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This study measured influencer characteristics, consumer emotions, self-construal, and behavioural intentions of Gen Z consumers for selecting fast-food restaurants in India. A consumer behaviour model was conceptualized based on established theories.

A cross-sectional design was employed for hypothesis testing. Influencer characteristic perceptions, consumer emotions, self-construal, and behavioural intentions were measured for Gen Z consumers in Tier 1 cities in India using structural equation modelling.

Influencer characteristics significantly influenced behavioural intentions, consumer emotions, and self-construal in Gen Z consumers. Self-construal was also a significant predictor of behavioural intentions. Consumer emotions had a negative effect on behavioural intentions. Self-construal was a mediator between influencer characteristics and behavioural intentions and between consumer emotions and behavioural intentions. However, consumer emotions did not mediate the relationship between influencer characteristics and behavioural intentions.

Marketers can leverage these insights to design influencer campaigns that resonate with the emotions and self-construal of Gen Z consumers. Microinfluencers with characteristics that align with the target demographic’s emotions and self-perception can be strategically chosen.

Only a limited number of studies have investigated the influence of social media marketing on consumer behaviour within the fast-food industry, specifically with Gen Z consumers. This study sheds new light on the behavioural intention of Gen Z consumers predicted through influencer characteristics, consumer emotions, and self-construal through a conceptual model. The results support choosing microinfluencers and investing in them judiciously to promote fast-food businesses.

While the literature on migration highlights the reshaping of host and immigrant population in countries, there is a paucity of research in marketing investigating the evolving dynamics for acculturation. The purpose of this study is to further the understanding of the emerging phenomenon of acculturation and identity negotiation.

Three experiments examined situational ethnicity, self-construal and identity negotiation in home and host culture work and social settings. Study 1 and Study 2 were conducted in the United Kingdom (UK), where the host country is the majority population. Study 3 was conducted in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where the host country is the minority population. Study 4 utilized qualitative interviews in both countries.

Results from all four studies show that ethnic consumers deploy “indifference” as an identity negotiation mechanism when the host society is the majority population (UK) and when the host society has the minority population (UAE).

The authors offer new insights into identity negotiation by ethnic consumers when the host society is the majority population as well as the minority population. “Indifference”, i.e. preferring to neither fit in nor stand out as an identity negotiation mechanism, is deployed in work and social settings of home and host societies. The authors also advance the existing literature on acculturation by examining whether independent and interdependent self-construal influence identity negotiation.

This research aims to explore how consumer responses to logo redesign (from angular to rounded) are contingent on brand commitment and self‐construal. The authors aim to explore two issues. First, what is the role of brand commitment on response to logo redesign and underlying brand attitude? Second, how does situational accessible self‐construal influence brand commitment in situations like this?

This research uses two field experiments; one using the general public via mall intercepts and the second with undergraduate college students.

In two studies the authors show that brand commitment negatively influences evaluation of inconsistent information (i.e. rounded logo), and this negative logo evaluation mediates the impact on brand attitude. They also find that motivated reasoning may be at play showing that when faced with inconsistent information brand commitment not only increases thought generation but, specifically, negative thoughts about the logo. Study 2, using more realistic stimuli shows that the deleterious effect of inconsistent information (i.e. new logo) is attenuated when the inconsistent information – i.e. rounded logo – is congruent with the consumers' self‐construal (i.e. interdependent self‐construal).

The authors advance the literature on self‐construal in advertising by identifying that self‐construal framing of ads may impact consumer response regardless of individual differences in self‐construal. They build on the work of Tsai who examined the effects of consumer characteristics such as product involvement and product knowledge in light of self‐construal differences on ad evaluation and purchase intentions.

The findings presented here suggest that consumers' responses to atypical brand information may be dependent on their level of brand commitment. This research shows that logo redesign in particular, and introduction of inconsistent information in general is a process that should be carefully managed. The second experiment shows that the independent message frame is the preferred approach for multi cultural/global marketers. In primarily independent cultures, one should target highly committed customers. In primarily interdependent cultures one can target both strongly and weakly committed consumers. These findings can help companies entering international markets or dealing with global brands. Beyond advertising, this research has application to other forms of brand aesthetics including packaging and web site design.

