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The purpose of this study is threefold, which is as follows: investigate the mediating effect of brand fan page attractiveness on the relationship between user gratifications and customer engagement with brand fan pages, determine whether fan page agility moderates this effect and examine the influence of fan page engagement on customers' share of wallet and resistance to negative brand information.

By using an online questionnaire, 614 valid responses were obtained from the followers of multiple Facebook brand fan pages. Partial least squares-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) was used to analyse the data.

The results indicate that fan page attractiveness mediates the relationship between user gratifications and fan page engagement. However, this relationship is moderated by fan page agility. Fan page engagement increases customers' share of wallet and resistance to negative brand information. This finding suggests that creating fan page content and interactions that are attractive to customers is not sufficient for promoting engagement; brand fan pages must also be agile to customers' changing needs and competitors' moves.

By proposing and testing a novel moderated mediation effect, this study enriches the uses and gratifications theory (UGT) and provides new insights into the underlying mechanisms and boundary factors driving fan page engagement. In addition, this study contributes to the customer engagement literature by introducing share of wallet and resistance to negative brand information as outcome variables.

This study aims to study the attitude toward purchasing luxury fashion of young consumers based on an extended model that integrates the constructs of the theory of reasoned action (TRA), identity theory, social identity theory, affect–behavior–cognition (ABC) model of attitude and brand attractiveness.

A purposive sampling approach was used to collect data from 237 young luxury fashion consumers in Hong Kong. Results were analyzed using partial least square.

The findings revealed that self-identity predicts affect-based attitudes (i.e. passive engagement and active engagement), and social identity predicts cognition-based attitude (i.e. attitude toward celebrity endorsement). Moreover, both affect- and cognition-based attitudes were found to be antecedents that enhanced brand attractiveness, which in turn positively affected purchase intention.

This study collected data from Generation Z. Although this generation is the world’s most influential consumer group and is highly engaged in social media, the findings may not be representative of the entire population in Hong Kong. Therefore, the findings should be used cautiously in the whole luxury fashion industry.

This study extends the understanding of luxury fashion purchase intention from TRA to the connection among identity, social identity theories and ABC model of attitude and brand attractiveness. The findings of this study also contribute to practical insights on developing suitable marketing strategies for the Asian luxury fashion market.

This research aims to unravel the intricate relationship between luxury brands' social media marketing strategies (i.e. communication and engagement) and their impact on consumers' willingness to pay a premium and brand loyalty.

A large online consumer panel was used to conduct an online survey of 381 consumers. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was adopted for hypothesis testing.

The study's outcomes indicated that (1) perceived interactivity and perceived openness positively influence social media brand communication, (2) social media brand communication and engagement are positive determinants for consumer empowerment and parasocial interactions, (3) consumer empowerment and parasocial interactions positively influence willingness to pay a premium and (4) parasocial interactions (but not consumer empowerment) positively influence brand loyalty.

The study offers significant theoretical implications by unraveling the mechanism of social media marketing for luxury brands, which is under-researched in the current literature. More specifically, the study reveals the process of how social media brand communication and engagement reinforce luxury brand outcomes through parasocial interactions and consumer empowerment. In addition, the study provides empirical evidence to delineate the role of interactivity and openness in enhancing social media brand communication. Moreover, the study extends past research that emphasized initial adoption outcomes such as attitude and purchase intention by probing luxury brand loyalty and willingness to pay a premium.

By effectively strategizing social media marketing, luxury brand marketers can promote brand loyalty and willingness to pay a premium. Luxury brand marketers should concentrate on establishing parasocial interaction with consumers by designing optimal social media brand communication and engagement. To this end, luxury brand marketers should consider integrating the elements of interactivity and openness in their communication with consumers.

The study offers valuable insights for luxury brand marketers aiming to capitalize on the potential of social media marketing to enhance their revenue generation and customer retention. The study advances past luxury branding research by validating the role of consumer empowerment and parasocial interactions in luxury brands' social media marketing.

This study aims to propose and test a research model outlining the chain effects of social media marketing activities (SMMA) on brand equity, encompassing the potential mediators of self-congruity, consumer empowerment and brand experience.

An online survey was conducted, and 241 valid responses were acquired. The data was submitted to Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM), complemented by the artificial neural network (ANN) analysis.

The results revealed that SMMA can foster the development of self-congruity and consumer empowerment. These two psychological responses represent the key drivers to reinforce the positive brand experience and ultimately lead to brand equity. The sequential mediating effect was confirmed. The ANN analysis offered further insights into the ranking of variable importance.

