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The Internet is a breeding ground for rumors. A way to tackle the problem involves the use of counter-rumor messages that refute rumors. This paper analyzes users' intention to follow rumors and counter-rumors as a function of two factors: individuals' risk propensity and messages' prior endorsement.

The paper conducted an online experiment. Complete responses from 134 participants were analyzed statistically.

Risk-seeking users were keener to follow counter-rumors compared with risk-averse ones. No difference was detected in terms of their intention to follow rumors. Users' intention to follow rumors always exceeded their intention to follow counter-rumors regardless of whether prior endorsement was low or high.

This paper contributes to the scholarly understanding of people's behavioral responses when, unknowingly, exposed to rumors and counter-rumors on the Internet. Moreover, it dovetails the literature by examining how risk-averse and risk-seeking individuals differ in terms of intention to follow rumors and counter-rumors. It also shows how prior endorsement of such messages drives their likelihood to be followed.

The paper explores the hitherto elusive question: When users are unknowingly exposed to both a rumor and its counter-rumor, which entry is likely to be followed more than the other? It also takes into consideration the roles played by individuals' risk propensity and messages' prior endorsement.

Based on the social role theory, role congruity theory and gender role conflict theory, this paper aims to investigate the mediating role of “relationship conflict” in the association between traditional gender role (TGR) endorsement and objective and subjective negotiation outcomes.

Two experimental negotiation studies (n1 = 138, n2 = 128) were conducted at a US university.

This paper presents three original and noteworthy findings: One, in mixed-gender negotiations, as a dyad’s TGR endorsement increases, final agreements become significantly more likely to favor men than women. Two, in mixed-gender negotiations, TGR endorsement is significantly associated with a decreased ability to establish a pleasant, mutually satisfactory and successful business relationship, resulting in a possible future economic cost due to lost opportunity. Three, the heightened relationship conflict during the negotiation mediates the negative association between TGR endorsement and women’s economic outcomes.

Empirical findings support social role theory, role congruity theory and gender role conflict theory. The use of a distributive negotiation case and laboratory research methodology may limit the generalizability of findings.

Findings about the detrimental effects of TGR in mixed-gender negotiations magnify the importance of becoming aware of our TGR orientations and their potential negative consequences on our long-term collaborations. Also, it is necessary to provide negotiation trainings to both genders with regard to gender-driven conflicts and offer tools to prevent or tackle such conflicts.

Negotiations are among the most consequential of social interactions as their results have a substantial impact on individuals’ careers and financial outcomes. Understanding the effect of TGRs is paramount to improve female representation, participation and effectiveness in management and leadership. Mixed-gender negotiations such as collective equality bargaining, workplace social interactions, work-life balance discourse are critical to establishing gender equality and fairness in organizations and societies.

Understanding how gender influences negotiation processes and outcomes and using the findings to improve both genders’ negotiation success are crucial to establishing fairness and equity in society and business. This research attempts to close a gap in the literature by focusing on the potential function of gender role orientation in explaining gender differences in negotiation.

This study explores the influence of parasocial interaction (PSI), brand credibility and product involvement on celebrity endorsement, and how PSI interacts with brand and product factors and affects celebrity endorsement synthetically.

This study employs a 2 (high/low product involvement) by 2 (high/low brand credibility) between-subjects factorial design experiment to test the hypotheses.

Brand credibility has a positive effect on followers' attitudes toward advertising and products, and product involvement influences its moderation. PSI has salient positive effects on followers' attitudes and behavioral intention, regardless of high/low product involvement. Brand credibility mediates PSI's influence on celebrity endorsement.

The results reinforce the significant effect of PSI on endorsement effectiveness and brand credibility, show the influence of brand credibility and product involvement and show how their influence conditionally interacts with others.

The corporate advertiser should prefer a high PSI celebrity as their endorser. The advertising message design on the microblog also deserves the attention of advertisers.

This study is the primary attempt to construct an integral model to demonstrate the synthetic effect and interaction process of consumers' perception of the endorser, brand and product category factors on celebrity endorsement within the social media context.

