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The purpose of this study is to examine how perceived corporate social responsibility (CSR) motives may influence situational scepticism towards luxury brands and its effects on brand resonance, resilience to negative information and consumer advocacy of luxury brands. The moderating role of perceived fit towards luxury brand CSR initiatives is also investigated.

An experimental approach on a 2 × 2 matrix was used. Data are collected through a consumer panel.

Values-driven motives were found to lead to lower consumer situational scepticism and egoistic-driven motives would lead to higher levels of consumer situational scepticism. While higher consumer situational scepticism leads to lower brand resonance, there is no significant relationship between scepticism and resilience to negative information and consumer advocacy. The findings also suggest that perceived fit moderates the relationship between consumer situational scepticism to resilience to negative information and consumer situational scepticism to consumer advocacy.

The key originality of the study is that it provides empirical insights into situational scepticism of CSR initiatives and its influence in consumer and management outcomes in luxury brands.

By integrating uses and gratification theory (UGT) and online buying behavior theory (OBBT), this study aims to examine the impact of escapism motives (self-suppression and self-expansion) and attitude toward online shopping (ATS) on eCart abandonment. In addition, the mediating role of ATS between escapism motives and eCart abandonment is examined.

Structural equations modeling was performed on the data of 400 consumers using AMOS 26.

The results indicated that escapism motivations impacted users’ eCart abandonment, and the attitude toward online shopping mediated this relationship.

The findings of this study imply that online sellers should understand the consumer motives for website use. In response, better strategies should be developed to reduce eCart abandonment.

This study extends knowledge of eCart abandonment by theoretical integration of UGT and OBBT and identification of the intrinsic predictors of virtual cart abandonment behavior. In addition, it is one of the early attempts to examine the dimensional impact of escapism on eCart abandonment.

The internationalization of retailing is increasing throughout the global service markets. Among many retail formats, the discount store is one of the fastest growing formats actively engaging internationalization. In managing retail firms in other cultures, understanding of local customers’ perceptions toward the retail formats is especially important. Shopping motives may be a function of retail format, cultural, economic and social environment. Prior studies on shopping motives, however, have focused on Western cultures and on a shopping mall format. This study provides an exploratory examination of Korean discount shoppers’ shopping motives and their shopping typologies based on their shopping motives. A total of 624 questionnaires were administered to married female discount shoppers in Korea using the intercept survey method, and 467 completed questionnaires were available for data analysis. Factor analysis identified three shopping motives for patronizing discount stores: socialization, diversion and utilitarian. Four groups were identified using cluster analysis and labeled as leisurely‐motivated shoppers (n =152, 34.1 percent), socially‐motivated shoppers (n=49, 11.0 percent), utilitarian shoppers (n=132, 29.6 percent) and shopping‐apathetic shoppers (n=113, 25.3 percent). The four groups significantly differ in their appraisals of patronized store in some of store attributes, repatronage intention, and money spent in a shopping trip. Typologies of each cluster, discount retailing environments and managerial implications are discussed based on findings.

The purpose of this study is to compare South Korean (SK) and United States (US) adolescents' clothing motives and their store selection criteria, examine whether adolescents with different primary clothing motives would have similar or different store selection criteria, and examine an interaction effect of country of residency and clothing motives on store selection criteria.

A total of 307 US students and 297 SK students participated in the study. The convenience sampling method was used to recruit teachers who volunteered to help with the study and administer the survey.

Results showed that clothing motives and store selection criteria differed significantly between SK and US participants. Participants with different primary clothing motives had significantly different store selection criteria. SK and US participants with the same primary clothing motive did not have significantly different store selection criteria.

Participants were recruited using a convenience sampling method and, therefore, they could not represent adolescents generally in either country.

Based on the findings, suggestions for store positioning, service management and international marketing strategies for apparel companies that target adolescents were provided.

Limited studies have examined adolescents' motives behind the clothes they purchase and wear, and their store selection criteria.

The purpose of this paper is to better understand the relationship between web site design characteristics and revisit intention by examining the roles of satisfaction and consumer motives, thus providing managers with strategies that they can adopt to secure revisiting consumers at their web sites.

This paper uses survey method to collect data from 238 respondents and mediation hypotheses are tested with structural equation modelling using LISREL.

The results indicate that for goal‐directed consumers web site content and customization play a more significant role in influencing their satisfaction and revisit intentions than convenience. However, for experiential consumers, content and convenience play a more significant role in satisfaction and revisit intentions than customization options at a web site.

One type of online business is used as a stimulus in this study. Future studies may include different types of web sites. Also, researchers in the future may use actual behavior, instead of intention, to increase the validity of the results.

This paper suggests that marketers interested in revisiting consumers should focus on web site characteristics that lead to satisfaction during their web visit. Also, marketers need to pay attention to the consumer motives at the web site, so that the web site characteristics can be tailored to the motives and would ultimately lead to positive consumer outcomes.

This is the first paper that investigates the moderating effect of consumer motives and mediating effect of web site satisfaction on web site characteristics and revisit intention relationship.

Negative word-of-mouth has a variety of negative effects on companies. Thus, how consumers process and evaluate negative word-of-mouth is an important issue for companies. This research aims to investigate the effect of emotional intensity of negative word-of-mouth on consumers' perceived helpfulness.

The research model was developed based on attribution theory. A four-study approach involving two field experiments and two online experiments was employed to examine the proposed hypotheses.

The results show that the emotional intensity of negative word-of-mouth negatively affects altruistic motive attributions, while altruistic motive attributions positively affect perceived helpfulness and plays a mediating role in the relationship between the emotional intensity of negative word-of-mouth and perceived helpfulness. Consumers' self-construal moderates the effects of emotional intensity of negative word-of-mouth on altruistic motive attributions and perceived helpfulness, with the negative effects of emotional intensity of negative word-of-mouth on altruistic motive attributions and perceived helpfulness being weaker for consumers with high interdependent self-construal than for those with high independent self-construal.

