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The purpose of this paper is to understand how the context congruity effects of online product recommendations (PRs) by recommendation agents (RAs) influence consumers’ attention to and memory of recommended products in an online shopping environment.

The study focuses on the context congruity effects of online PRs by examining consumers’ browsing patterns and attention characteristics (fixation counts and fixation duration) using an eye-tracking device and by measuring memory performance with an aided memory test. Three types of PRs (highly congruent, lowly congruent and incongruent PRs) and two degrees of involvement (high and low involvement) are considered.

The results of the gaze data show that context congruity effects can influence consumers’ PR attention, but this effect is not moderated by involvements. The results of the memory data show that PR recognition is influenced not only by context congruity effects but also by involvement. Another significant finding is that attention to a PR does not necessarily guarantee better memory performance.

The study significantly contributes to deepening the understanding of how context congruity can influence consumers’ attention to and memory of PRs. The findings also have important managerial and practical implications, such that selecting and presenting PRs should be based on context congruity effects.

First, introducing context congruity effects to investigate the effectiveness of online PRs by RAs not only provides an important theoretical contribution to research on recommendation effectiveness but also enriches its application. Second, the findings suggest that the relationship between visual attention and memory is not definitely positive. Third, to interpret the complex translation process from attention to memory, the authors propose a methodology that considers stimulus attributes, issue involvement, cognitive capacity and cognitive interference.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of country of origin (COO) information as an important/salient categorical attribute on choice context effects. Specifically, this research examines whether the introduction of a unique COO in the choice set will have a differential influence on context effects depending on the relative position of the third option (the asymmetrically dominated option vs the extreme option).

Five experiments were conducted in this research. Study 1 had a 2 (set size: two-option core set vs three-option asymmetric dominance set)×2 (competitor’s COO: common vs unique) between-subjects design. Study 2 had a 2 (set size: two-option core set vs three-option extreme option set)×2 (competitor’s COO: common vs unique) between-subjects design. To address the robustness of the effects, Studies 3-5 replicated the results of Studies 1 and 2. The data were analyzed by χ² tests and logistic regression analyses.

The current research demonstrates that the attraction effect is attenuated by the introduction of a unique COO information in the competing option, whereas the tendency to prefer a middle option is not significantly affected.

The present research adds to the current understanding and the practical relevance of COO effects and context effects in marketing by examining the impact of COO as an important/salient categorical attribute on context effects.

The purpose of this research is to study the moderating role of the personality trait Discomfort With Ambiguity (DWA) on the processing of mixed emotions in advertising. Two experiments were conducted. In the first experiment, the emotions between the medium context and the embedded advertisement were mixed. In the second experiment, the emotions in an advertisement were mixed by manipulating emotions in the text and picture. Results indicate that DWA, being a proxy for how well people are able to deal with mixed emotions, has a moderating effect on advertising processing. Individuals having a high DWA appear to respond less positively to mixed emotions.

The purpose of this study is to examine whether the context of ad pictures differs between Chinese ads and US ads and whether it can influence consumers' ad attitudes.

An ad content analysis and a laboratory experiment were conducted to test the hypotheses.

Findings suggest that contextualized ads appear more frequently in Chinese magazines because East Asians have a context‐dependent mode of thinking while westerners have a context‐independent mode of thinking. However, the effect of culture on advertising is moderated by product class (goods vs service), product category, and magazine category. Moreover, East Asians prefer contextualized ads to non‐contextualized ones, while westerners prefer non‐contextualized ads to contextualized ads. However, the effect of culture on ad attitudes may be moderated by ad involvement.

The limitations of this study stem from its being based on ad samples from China and its use of students to test ad attitudes.

The findings allow managers to better determine whether and under what conditions to use contextualized or non‐contextualized advertisements.

The study's examination of the effect of culture on the context of ad format and effect of context on persuasion in this context constitutes a unique and valuable contribution to the literature. The paper also contributes much to the literature by checking cultural differences across 17 magazine categories, compared to the vast majority of studies analyzing ad content between eastern and western cultures, which have been based on ads from only a few sources.

Social media have become an increasingly important venue for prosocial campaigns. Competing for the public’s attention in the digital space is an ongoing challenge. This study aims to test the influence of ad-context congruence, ad position and ad type (i.e. public service advertising [PSA] vs cause-related brand [CRB] advertising) on the effectiveness of prosocial native advertising on social media.

Two experiments were conducted on different social media platforms (i.e. Twitter and Instagram) with varied prosocial issues (i.e. healthy eating and environmental sustainability).

Experiment 1 indicated that the congruence between prosocial native ads and social media feeds elicited greater ad involvement and a more favorable ad attitude, regardless of ad position. Experiment 2 revealed that such an impact was contingent on whether the prosocial native ad was a public service ad or a CRB ad. The positive influence of ad-context congruence was pronounced among public service ads but was not observed among CRB ads. Perceived ad involvement mediated the interaction effects between ad-context congruence and ad type on ad attitude and behavioral intention.

The study extends ad-context congruence research to the context of prosocial native advertising on social media. Moreover, it identifies ad type as a boundary condition for the congruence effects and reveals that increased ad involvement is the mechanism underlying the positive effect of congruent PSA.

The purpose of this study was to examine how national context moderates the impact of family supportive supervisory behavior (FSSB) on employee’s job performance and turnover intentions. The authors consider direct and indirect (through work–family positive spillover) effects of FSSB. Our model is based on conservation of resources (COR) theory and boundary theory. The authors conceptualize national context as contributing resources to or threatening with loss of resources for individuals. To test the model, the authors use data from three Latin American countries – Brazil, Chile and Ecuador.

