Search results

The purpose of this study is to understand how and why consumers engage in market-shaping activities on behalf of firms.

This study uses a combination of archival, netnographic and interview methods to examine how consumers responded to the entry of Tesla into the U.S. automotive market.

Consumers are driven to engage in supportive institutional work by the culturally resonant ideologies embodied in Tesla’s strategic orientation. This work takes both discursive and practical forms and sees consumers adopting responsibilities typically associated with other actors, including activists and sales professionals.

In developing an account of an understudied phenomenon – consumers’ firm-supportive market shaping – this research extends theorization around institutional work and cultural branding.

This study examines handmade clothing consumption as a means of self-expression by exploring the interrelationships between consumers' self-expression, brand love and word of mouth.

Using a descriptive research design, data were collected from 295 respondents in South Africa who posted about fashion on social media and who had bought handmade clothing in the 6 months prior to data collection. Structural equation modelling was used to examine the interrelationships between consumers' self-expression, brand love and word of mouth.

Brand love intervenes between consumers' self-brand connections and word of mouth about handmade clothing. More specifically, brand love strengthens positive word of mouth online and mitigates negative word-of-mouth intentions following a handmade clothing product failure scenario.

The study enlightens scholarly understanding of consumers' self-expression motivations for using ready-made handmade clothing that results in brand love and positive word of mouth.

Handmade clothing marketers who tap into consumers' self-expression and who can establish brand love among consumers can similarly create beneficial consumer–brand relationships.

Consumers often use handmade clothing for the purpose of self-expression, which provides subsequent spin-offs for brands in the form of brand love and positive word of mouth. Objective self-awareness theory provides a parsimonious lens to reveal the important role that brand love plays as a mechanism to explain the linkage of consumers' self-brand connections to word of mouth about handmade clothing.

With the growing market for luxury fashion rental, we aim to examine how renting luxury fashion is related to consumers' construction of the material self, based on material self-framework. We propose that consumers adopt luxury fashion rentals to construct and manage the personal and social aspects of the material self and that their belief in brand essence facilitates the mechanism.

A total of 296 responses of US female participants collected from Cloudresearch were analyzed to test the relationships between constructs in the proposed model.

The results, using structural equation modeling analysis, supported the expected relationships. Specifically, whereas the social material self directly increased adoption intention, the personal material self indirectly increased such intention via the belief that rented luxury items preserve brand essence.

Our findings advance the literature by showing how the self is constructed and managed in collaborative luxury fashion consumption, from self-identity perspective. The current research reveals the important roles of two aspects of material self that respectively contribute to consumers' adoption of luxury fashion rentals.

This study empirically tests the material self theory in the context of luxury fashion rental and demonstrates the processes of how consumers regard a luxury fashion rental as a tool to construct their identity. This study not only validates the two-structure model of material self (social and personal), but also incorporate the role of brand essence in revealing how the two facets of material self differently facilitate luxury fashion rental adoption.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how gamification in advertising affects the effectiveness of advertising on social media.

Drawing from the gamification literature, immersion, achievement and social interaction features were identified as features, and advertising effectiveness factors were brand attention, brand liking and recall. A questionnaire was used for collecting data, and a structural equation modeling approach was applied to examine the model.

The results indicated that immersion, achievement and social interaction features affect advertising effectiveness. Furthermore, advertising effectiveness factors had a significant effect on purchase intentions.

The study contributes to the combination of gamification in advertising by offering characteristics for gamification that can enhance advertising effectiveness through brand attention, liking and recall. Finally, it provides managerial guidance on how they can use gamification in their advertising process.

Understanding the effect of assortment composition on attentional levels is an essential topic for academic researchers and practitioners. This work has important implications when analyzing the influence of shopping frame time and search effort on the relationship between the reaction to assortment composition and visual attention to stock-keeping units (SKUs) pricing.

Two experimental studies through gauze behavior analysis technology (using eye-tracking equipment) analyze the variable's large assortment, visual attention to SKU pricing, search effort and shopping frame time.

The results suggest that, although it increases the search effort, a large assortment decreases the visual attention to SKU pricing. Further, our results indicate a moderating effect associated with mitigating the negative effect by medium-low levels of search effort and a moderating impact of time in this relation.

Marketing professionals can carefully optimize the in-store experience by managing the assortment and variety and by influencing consumers' visual attention to SKU pricing along the journey as part of the experience. Assortment and SKU pricing strategies need to be aligned with consumer journey design.

Our findings contribute to assortment theory and management by detailing the relationship between consumers' reactions to assortment perception and visual attention to SKU pricing in time flow. We reinforce the importance of considering assortment strategies from the consumer perspective and giving reliable information about in-store behavior.

This paper aims to identify the mechanism through which consumer empowerment, created via the Facebook brand page (FBBP), is transformed into brand page stickiness. Specifically, a model examining the mediating role of FBBP experience and the moderating role of brand love is proposed and tested.

Data from 283 FBBP users were analyzed using structural equation modeling with partial least squares.

