Search results

This study aims to examine digital consumer culture and behavior in the community, namely, 180° Movement Digital Training Center (DTC), in Jakarta, Indonesia. It aims to describe the dynamics of digital consumer culture in contemporary society, particularly as experienced by the youth community in Jakarta in the context of socio-technology relations and incorporates it into the diagram of digital consumer culture network.

This research uses a constructivist qualitative approach and socio-technical relation analysis through actor-network theory and digital consumer culture.

The study finds that the individual model of digital consumption is constructed through the process of problematization, interessement, enrollment and mobilization of individuals. It generates a culture in which consumers are constantly up to date with high-intensity information, but within increasingly shorter timeframes, while also considering principles of affordability, needs, desires and satisfaction. The network of digital consumer culture construction among informants is peculiar and unstable.

The study of digital consumer culture within the 180° Movement DTC community highlights how consumer behaviors of its members are facilitated and interconnected within a digital cultural network. However, this research is constrained by the dialectical interplay between Christian principles and the emerging values of consumer culture, a result of the scarcity of theoretical resources and information. This study also provides a specific contribution as a foundation for mapping the volatile digital consumer culture for researchers.

Understanding the socio-technological relationships and consumption behavior of the youth community could help digital platforms tailor their services more effectively. It could also guide the 180° Movement DTC in developing programs that resonate with the youth, bridging the gap between the physical and virtual realms. Ultimately, this could lead to a more engaged and digitally literate society.

This study contributes to a broader societal understanding of how digital technology is shaping consumer behavior and identity within youth communities, which can influence social dynamics and interactions. It provides insights into the potential social impacts of digital technology, such as changes in relationships, communication patterns and self-perception, informing societal discourse on digital culture.

In addition to presenting socio-technological analysis on Indonesian consumer culture using actor-network theory, some also show that studies on digital connectivity ambivalence that concern the relationship between humans as actors and non-humans as actors have become one of the popular sociology studies at present.

Due to changing consumer thinking patterns and market dynamics, the quick service restaurant (QSR) industry has changed dramatically in the past few years. Considering this, this study aims to examine the influence of perceived brand globalness and perceived brand localness on consumer word of mouth through brand attitude by considering consumer ethnocentrism and perceived brand origin as moderators.

This study obtained 750 responses from Turkish consumers through a survey and analyzed the data using the maximum-likelihood estimation technique with structural equation modeling.

This study discovered that perceived brand globalness and perceived brand localness are critical components that drive brand attitude, influencing consumers' WOM toward global and local QSR brands. Similarly, perceived brand globalness and perceived brand localness are important brand attributes influencing consumer WOM. Importantly, this study found the significant effects of perceived brand origin on brand attitude mainly toward perceived local brands compared to global QSR brands. Although this study did not uncover the influence of consumer ethnocentrism as expected. However, these insights may assist global and local managers to rethink their strategies toward Turkish consumer settings.

This study was conducted exclusively in Turkey. However, additional studies in other countries, such as the comparative Asian versus European consumers' perspectives, may be considered to generalize the findings.

This study provides recommendations to global and local managers to support them in designing and executing several brand positioning strategies in the QSR industry.

This novel study contributes to the accessibility diagnostic theory and signaling theory by examining consumers' perceptions of local and global brands.

Do luxury consumers negatively evaluate digital interactions (website and social media) by international luxury brands? The topic has received much debate. The authors argue that luxury brand personality (modern vs. traditional), which encompasses a more stable form of brand identity in global markets, affects evaluations of digital interactions. They further investigate the role of self-brand connection in this process.

Three experiments on Prolific use a European sample and manipulate a single factor between subjects (modernity: less vs. more; traditionality: less vs. more) of French luxury brands and measure evaluations as the dependent variable. Two studies assesses self-brand connection (continuous) as a moderator (studies 2a, 2b). Study 2b rules out some alternative explanations, with culture (independent vs. collectivist) as an independent variable. A fourth study, using a North American sample on CloudResearch, assesses the effect of personality manipulation (more modernity vs. more traditionality) on consumer evaluations of an Italian brand, and assesses ubiquity perceptions as a mediator.

Consumers evaluate digital interactions of international luxury brands less favorably when luxury brand personality exhibits more (vs. less) modernity or less (vs. more) traditionality. Perceptions of ubiquity mediate these relationships. When self-brand connection is high, this effect is attenuated.

The research sheds light on the debate on whether luxury brands should create digital interactions in international markets, given that these global brands operate in multiple channels. Findings show that luxury brands can develop strategies based on aspects of their brand identity, a less malleable feature of brand identity within global markets. Additionally, the research contributes to the conversation about a global luxury market. In short, the findings offer evidence in favor of brand identity (personality) influencing the digital channel strategy a brand should undertake in international markets, first, followed by consumer needs.