This study is the first to show that self‐construal framing can act as a boundary condition on the role that consumer commitment plays in shaping ad evaluations and purchase intentions regardless of chronic self‐construal.

Customization, as a crucial way to meet the heterogeneous demand of individuals, exists two fundamental and competing motivations, namely, assimilation and uniqueness. Based on optimal distinctiveness theory, this paper aims to validate the interactive effect of self-expressive customization types (i.e. customization to express individual identity and customization to express a shared identity) and self-construal on consumers’ willingness to pay a premium (WPP).

Two studies were conducted to provide empirical support for all proposed hypotheses. The first study (n = 151) uses a hypothetical scenario of a basketball game to test the interaction effect of self-expressive customization and self-construal. The second study (n = 184) assumes a scenario of designing a t-shirt or a uniform to examined the moderated mediating role of consumer-product identification.

The results reveal that independent (vs interdependent) self-construal will have stronger consumer-product identification for customization to express an individual identity (vs customization to express a shared identity), thus generating a higher WPP. Also, perceived task difficulty is the boundary condition of the research model.

This paper makes insightful contributions to the customization literature by strengthening the identity signals of customization and exploring the psychological mechanism and the boundary conditions.

This research is one of the first few empirical studies to examine the impact of self-expressive customization on consumers’ WPP via the identification with the focal object. This paper not only expands the literature of self-expressive customization but also provides a new research direction for the research of person-object interaction in marketing.

This study examines how consumers' self-construal moderates consumers' buying behavior in situations requiring consumers to buy larger-than-expected clothing sizes. The authors explore the potential effectiveness of two distinct communication strategies – emotional versus informational ad appeals – to mitigate the negative effects of sizing discrepancies.

A total of three experiments were conducted to examine the proposed framework. Studies 1 and 2 investigate whether self-construal moderates the relationship between sizing discrepancy and purchasing intentions. Study 3 examines the effectiveness of communication strategies in reducing the detrimental effects of sizing discrepancy.

When encountering sizing discrepancies, the authors find that consumers with an interdependent self-construal have lower purchase intentions than those with an independent self-construal. The authors demonstrate that an emotional communication strategy is more effective for consumers with an interdependent self-construal, whereas an informational communication strategy is more effective for consumers with an independent self-construal.

With the lack of a universal sizing system, consumers often struggle to find clothes that fit as expected. However, extant research has not explored cross-cultural differences in how consumers respond to sizing discrepancies and how managers can reduce any potential negative effects.

This paper aims to adopt the perspectives of cognition and emotions to investigate whether the interdependent self-construal of consumers in a Chinese collectivist culture, along with empathy and moral identity, evokes direct and indirect responses to corporate cause-related marketing (CRM).

A total of 901 valid questionnaires were retrieved, and PROCESS macro for SPSS was used to test the multiple mediation and serial mediation hypotheses. The structural equation modeling was also used to confirm the results.

The empirical results showed that consumer self-construal exerts a positive influence on consumer responses to corporate CRM through empathy. The results also suggest that CRM events provoke empathetic responses in consumers and trigger their moral identity, which in turn affects their evaluations on CRM corporations and their purchase intentions for CRM goods.

The present study targeted the relatively affordable CRM events in convenience stores to investigate consumer responses; the results may not be applicable to CRM events in other industries. Besides that, as this study is focused on CRM activity, respondents may have more positive evaluation.

Corporations are advised to improve their corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication strategies. These should rely on factual, sincere, easy-to-understand and appropriate communication to trigger moral identity in consumers. Because empathy is regarded as the core of human moral and emotional systems, corporations are advised to associate their charitable events with social emotions to strengthen consumer perceptions, enhance moral identity and promote prosocial behaviors.

This study verified the serial multiple mediating effect of empathy and moral identity in the relationship between consumer self-construal and responses to corporate CRM. Corporations are advised to improve their CSR communication strategies and public expression of moral actions to raise consumer empathy and moral identity, so as to improve consumer responses to CRM.

Enhancing consumer-company identification (CCI) is a useful means by which to build deeper, more committed relationships with consumers. The purpose of this paper is to examine how consumers’ perceptions about the company (service quality and corporate social responsibility) and construal of the self (independent self-construal and interdependent self-construal) affect their identification with a service firm. This study also investigates how consumers’ involvement with the service firm moderates the relationships between CCI and four specific drivers.

