the individual constituents of a celebrity’s polysemic appeal. While celebrities are traditionally theorised as unidimensional semiotic receptacles of cultural meaning, the authors conceptualise them here instead as human beings/performers with a multi-constitutional, polysemic consumer appeal.

Supporting evidence is drawn from autoethnographic data collected over a total period of 25 months and structured through a hermeneutic analysis.

In rehumanising the celebrity, the study finds that each celebrity offers the individual consumer a unique and very personal parasocial appeal as the performer, the private person behind the public performer, the tangible manifestation of either through products and the social link to other consumers. The stronger these constituents, individually or symbiotically, appeal to the consumer’s personal desires, the more s/he feels emotionally attached to this particular celebrity.

Although using autoethnography means that the breadth of collected data is limited, the depth of insight this approach garners sufficiently unpacks the polysemic appeal of celebrities to consumers.

The findings encourage talent agents, publicists and marketing managers to reconsider underlying assumptions in their talent management and/or celebrity endorsement practices.

While prior research on celebrity appeal has tended to enshrine celebrities in a “dehumanised” structuralist semiosis, which erases the very idea of individualised consumer meanings, this paper reveals the multi-constitutional polysemy of any particular celebrity’s personal appeal as a performer and human being to any particular consumer.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) marketing has become ubiquitous in the hospitality industry. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of donation appeals containing warmth-focused versus competence-focused messages in hospitality CSR marketing. Moreover, we offer an innovative visual design strategy focusing on the typeface (handwritten vs machine-written) in donation appeals to encourage consumers’ donations and boost their brand loyalty.

This research used a 2 (message framing: warmth-focused vs competence-focused) × 2 (typeface: handwritten vs machine-written) between-subjects experimental design.

The findings suggest that donation appeals featuring warmth-focused messages combined with handwritten typeface and competence-focused messages combined with machine-written typeface can maximize donation intention and brand loyalty. Furthermore, results from the moderated mediation analyses indicate that brand trust is the psychological mechanism underlying these effects.

Hospitality managers should use typeface design, which is easy and inexpensive to manipulate, to enhance the effectiveness of CSR marketing. Specifically, for donation appeals featuring warmth-focused (competence-focused) messages, the handwritten (machine-written) typeface can boost consumers’ donation intention and brand loyalty.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to reveal the competitive advantage of typeface design in hospitality CSR marketing. This research sheds light on the congruency effects of message framing and typeface design in donation appeals on consumers’ donation intention and brand loyalty while using the contemporary context of The Coronavirus Disease 2019 to test the theory.

This study aims to investigate the effects of sick-, well- and healed-baby appeals used in fashion products on purchase intentions through anticipated emotions. Consumers' perceived saliency of the environmental issues in the fashion industry was examined as an influencing factor that further explains the persuasion of the advertising appeals.

Two sets of experimental studies were conducted with 201 participants in Study 1 and 186 participants in Study 2.

The results demonstrated that well- and healed-baby appeals increased purchase intentions fully mediated by anticipated positive emotions. In particular, the mediation effect was conditionally significant when individuals' saliency of environmental issues was low. The three types of advertising appeals did not differ in consumers with high saliency for environmental issues. A sick-baby appeal did not induce purchase intentions through anticipated negative emotions. The mediation effect of anticipated negative emotions did not work with any appeal type.

Retail marketers can use the findings to create commercial messages to persuade their fashion consumers. If the brand has consumers with low saliency, either educating consumers about the importance of environmental issues in the fashion industry or using a well- or healed-baby approach in their advertising can increase purchase intentions due to the increased anticipated positive emotions. Increasing the threat level of environmental problems by using a sick-baby appeal would not work, as consumers' anticipated negative emotions (e.g. feeling of guilt from not buying green products) would not convince them to purchase the green product.

The purpose of this paper is to explore strategic differences in marketing communication tactics for vegan and humane meat brands.

Content analysis was used to categorize the types of persuasive appeals used on the packaging of vegan and humane meat brands.

Humane meat brands use animal welfare and environmental appeals more often whereas vegan brands use taste appeals more frequently.

Marketers’ communication strategies for alternatives to traditional meat consumption are different from those of activists and non-profit organizations. By targeting middle of the road consumers, both vegan and humane brands can support widespread efficient and curtailment behaviors and in the process benefit consumers, the brands and society.

Anti-consumption and/or reduction of meat and animal by-products are arguably the most impactful ways in which consumers can alter their diets to positively impact individual and societal well-being. Consumers seeking alternatives to traditional meat consumption may either chose more sustainable meat products (efficient behaviors) or reduce/eliminate meat consumption (curtailment behaviors). Existing research suggests that such consumers can be divided into two segments – those driven by personal motives (health and/or taste) and those motivated by prosocial concern (environmental sustainability and/or animal welfare) and brands should match persuasive appeals to consumer motives, i.e. curtailment-focused vegan brands should use environmental or animal justice appeals and efficiency-focused humane meat brands should use taste or health appeals. However, the present research assumes marketers’ perspective and demonstrates that both vegan and humane brands target middle of the road consumers striving to balance multiple personal and prosocial goals, being socially responsible without compromising taste.

This study aims to investigate how the effectiveness of luxury advertising can be improved by matching the emotional (promotion pride vs prevention pride) and luxury value (authenticity vs exclusivity) appeals within advertising messages.

Three experiments were conducted. Studies 1A and 1B establish the influence of incidental emotions and regulatory focus on consumer preferences for divergent luxury value appeals (exclusivity vs authenticity) within advertisements. Study 2 shows the match-up effects of congruent emotional and luxury value appeals on advertising effectiveness.

The authors offer causal evidence that promotion pride increases the preference for exclusivity appeals, whereas prevention pride increases the preference for authenticity appeals in luxury advertising.

The study offers a novel perspective into the ways consumers evaluate different value appeals in luxury advertising and establishes the important role played by emotions within such evaluations.

Marketers of luxury products can increase the effectiveness of their advertising campaigns by considering the fit between emotional and luxury value appeals. Specifically, the authors show that the congruent matching of promotion pride with exclusivity appeals and of prevention pride with authenticity appeals within advertising messages can elicit more favorable consumer responses.

The study is the first to illustrate novel “match-up” effects: it shows when and how different luxury value appeals (exclusivity vs authenticity) and emotions (promotion pride vs prevention pride) influence the effectiveness of luxury advertising.

To investigate the psychological mechanism of observational learning in the online retailing context, the purpose of this paper is to show how the psychological distance between consumers and products affects modes of observational learning.

Five experimental studies are conducted to test the hypotheses.

The findings show that which modes of observational learning are adopted by consumers is affected by consumers’ psychological distance. Specifically, when the psychological distance between consumers and products is proximal, consumers tend to adopt the termed adequate observational learning mode by considering the interaction of information about popularity and the breadth of appeal of a product to make purchase. However, when the psychological distance is distal, consumers would consider information of popularity and breadth of appeal separately without considering the interaction, termed as inadequate observational learning mode. The observed relationship between psychological distance and observational learning mode could be explained by the construal level.

This research advances the observational learning and psychological distance literature by investigating the psychological mechanism behind observational learning modes. Limitations include the use of scenario-based experiments to test the hypotheses, investigation of a single product attribute (i.e. breadth of appeal) and assessment of popularity information by sales volume alone.

The current research provides a deeper understanding of consumer observational learning modes, which can help online retailers to develop effective product strategies and marketing tactics and, finally, achieve stronger competitive positions.

The present research contributes to the literature by examining the psychological mechanism involved in observational learning. This research distinguishes adequate and inadequate observational learning modes from the perspective of psychological distance.