This study aims to explore how a postmodern tribe enacts and re-interprets ideologies as a part of consumers’ collective experience, to enhance our understanding of consumer communities in conjunction with ideological capacities.

The community of “presenteers” is conceptualized as a self-organized tribe with heterogeneous components that generate capacities to act. Netnographic observation was conducted on 18 presenteer accounts and lasted around six months. Real-time data were collected by taking screenshots of the posts and stories that these users created and publicly shared. Data were analysed by adopting assemblage theory, combining inductive and deductive approaches. Firstly, a qualitative visual-textual content analysis of the tribe’s defining components was conducted. Then, the process continued with the thematic analysis of the ideological underpinnings of the tribe’s enactments.

Findings shed light on the ways in which consumer communities interpret the entanglement of religious, political, and cultural ideologies in shaping their experiences. In the case of the presenteers tribe, findings reflect a novel ideological interplay between neo-Ottomanism, post-feminism and consumerism.

The study offers a deep dive into a unique tribe that is being organized around the consumer-created practice of “presenteering” and investigates consumer communalization in alignment with the ideological turn in culture-oriented interpretative research on consumers, consumption, and markets. This exploration helps to bridge the research on the communalization of consumers with the recent discussions of ideology in the postmodern market.

The study offers a deep dive into a unique tribe that is being organized around the consumer-created practice of “presenteering” and investigates consumer communalization in alignment with the ideological turn in culture-oriented interpretative research on consumers, consumption, and markets. This exploration helps to bridge the research on the communalization of consumers with the recent discussions of ideology in the postmodern market.

Luxury consumption has evolved, and two important reasons behind the change include globalization and the COVID-19 crisis. These factors have led to the rise of new luxury consumption, which is different from traditional luxury consumption. This study examines how consumers’ identities shape their intentions to consume traditional luxury and new luxury brands.

The theoretical underpinnings of the schema congruity theory and heuristic systematic framework were applied to understand the role of identities in determining consumers’ regulatory focus, price luxuriousness inference and preference for traditional and new luxury brands.

Findings suggest that the global identity of consumers shapes their promotion focus and price luxuriousness inferences. However, their local identities induce a prevention goal. Consumers with such a goal are unlikely to make price luxuriousness inferences. Further, these inferences lead to the choice of traditional luxury over new luxury brands. The results also establish the moderating effects of consumer flexibility.

The extant literature is inconclusive on the role of globalization in luxury consumption and ignores new luxury brands. The current study shows the impact of identities and regulatory focus on traditional and new luxury consumption. The findings also indicate consumers’ regulatory focus and price luxuriousness inference as the reasons behind the influence. The paper also implies that consumers open to renting, sharing or buying second-hand goods will prefer new luxury over traditional luxury brands.

This paper first aims to examine associations between factors involved in business-to-business complaints management and results (satisfaction and loyalty) and analyses three types of distributors based on their cultural profile (domestic, low context and high context). Second, the paper investigates whether the identified associations remain stable over time.

Data from a sample of distributors for a manufacturing company were gathered during two periods of time. A factorial analysis of correspondences and a cluster analysis were carried out to visually represent the associations among clients, complaints and results in the associations among clients, complaints and results. The stability over time of these relationships was also analysed by calculating the correlations between the Euclidean distances on the two maps (one per year) and their mobility ratio.

The authors found significant evidence that clients from different cultures are associated with varying profiles of complaint and different result types and that certain associations remain stable over time.

While many studies have analysed complaint behaviour in business-to-consumer contexts, there is a lack of research from an international business-business relations point of view, leaving questions virtually unexplored. Second, the last phases of supply chain management, specifically complaints management, have been undeveloped, limiting the cultural factor to the general scope of negotiation. In this vein, this paper compares different complaint profiles and results, comparing culturally different customers/distributors. Third, research has mostly referred to a single period, while this paper investigates two different periods of time for the same company (and their distributors) to analyse the relevance of the stability (or not) over time of the associations identified.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of online identity orientation and online friendship homophily on online socializing, online information search and ethnic guests’ hospitality experiences.

The study uses structural equation modeling to test a conceptual model developed after reviewing hospitality literature. Data is collected from a sample of 514 Turkish-Dutch ethnic guests living in the Netherlands using a self-administered questionnaire.

The results show that online identity orientations aligned with minority and majority cultures impact online friendship homophily and online socializing, which subsequently impact online information search and hospitality experiences of ethnic guests.

On the whole, ethnic communities have considerable spending power. The findings point to heritage and mainstream cultural socialization accounting for travel and hospitality experiences within an ethnic minority group. The findings supply relevant information for hospitality sectors on services to endorse or promote to guests from ethnic communities.