The findings not only have a significant theoretical contribution, deepening the understanding of the effects of negative word-of-mouth but also have useful implications for practitioners to improve the management of negative word-of-mouth.

In addition to having an understanding of consumers' food choice motives which influence their attitudes toward GM foods in Taiwan, the aim of this study is to ascertain whether gender differences play a role in consumers' food choice motives and their attitudes toward GM foods.

A total of 12 distinct food choice motives, adapted from the Food Choice Questionnaire (FCQ) is posted on a questionnaire collection web site to collect research data. A total of 522 useful responses were elicited as the data input for analysis.

The results indicate that mood, sensory appeal, price, and familiarity were found to have positive impacts on consumers' attitudes toward GM foods but natural content is observed to have a negative impact on consumers' attitudes toward GM foods. Moreover, female consumers have a more negative attitude toward GM foods than male consumers when they consider whether GM foods are healthy or not.

The marketers of this GM foods sector in Taiwan should emphasize the price advantage and the appealing sensory aspects of GM foods. By doing so, consumers could familiarize themselves with such foods being promoted. However, how to prevent them from treating GM foods as unnatural and unhealthy is an important task for GM foods marketers.

This is the first study to investigate the gender gap in food choice motives as a determinant of consumers' attitudes toward GM foods in Taiwan. Based on the empirical findings, some suggestions are provided here to benefit the marketers of this GM foods sector in Taiwan.

This paper aims to examine the online apparel shopping behaviour of Generation Y (Gen Y) in an unprecedented digital dissemination era.

For this purpose, a “mixed-method approach” was used with an explanatory sequential research design. Logistic regression was conducted to identify the role of various contemporary elements of shopping motives. Fifteen semi-structured interviews were conducted to explain quantitative outputs.

It finds that Gen Y consumers demonstrate “fashion-hunting”, “variety-seeking”, “status/recognition-seeking” and “deal-hunting” behaviours in online apparel shopping. “Haptic impressions” gained via hands and other “socio-psychological benefits” trigger their apparel shopping behaviour. They make better and more informed purchase decisions based on prior online research and user-generated content shared by friends/relatives on social media portraying the true characteristics of “digital natives”. They do not trust online retailers for premium apparel shopping due to associated “product risk” and lack of transparency in their “exchange/return/refund policy”. Finally, they are increasingly inspired to have an “integrated online and offline shopping experience”.

Online retailers can use the findings of this study to develop more effective marketing strategies to serve Gen Y consumers.

The study measured actual behaviours on a holistic gamut of shopping motives consisting of utilitarian, hedonic, physical product-specific (apparel) and emerging elements of shopping motives in the technology-enabled era of shopping exclusively. Therefore, the results of the study offer significant, realistic and useful theoretical contributions to the existing literature on the subject matter along with valuable inputs to practitioners alike.

This paper aims to examine the common situation where the sponsor of an event is replaced and the impact of this situation on consumers’ behavioral intentions toward the new sponsor.

An original conceptual framework was developed to account for consumers’ reactions toward a new sponsor in the context of a sponsorship change, depending on whether the former and new sponsors are competitors, the duration of the relationship between the former sponsor and the event (tenure length), and the level of congruence between the new and the former sponsor and the event. This framework, based on consumer motive attributions, was tested by means of three completely randomized experiments.

The results of the first experiment show that if the former and new sponsors are competitors, consumers’ behavioral intentions toward the new sponsor are more positive if the former sponsor’s tenure duration was short. When the former and the new sponsors are not competitors, the former sponsor’s tenure duration does not impact behavioral intentions. The second experiment demonstrates that consumers’ altruistic motive attributions are the underlying mechanism that explains these effects. Finally, the third experiment identifies a boundary condition, that is, these effects occur only if the new and the former sponsor are congruent with the sponsored property.

This research has not considered the situation where the former and new sponsors have different levels of congruence with the event (e.g. when the former sponsor is congruent but the new sponsor is incongruent with the event) and has examined only sponsorship tenure durations of one versus 15 years.

Sponsorship managers learn that replacing a sponsor that was supporting the event for a short rather than a long period of time is more beneficial, but only if replacing a competitor that is congruent with the sponsored property. The reason is that such a replacement triggers more altruistic motive attributions compared with contexts where the former sponsor is not a competitor or incongruent with the sponsored property. Suggestions of sponsorship activation strategies known to increase perceptions of altruism are provided to enhance sponsorship effectiveness for new sponsors.

This study is the first to look at how consumer responses to a new sponsor vary depending on the former sponsor’s tenure length, competitor status and event congruency.

Literature on the motives influencing consumers’ intention to use peer-to-peer (P2P) platforms has become vast and fragmented. The purpose of this paper is to shed light on this research stream by applying a novel methodological approach that reveals the existence of alternative combinations of motives that equally boost consumers’ intention to use P2P accommodation.

The methodological approach builds on the complexity theory and includes both linear and nonlinear techniques. The empirical analysis combines multiple regression analysis and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). The sample comprises 458 users of a leading P2P accommodation platform.

The fsQCA reveals four distinct combinations of motives. Social interaction and social esteem, either combined themselves or in partial combination with economic benefits, emerge as two important drivers of behavioral intention to use P2P accommodation. Sustainability appears in three of the combinations.

This paper contributes to the P2P accommodation literature by adopting a novel methodological approach that shows the complexity behind consumers’ intention to use P2P accommodation. Consumer motives cannot be considered as separate entities because their effect on consumer intention depends on the interplay among them. Therefore, the different combinations of motives should be managed simultaneously.