The present study presents a breakthrough by taking into account the roles of self-congruity, consumer empowerment, brand experience simultaneously and assesses their sequential mediating roles in the linkage between SMMA and brand equity.

This study aims to identify what type of post is most effective in drawing fans to like, comment on or share it, building on the premise that hotels can only benefit when “fans” – customers who “like” them – engage in discussion and interaction on Facebook.

In the case of the Super 8 Hotels Facebook fan page, 14 underlying factors related to themes, media, characteristics and time are identified in a content analysis of its posts. Multilevel regression is employed in the study to test the effects of these 14 factors on the number of fans who like, comment on or share a post.

Posts about hotel products and attributes diminish the attractiveness to the hotel brand’s Facebook page. The posts that include award and discount information, expressed in a humorous way or end with requests to like tend to be liked more often by fans. Furthermore, posts ending with a question are likely to get more comments, but these questions have a negative influence on the number of likes the post receives. In addition, posts with pictures or involving environment concerns are more likely to be shared by fans.

The paper provides hotel practitioners with implementable communication tactics to increase their appeal to consumers on Facebook.

The study represents a new academic area of how to communicate using social media and concludes with practical strategies for hoteliers seeking to utilize Facebook as an effective marketing tool.

The purpose of this study is to assign polarity score to each post from Facebook fan pages, and then examine whether the Comments submitted by users on a post from fan page have a significant relationship with the popularity of that post. Being aware of how to enhance the popularity of posts will help companies in terms of administrating their fan pages.

In the context of fan page and post popularity, the authors test significance of the relationship between Comments’ polarity and number of Likes and Comments of a post in different Facebook pages by regression method. The data are collected from different fan page posts in Facebook, and a sentiment analysis approach is proposed to accomplish this research.

Results show that the relation between users’ Comments and popularity of fan page posts is strongly significant. Outcomes of this research are useful for every company in terms of monitoring and managing their brand fan pages on social networking sites such as Facebook.

Investigation of factors influencing popularity of fan page posts in social media is almost a new area of study that dates back to recent years. The authors use a sentiment analysis approach to evaluate a new concept describing the relationship between users’ Comments and popularity of posts from Facebook fan pages. Moreover, a part of dataset is extracted from Facebook by a crawler which is an advantage to prior studies.

In recent years, festivals have become prominent events in many cities throughout Europe, playing a crucial role in improving the image of the host city and enhancing its attractiveness to tourists. Festivals are temporary organizations with a short-lived and intermittent nature. Such features could raise several challenges in terms of maintaining a festival’s identity and its attendees’ identification during the periods of inactivity. Drawing on the literature on temporary organizations, organizational identity, and social identification, this chapter investigates how festivals can communicate their central and stable characteristics to audiences by adopting Web 2.0-based communication strategies. To explore this issue, the chapter illustrates the case of an Italian festival, Fotografia Europea, which has changed its communication strategy from a more traditional approach to a Web 2.0-based one.

There are few studies examining the marketing characteristics of intercollegiate women's volleyball spectators. The purpose of this paper is to examine intercollegiate women's volleyball spectators from the perspectives of sociodemographics, market demand and consumption. Spectators (N=265) from seven intercollegiate women's volleyball games at three National Collegiate Athlete Association Division-I universities participated in the study. The findings indicate that there is a need to emphasise the market demand factors when marketing intercollegiate women's volleyball games.

Many companies have now built brand fan pages (BFPs) on social media platforms to connect with their existing and potential customers. Nevertheless, the inability to retain existing followers would severely threaten the survival of BFPs and the effectiveness of a company's social media strategies. Drawing upon Furneaux and Wade's discontinuance framework, our study develops a research model to understand the BFP user's intention to discontinue following a BFP.

An empirical study was conducted through an online survey of Chinese social media users. The proposed model was tested by analyzing the collected data using the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) approach.

The results reveal that dissatisfaction with information quality, unfollowing costs, trust and alternative attractiveness affect the individual's intention to unfollow a BFP. Notably, unfollowing costs is the most powerful factor to predict followers' propensity to discontinue.

Our study contributes to the understanding of the discontinuance of information systems. Theoretical implications for future social commerce research as well as practical suggestions for BFP operators are also discussed.

This study tested the paths of a structural model that was conceptualised by hypothesising that team attributes affect team identification, which in turn plays a mediating role in sponsor identification and image transfer from event to sponsor. A questionnaire adapted items from relevant constructs in past research and responses were collected from 991 conveniently sampled fans of professional soccer teams in Korea. Data analysis using the SPSSWIN statistical program (v. 12.0) and the AMOS structural modelling program (v. 4.0) found that the data fitted the conceptualised structural model.