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Using identity theory, this paper aims to explore differences in socially responsible signaling behavior based on the salience of a personal or social identity.

Structural equation modeling was used to study the relationship among identity commitment, salience, and signaling behavior.

Findings revealed personal identity salience mediated the relationship between socially responsible commitment and socially responsible social-signaling consumption behavior.

The results of the study suggest that Millennials engage in socially responsible activities as a result of a salient personal identity. Millennials use socially responsible behavior to signal their benevolence to themselves and others.

This is the first research that has examined the relationship between Millennials’ socially responsible consumption behavior and a salient personal or social identity.

The present research responds to researchers’ calls for more research of consumer animosity on potential boundary conditions (e.g. product categories) and marketing strategies that may mitigate such negative impacts on marketers’ product and/or brand performance, with a special focus on the soft service sector. This paper aims to address the unique characteristics of service internationalization, i.e. cultural embeddedness, hybridized country origins and high consumption visibility, by proposing a social identity signaling model to explain consumer animosity effects in the soft service sector.

Two surveys (Pretest with 240 participants and Study 1 with 351 participants) and one experiment (Study 2 with 731 participants) were conducted to empirically test our hypotheses in the Japanese-Chinese relationship context.

The stronger the national/cultural symbolism and social expressiveness, the stronger the consumer avoidance for the service category. Then the consumer culture positioning strategy that can mitigate an offending country’s cultural symbolism can reduce consumer avoidance.

This research introduces two factors that could affect the negative social identity signaling capacity of service categories in the animosity context: the national/cultural symbolism reflecting an offending country and the social expressiveness communicating social identity. In line with the social identity signaling perspective, the present research specifically uses consumer avoidance as the dependent variable to capture the notion that consumers avoid consuming services because they wish to avoid being associated with an offending country that may threaten their in-group social identities.

This study aims to review family business branding research, elaborate a new framework integrating family business branding and corporate brand management literature and finally identify future research directions.

A bibliometric analysis was conducted to present the main research topics within family business branding.

The contributions of this study are threefold. First, this study maps the main themes of family business branding research and highlights its fragmented nature. Second, this study proposes an overarching framework based on signaling theory, attempts to bridge the family business branding and corporate brand management literature and provides a lead for future research. Third, this study stresses the role of brand construct in family business branding.

This study represents an important step in the identification of a new theoretical framework that best fits the investigation of family business branding.

This study aims to follow a rigorous approach to identify, critically analyze and synthesize 75 papers published from 2000 to 2022.

The study presents a systematic literature review on identity expressiveness (IE), clarifying and expanding what is currently known about the concept.

To synthesize current knowledge on IE, the study uses the overarching framework of antecedents-phenomenon-consequences, using this same framework to identify gaps and future research directions. The findings show individual and brand-related factors such as the need for uniqueness and anthropomorphism as antecedents of IE, and eWOM/WOM, impulse purchases and upgrading to more exclusive lines as consequences of IE.

The study contributes to theory by synthesizing and mapping current understanding of the state of knowledge on the concept of IE while highlighting gaps in the extant literature and paving future research directions for scholars in the field.

The study offers useful insights for practitioners, broadening marketers’ actionable options in identity-based marketing. Marketers can use insights from this study to inform marketing strategy and communication campaigns for different types of brands.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first of its kind and offers an integrative review of the current literature on IE, thus enhancing understanding of the concept, its antecedents and consequences. The study also contributes to knowledge by highlighting future research priorities for researchers in this field of enquiry.

The purpose of this study was to conceptualize consumer’s luxury brand aspiration and develop a psychometrically reliable scale to measure the construct. This study aims to extend the existing research in luxury branding domain through validating a scale to measure consumer’s luxury brand aspiration.

Initially, the dimensions of consumer’s luxury brand aspiration were identified through prior literature review and qualitative investigations. This was followed by a series of scale development studies suggested by Churchill (1979).