As the superiority of sports celebrities' endorsements has been questioned, the purpose of this study is to identify various types of endorsers' direct and indirect effects on consumers' purchase intentions.

Empirical data were collected from 240 useful responses to an online experiment, and research hypotheses were tested using (moderated) serial mediation analyses.

The study's findings indicate that an endorser has a positive influence on consumers' purchase intentions through their perceptions of the advertisement and the endorsed brand. A moderated serial mediation analysis finds differences in the four types of endorsers analyzed. A sports celebrity is the most effective type of endorser in increasing consumers' purchase intentions, whereas endorsements by company managers and peer consumers, while also positive, are less effective in influencing advertising outcomes. An expert's endorsement is comparable to that of a manager but not significant.

The generalizability of the study's findings is limited because of a restricted data sample, the use of fictitious endorsers and the limited number of product categories and brands analyzed.

The study systematically analyzes the behavioral influence of four types of endorsers on consumers' purchase intentions, mediated by their perceptions of the advertisements and the endorsed brand. The results of this analysis extend the current state of endorsement research, indicating that endorsements should be integrated into companies' marketing strategies and provide marketing professionals practical guidance on which type of endorser is most effective in influencing advertising outcomes.

Numerous companies have launched brand pages (BPs) on social networking sites to enhance customer-brand communication, cultivate the customer-brand relationship and promote brand loyalty. This study aims to investigate how BP affordances support social commerce.

The study devises a theoretical model linking the proposed BP affordances (visibility, selectivity, persistence and interactivity) to three customer values (relationship quality, brand experience and smart shopping feeling [SSF]) to encourage brand loyalty and BP endorsement on the part of the customer.

Data collected from 591 respondents support all proposed hypotheses. The model explains high variances in brand loyalty and BP endorsement, indicating that relationship quality plays a more salient role in producing brand loyalty, while SSF plays a more important role in eliciting BP endorsement.

The study is unique in four ways. First, drawing on the lens of affordance, it proposes specific affordances for BPs and offers empirical results for their applicability. Second, by incorporating CDL into the research model, it illuminates the high explanatory power of these proposed BP affordances on the three customer values. Integrating the S-O-R model with the affordance perspective and CDL provides a more complete picture of the BP phenomenon. Third, it extends the reach of existing work by examining BP endorsement in social media as a dependent variable beyond brand loyalty, with SSF included as another source of values to shed more light on the relationships depicted in the model. Fourth, by taking trait competitiveness into account, it sheds further light on relationships between customer values and BP endorsement.

Purpose – This study examines the relationship between endorsement of positive stereotypes of women and support for women's rights to shed light on the role that endorsement of positive stereotypes may play in maintaining social stratification.

Design/methodology/approach – The study uses data collected from a web-based survey of 181 male undergraduate students in six different universities and colleges to examine the relationship between the endorsement of positive stereotypes of women and support for women's rights. The paper examines four ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models to determine the relationship and utilizes the statistical software Stata 9.2.

Findings – Rather than a simple direct relationship, the findings suggest that the relationship between the endorsement of positive stereotypes and support for women's rights varies based on the level of hostile sexism. Increased endorsement of positive stereotypes of women was associated with decreased support for women's rights among males with the lowest level of hostile sexism, but the opposite relationship was found for males at the mean and the highest level of hostile sexism.

Research limitations/implications – The findings suggest that endorsement of positive stereotypes plays a unique role for males who do not endorse traditional sexist attitudes. Although data are not available to clarify what processes might be undergirding the relationship, the author suggests directions for future research.

Practical implications – Given the relationship found, prejudice reduction interventions that rely on the promotion of positive stereotypes of various social groups should be closely examined to determine if they actually foster attitudes that are detrimental for the eradication of social stratification.

Originality/value – This study is one of the first to examine the possible negative impacts of endorsement of positive stereotypes of women on gender stratification through a moderated relationship with levels of hostile sexism.