The study examines the simultaneous effects of online identity orientations and online friendship homophily on online socialization and hospitality experiences of ethnic guests. It highlights the role of culture in explaining the use of social networking sites and its potential impact on hospitality-related behaviors and experiences of ethnic guest consumers.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused severe challenges to ethnic minorities in the UK. While the experiences of migrants are both complex and varied depending on individuals' social class, race, cultural proximity to the host country and acculturation levels, more in-depth studies are necessary to fully understand how COVID-19 affects specific migrant groups and their health. Taiwanese migrants were selected because they are an understudied group. Also, there were widespread differences in pandemic management between the UK and Taiwan, making this group an ideal case for understanding how their acculturation journey can be disrupted by a crisis.

Qualitative data were collected at two different time points, at the start of the UK pandemic (March/April 2020) and six months on (October/November 2020), to explore migrant coping experiences over time. Theoretically, the authors apply acculturation theory through the lens of coping, while discussing health-consumption practices, as empirical evidence.

Before the outbreak of the pandemic, participants worked hard to achieve high levels of integration in the UK. The pandemic changed this; participants faced unexpected changes in the UK’s sociocultural structures. They were forced to exercise the layered and complex “coping with coping” in a hostile host environment that signalled their new marginalised status. They faced impossible choices, from catching a life-threatening disease to being seen as overly cautious. Such experience, over time, challenged their integration to the host country, resulting in a loss of faith in the UK’s health system, consequently increasing separation from the host culture and society.

It is important to note that the Taiwanese sample recruited through Facebook community groups is biased and has a high level of homogeneity. These participants were well-integrated, middle-class migrants who were highly educated, relatively resourceful and active on social media. More studies are needed to fully understand the impact on well-being and acculturation of migrants from different cultural, contextual and social backgrounds. This being the case, the authors can speculate that migrants with less resource are likely to have found the pandemic experience even more challenging. More studies are needed to fully understand migrant experience from different backgrounds.

Public health policymakers are advised to dedicate more resources to understand migrants' experiences in the host country. In particular, this paper has shown how separation, especially if embraced temporarily, is not necessarily a negative outcome to be corrected with specific policies. It can be strategically adopted by migrants as a way of defending their health and well-being from an increasingly hostile environment. Migrants' home country experience provides vicarious learning opportunities to acquire good practices. Their voices should be encouraged rather than in favour of a surprising orthodox and rather singular approach in the discussion of public health management.

The paper has clear public health policy implications. Firstly, public health policymakers are advised to dedicate more resources to understand migrants' experiences in the host country. Acknowledging migrants' voice is a critical first step to contribute to the development of a fair and inclusive society. Secondly, to retain skilful migrants and avoid a future brain-drain, policymakers are advised to advance existing infrastructure to provide more incentives to support and retain migrant talents in the post-pandemic recovery phase.

This paper reveals how a group of previously well-integrated migrants had to exercise “coping with coping” during the COVID crisis. This experience, over time, challenged their integration to the host country, resulting in a loss of faith in the UK’s health system, consequently increasing separation from the host culture and society. It contributes to the understanding of acculturation by showing how a such crisis can significantly disrupt migrants' acculturation journey, challenging them to re-acculturate and reconsider their identity stance. It shows how separation was indeed a good option for migrants for protecting their well-being from a newly hostile host environment.

The purpose of this study is to, first, analyze the past years of research on international branding and, second, building on an early literature review, to analyze patterns in the field and suggest future research.

The analyzed papers were compiled using the Web of Science and Scopus databases. The author searched papers published between 2007 and 2023 that used terms related to international branding in their title, abstract and keywords.

This paper structures and identifies key institutions, papers, regions and authors in the field. It provides an overview of the past years of research in the area. The study identifies important gaps in the literature and suggests further research dealing with, for example, the B2B sector and emerging markets.

Despite the increase in international branding studies, few literature reviews have been published since 2007. This review fills this research gap. It identifies future research areas dealing with branding in the B2B sector, branding in emerging markets, branding process and implementation studies using longitudinal methods and more practical research.

This empirical study aims to examine luxury fashion retailers' localised multiple channel distribution strategies in China.

Through case studies of 15 participating retailers, qualitative data were collected from 33 semi-structured interviews.

Strong impacts of internationalisation strategies, distribution strategies and channel length towards multiple channel retailing are revealed. Multi-channel retailing is widely employed by firms who have entered China and further developed their businesses through local partnerships and adopted a selective distribution strategy via relatively longer channels. Omni-channel retailing is only suitable for the few retailers using an exclusive distribution strategy through direct marketing and wholly owned customer relationship management. As a dynamic transformation from multi- to omni-channel retailing, cross-channel retailing is adopted by those who are withdrawing from local partnerships and shifting to wholly owned expansions and operations in host markets.

The results are potentially challenged by relatively small sample size.

Practitioners are suggested to adapt multiple channel retailing to their international expansion strategies, distribution strategies and channel length in the host markets.

This paper contributes to the literature in both multiple channel retailing and international retailing by offering insights into the motives, development patterns and suitability of multiple channel retailing in the international retail marketing context.