The findings reveal the positive effect of consumer empowerment and brand page experience on brand page stickiness. The mediating role of brand page experience and the moderating role of brand love were prominent in the consumer empowerment–brand page stickiness link.

This paper is novel in inaugurating the association between consumer empowerment and FBBP stickiness, which is mediated by brand experience and moderated with brand love. This paper enriches the understanding of how brand page stickiness can be enhanced in the social media context.

This paper guides managers to best utilize FBBP to create a pleasant experience and yield stickiness.

The increasing popularity of immersive activities (e.g. immersive performing art (IPA) at tourism destinations calls for the need to understand customers’ immersive experiences and its impact on their attitudes and behavioral intentions. This study aims to conceptualize customers’ interactive experience in IPA and systematically examine how interaction in IPA experience shapes customers’ word-of-mouth (WOM) intention and thus generates business values for destination managers.

A two-step mixed-methods approach was used. The qualitative study was adopted to identify the salient dimensions of interaction in IPA experience and develop a context-specific measurement scale. Structural equation modeling approach was applied to test the theoretical model using partial least squares 3.3.0.

The results indicated that the three dimensions of interaction in IPA experience (i.e. parasocial interaction, narrative interaction and environmental interaction) are positively related to customers’ experiences of narrative transportation and self-expansion related to the IPA, which further influence their WOM intention.

This study considers IPA as an emerging form of immersive tourism activities and conceptualizes its interactive nature, and contributes to the understanding of how customers’ interactive experience helps them construct meanings through narrative transportation, and offers valuable guidance for IPA designers and destination management organizations.

When an audience mentally counterargues a spokesperson, the message is backfiring. In such cases, audience members are practically persuading themselves to take the opposite position advocated by the spokesperson. Yet spokespeople who are professional persuaders serving corporations often seem to instill counterargument. This paper examines the role of counterargument as the conduit through which a spokesperson's different message types affect a company during a crisis. The authors explore the paradox of spokespeople's (in)effectiveness by testing divides in research drawn from normative crisis communication theory, narrative persuasion theory and the theory of reporting bias.

Two controlled, randomized experiments are reported. Participants (total N = 828) watch video clips of media interviews of a company spokesperson fielding questions about a scandal.

In the first study, non-narrative information most effectively bolsters purchase intentions and reduces negative word-of-mouth. The effect is mediated by decreased counterargument. The second study replicates the results concerning on-topic narratives compared with spinning, while on-topic narratives and non-narratives perform equally well.

This study addresses conflicts between two distinct traditions of theory as well as between normative crisis communication and its frequent practice. Reducing counterargument matters in the context of non-narrative persuasion, and non-narratives can perform at least as well as narratives in crisis communication.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the prospect of using neurophenomenology to understand, design and test phygital consumer experiences. It aims to clarify interpretivist approaches to consumer neuroscience, wherein theoretical models of individual phenomenology can be combined with modern neuroimaging techniques to detect and interpret the first-person accounts of phygital experiences.

The argument is conceptual in nature, building its position through synthesizing insights from phenomenology, phygital marketing, theoretical neuroscience and other related fields.

Ultimately, the paper presents the argument that interpretivist neuroscience in general, and neurophenomenology specifically, provides a valuable new perspective on phygital marketing experiences. In particular, we argue that the approach to studying first-personal experiences within the phygital domain can be significantly refined by adopting this perspective.

One of the primary goals of this paper is to stimulate a novel approach to interpretivist phygital research, and in doing so, provide a foundation by which the impact of phygital interventions can be empirically tested through neuroscience, and through which future research into this topic can be developed. As such, the success of such an approach is yet untested.

Phygital marketing is distinguished by its focus on the quality of subjective first-personal consumer experiences, but few papers to date have explored how neuroscience can be used as a tool for exploring these inner landscapes. This paper addresses this lacuna by providing a novel perspective on “interpretivist neuroscience” and proposes ways that current neuroscientific models can be used as a practical methodology for addressing these questions.

In a society that encourages consumption, attributes such as exclusivity and social recognition are important in what is intended to be restricted to a certain exclusive segment. Luxury is something that is more desirable than necessary. This study develops and tests a model that analyses the brand loyalty–risk relationship in the luxury watch market.

To test the proposed research model, a sample of 306 international consumers and enthusiasts of luxury brand watches was collected. The data were analysed using structural equation modelling.

The results show that perceived quality has a negative indirect influence on brand risk and brand trust has a strong direct negative effect on brand risk. However, the findings also show that in the luxury market, the greater the affection for the brand, the greater the risk perceived by consumers.

The study was conducted in a single market, luxury watches and the sample includes both enthusiasts and consumers of the luxury brands.

Managers should be aware of the double-edged role of brand affect on brand risk. The quality of a brand and the trust in its promise decrease the risk to the consumer.

This pioneering study is one of the first to approach an underexplored topic as is the case of the risk associated with a brand in the context of the luxury goods market. Moreover, it relies on an international sample composed of consumers from several countries.