This chapter has three central goals: First, it aims to introduce the concept of consumers’ online brand endorsements, which we define as consumers’ intentional, public, and positive online affiliations with brands (e.g., liking a brand page on Facebook). Second, it provides an overview of the drivers and consequences of this phenomenon. Third, it answers the question whether and when the broadly adopted marketing strategy of consumers’ online brand endorsements is feasible.

To accomplish these goals, we conducted a general review of the literature.

We identified three different drivers of consumers’ online brand endorsements: Identity-related drivers, brand-related drivers, and community-related drivers. Based on the literature we suggest that from the perspective of the endorsing consumer, online brand endorsements have the potential to be a two-sided sword.

The greater potential of this marketing technique appears to rely on the fact that consumers’ online brand endorsements are broadcasted to a gigantic network of other consumers and their potential to be contagious.

Consumers’ online brand endorsements are a new phenomenon and therefore quite understudied. Still, many brands have social media marketing strategies that aim to acquire huge amounts of endorsements by their consumers. This chapter contributes to our knowledge about the underlying mechanisms of consumers’ online brand endorsements. Moreover, it shows how and when consumers’ online brand endorsements can be a feasible marketing strategy.

We identify methodological weaknesses in a paper by Skocpol, Abend-Wein, Howard, and Lehmann (1993) on the origins of mothers’ pensions in the American states in the early twentieth century. These include a sub-optimal and potentially biased strategy for assessing the impact of state characteristics on the time to adoption of pensions, as well as the use of a backward stepwise regression procedure for selecting independent variables. To determine whether Skocpol et al.’s conclusions remain valid, we recreated most of their dataset and used methods that are more appropriate for the analysis of duration data, including the Cox and complementary cloglog event history procedures. While we find support for several of their claims, our findings allow for a more straightforward interpretation of the role of explanatory variables, and the temporal dependence of the adoption process.

This paper aims to clarify the persuasion mechanism of chief executive officers (CEOs) and employees as endorsers of brand advertising and helps discern consumer attitudes toward internal endorsement.

The exploratory character of the present research required a qualitative approach combining focus groups and face-to-face interviews considered as both meaningful and complementary.

The findings suggest that while the celebrity endorsement ensures familiarity and likability, internal endorsement supports credibility and congruity with an important role of storytelling. Moreover, employee endorsements induce an internalization process based on the real-self, while the endorser CEO induces admiration grounded in the ideal self. More fundamentally, the study reveals how the internal endorsement modifies the meaning transfer model and involves a process of meaning translation, which affects the corporate brand image rather than the product brand image.

The present paper reveals that CEOs and employees can be strong levers for gilding the corporate brand image compared to the celebrities who enhance the product brand image. Moreover, the authors show that the CEO is a character who can be admired without the threat of upward comparison at the opposite of celebrities. Finally, this research highlights the specific role of employees bringing authenticity because of their anchorage in real life.

The study aims to assess the moderating role of celebrity characteristics in the relationship between celebrity endorsement and telecommunication companies’ reputation.

Analysis of results was based on 700 customers in the telecommunication sector. Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to check for validity and reliability of the observed items. A hierarchical regression model was estimated to test the various hypotheses set for the study.

The study finds that celebrity endorsement in itself had no significant effect on the reputation of telecommunication companies. Celebrity attractiveness, likeability and trustworthiness had a direct effect (positive) on the reputation of telecommunication companies and positively moderated the effect of celebrity endorsement on telecommunication company reputation. Celebrity expertise had no direct effect on telecommunication company reputation but positively moderated the effect of celebrity endorsement and telecommunication company reputation.

This study was purely quantitative. Future study could consider a mixed approach and include senior management members of the telecom firms for an in-depth interview.

In signing on celebrities as brand ambassadors, management must pay particular attention to celebrity attractiveness, likeability and trustworthiness. This would be more rewarding to the firms.

The study adds to the little empirical knowledge available on celebrity endorsement in sub-Saharan Africa and telecommunication sector in particular.