A conceptual model is developed and empirically tested through two field-based studies (restaurant services and financial services) and one follow-up laboratory experiment.

The results of this research show that service quality, corporate social responsibility and interdependent self-construal positively affect CCI and that independent self-construal has a negative effect on CCI. In particular, the greater the involvement of the consumer with the service firm, the more positive the effects of service quality and corporate social responsibility are on CCI.

This research provides new insight into services marketing management by suggesting that service firms can enhance CCI and, consequently, consumer loyalty by adopting different strategies for specific consumer segments.

This is the first empirical study to simultaneously incorporate both company characteristics and consumer personal factors into a framework, and provide an integrative understanding of what factors determine consumers’ identification with a service firm.

The authors investigated the factors influencing consumer evaluations of advertisements for ethical luxury products that incorporate animal rights and protection concerns. The authors empirically examined how ethical messages influence advertisement persuasiveness through ethical consumer guilt and positively impact consumer evaluations of ethical luxury products. Furthermore, the authors explored the moderating role of consumers’ independent versus interdependent self-construals.

The authors conducted four experimental studies on the interplay among ethicality, luxury brand positioning and self-construal. Moderated mediation analyses revealed that moral emotions were responsible for the effect of ethical luxury advertisements that address animal welfare on brand attitude.

Advertisement messages signaling a luxury brand’s ethical efforts increase empathy through ethical consumer guilt, thereby generating favorable attitudes toward luxury products. However, this effect is limited to consumers with independent self-construal in South Korea and the United States of America.

The authors offer novel insights into the roles of ethical consumer guilt and empathy in the positive effects of ethical messages from luxury brands. Furthermore, the authors identified brand type and self-construal as boundary conditions for the effects observed across different consumer groups and markets.

Customer referral programs (CRPs) are popular; however, they often generate low referral rates. The authors propose that certain CRP referral tasks may hinder consumers’ referral likelihood. This study aims to explore the effects of referral tasks (communication content and approach) on customers’ referral likelihood on social platforms and the role of self-construal.

This study establishes a theoretical model based on online social platforms and conducts three scenario-based experiments. The authors obtain data from consumers on Sojump platform and test the hypotheses using analysis of variance (ANOVA) analysis and mediation analysis in SPSS. The valid sample sizes for these three experiments are 288, 203 and 214, respectively.

Three experimental studies indicate that communication content and approach have a significant effect on referral likelihood. Furthermore, the effect of communication content on referral likelihood depends on the communication approach. Self-construal plays a moderating role in the effect of communication content and approach on perceived social costs.

CRPs typically involve tasks and rewards; consumers are asked to complete a referral task and then receive a reward. Both tasks and rewards can affect an individual’s willingness to participate; however, existing studies on CRP focus primarily on the reward component. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to systematically investigate the role of referral tasks (communication content and approach) in CRPs. The authors extend the related research by examining the impact of referral tasks on consumers’ willingness to recommend. In addition, this study introduces self-construal into CRPs research.

This study aims to examine the effect of self-construal on solo dining intentions and its underlying mechanism through consumer emotions. Furthermore, the study also investigates the moderating effect of the composition of other diners on the relationship between self-construal and solo dining intentions.

A 2 (self-construal: independent vs interdependent) × 2 (other diners: solo diners vs social diners) between-subjects experimental design was adopted to test the hypotheses. The data were collected from 317 Chinese consumers, followed by an analysis using IBM SPSS 23.0 and AMOS 23.0.

The findings indicate that consumers with an independent self-construal are more likely to have the intention to dine alone at a restaurant. Nevertheless, this effect is contingent upon the composition of other diners. The effect is significant only when nearby diners are social diners, and perceived enjoyment partly mediates the relationship. Conversely, when nearby diners are also solo diners, consumers' self-construals do not significantly affect their solo dining intentions. Moreover, the results indicate that consumers generally experience low levels of perceived stress when dining alone.

This study incorporates individual personality traits into research on solo diners and highlights the crucial role of positive emotions in solo dining, which provides insights for relevant enterprises to develop effective marketing strategies.