This is a cross-sectional study based on a survey of almost 988 individuals. The authors first test the direct and indirect effects (via bi-directional positive spillover) of FSBB on performance and turnover intentions without considering the moderating effects of national context (mediation analysis). Then, the authors test the effect of national context in our baseline model by conducting a moderation analysis of direct and indirect effects. The authors use seemingly unrelated regressions and account for control variables and country-level effects.

The results confirm that national context affects the relationships between FSSB and outcomes. As unemployment rises, the effect of FSSB on turnover intentions is stronger and the effect of FSSB on performance, via bi-directional work–family positive spillover, is stronger. When social expenditures increase, the relationship between FSSB and performance via work–family positive spillover becomes weaker. In addition, the authors find some unexpected results.

The authors advance the understanding of how national context affects the impact of FSSB on outcomes, specifically in Latin America. The authors conceptualize national context as providing or threatening individuals’ resources, using publicly available data on unemployment and social expenditures.

The purpose of this paper is to study the nature of brand emotions elicited by advertising stimuli across cultures and the process underlying such emotional experiences.

The study uses factorial between-subjects design. Random samples of the populations were solicited from the panels of an international data provider in Norway and Thailand.

This research shows that Thai consumers experience more positive socially engaging and disengaging brand emotions and fewer negative socially engaging emotions relative to Norwegian consumers. The effects of culture are mediated by consumers’ self-construal. Social advertising context increases number of positive and negative socially engaging emotions among Thai (but not among Norwegian) consumers.

The results highlight the importance of incorporating social orientation of emotions and adverting context in cross-cultural studies of brand emotions. The finding that Thai consumers (relative to Norwegian) experience higher levels of atypical for their culture – positive socially disengaging brand emotions requires further research.

The findings suggest that advertising stimuli need to be adapted to the cultural context. Marketing managers should use extensive pretesting in culturally distinct markets to make sure that advertising evokes brand emotions in line with the strategy.

Despite extensive research on brand emotions, extant studies on brand emotions across cultures are limited. This study is among the first to advance the understanding of how social orientation of emotions and advertising context underlie experience of brand emotions across cultures.

Integrating conceptual perspectives from social exclusion, thinking style and context effects, this study aims to examine how different types of social exclusion influence attraction and compromise effects.

Eight studies were conducted. To establish the causal relationship between social exclusion types and context effects, this study uses experimental designs in all studies.

The attraction effect is stronger when consumers feel rejected than ignored, whereas the compromise effect is stronger when they feel ignored than rejected. Consumers who feel rejected increase their propensity to think holistically, which in turn leads to their choice preferences for asymmetrically dominant options. Conversely, those who feel ignored increase their propensity to think analytically, which in turn leads to their choice preferences for compromise options.

The findings show that consumer preferences for one option over the other alternatives in choice contexts are susceptible to subtle differences in the manner that exclusion is communicated. The studies are limited to recall tasks and scenarios that previous research has shown to be effective. Future research may use actual exclusion to corroborate this study’s findings.

Marketing practitioners may benefit from this study’s findings when it comes to an increase in the relative share of their target brand against their competitor brands by introducing a third option.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to provide evidence that exclusion communicated in an explicit manner produces the attraction effect, whereas exclusion communicated in an implicit manner produces the compromise effect. Given that threatening situations often influence individuals’ preferences and choices, how social exclusion shapes cognitive processes is an empirical question worthy of investigation.

Previous research on salesperson-customer proximity has yielded mixed results, with some studies documenting positive proximity effects on shopping responses and others demonstrating the reverse. To reconcile such mixed findings, this paper aims to test whether and how salesperson proximity influences a series of key customer outcomes in actual retail settings using sample sizes that are considerably larger than most former investigations.

We conducted two high-powered field studies (N = 1,312) to test whether salesperson‐customer proximity influences consumers’ purchase behavior and store loyalty. Moreover, we investigated whether the short-term effects on purchase behavior were moderated by the extent to which the consumption context had a clear connection to consumers’ own bodies.

Salesperson proximity increased purchase incidence and spending in consumption contexts with a bodily basis (e.g. clothes, beauty, health), suggesting that consumers “buy their way out” in these contexts when a salesperson is violating their personal space. If anything, such proximity had a negative impact on consumers’ purchase behavior in contexts that lacked a clear bodily connection (e.g. building materials, furniture, books). Moreover, the link between proximity and consumer responses was mediated by discomfort, such that a salesperson standing close-by (vs farther away) increased discomfort, with negative downstream effects on shopping responses. Importantly, the authors found opposite proximity effects on short-term metrics (purchase incidence and spending) and long-term outcomes (store loyalty).

Drawing on the nonverbal communication literature and theories on processing fluency, the current work introduces a theoretically relevant boundary condition for the effects of salesperson-customer proximity on consumers’ purchase behavior. Specifically, the bodily basis of the consumption context is discussed as a novel moderator, which may help to explain the mixed findings in this stream of research.

Salesperson-customer proximity may serve as a strategic sales tactic to improve short-term revenue in settings that are closely tied to consumers’ own bodies and characterized by one-time purchases. However, as salesperson proximity was found to be associated with lower store loyalty, irrespective of whether the shopping setting had a bodily basis, the risk of violating consumers’ personal space may have costly consequences from a long-term perspective.

The present field studies make three central contributions. First, we introduce a novel moderator for proximity effects in various sales and service settings. Second, we test the focal hypotheses with much higher statistical power than most existing proximity studies. Finally, we document that salesperson-customer proximity ironically yields opposite results on short-term metrics and long-term outcomes, thus underscoring the importance of not solely focusing on sales effectiveness when training frontline employees.