The results supported that the second-order measure of consumer’s luxury brand aspiration consist of four related first-order dimensions, namely, identity signaling, social recognition, self-esteem and achievement signaling. Luxury brand aspiration was found to have direct positive influences on brand commitment and brand attachment. Brand commitment and attachment in turn significantly influence intention to pay price premium.

Value of this research article lies in validating a scale to measure individual’s luxury brand aspiration for the first time in branding literature.

This study examines the determinants of medical crowdfunding performance. Drawing on signaling theory, the authors investigate how funding-related signals (funding goal and duration), story-related signals (text length, text sentiment, and use of first-person pronouns), and donor-related signals (donor identity disclosure) affect medical crowdfunding performance.

This study analyzed the data of 754 medical crowdfunding projects collected from the Qingsongchou platform in China to test the proposed model.

The empirical findings reveal that both funding goal and funding duration exhibit a U-shaped relationship with crowdfunding performance. Additionally, the authors find evidence that story text length and donor identity disclosure are positively related to crowdfunding performance, whereas the use of first-person pronouns is negatively related to crowdfunding performance.

This study extends the understanding of the determinants of medical crowdfunding performance through the signaling theory. Specifically, this study provides new insights into the roles of funding goal and funding duration in predicting medical crowdfunding performance and identifies several new predictors of crowdfunding performance, including the use of first-person pronouns in project story text and donor identity disclosure.

Guided by the collective action theory, signaling theory and social identity approach, this study examines backing behavior by individuals who have created projects under CC licenses. Two motivational mechanisms were examined: (1) identification via common interests in the CC space; (2) resource signaling by other users via their diverse project creation experience, funding or commenting activity.

Data were collected from Kickstarter.com. Exponential random graph modeling was used to examine how the two reviewed mechanisms influence the tie formation probability between Creative Commons (CC) project creators and other creators. The analysis was conducted on two subnetworks: one with ties between CC creators; and one with ties from CC creators to non-CC creators.

The study found that CC creators exhibit distinct backing patterns when considering funding other CC creators compared to non-CC users. When considering funding their peer CC creators, CC identity can help them allocate and support perceived in-group members; when considering funding non-CC creators, shared common interests in competitive project categories potentially triggers a competition mindset and makes them hold back when they see potential rivals.

This study makes three contributions. First, it draws from multiple theoretical frameworks to investigate unique motivations when crowdfunders take on dual roles of creators and funders and offered implications on how to manage competition and collaboration simultaneously. Second, with network analysis our study not only identifies multiple motivators at work for collective action, but also demonstrates their differential effects in crowdfunding. Third, the integration of multiple theoretical frameworks allows opportunities for theory building.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-05-2020-0166.

Despite its prevalence and serious negative impact on consumer behavior, marketing strategies and social welfare, little is known about how to effectively curb moral licensing. Drawing on research in warm-glow giving and virtue signaling, this paper aims to propose that social sharing can help alleviate the moral licensing effect; and this effect is mediated by moral self-regard and moderated by temporal distance.

Two experimental studies were conducted in a laboratory setting using large samples. In particular, Study 1 was designed to test the proposed main and mediation effects, and Study 2 was designed to further examine the proposed moderation effect.

Study 1 demonstrates after having shared a prior moral behavior on social media, people are more likely to engage in another moral act subsequently. This is because that sharing a prior moral behavior on social media leads to a drop in moral self-regard, which, in turn, boosts a subsequent moral intention. Study 2 further shows that after having shared a prior moral behavior on social media, when making a decision for the present, people are more likely to engage in a subsequent good deed; however, this effect is diminished when people are making such a decision for the future.

This work provides important implications for marketing managers and policymakers. In particular, this research suggests that social sharing can be an effective tool to encourage individuals’ consistent moral behavior so as to promote individual and collective well-being. Moreover, the findings demonstrate that temporal distance and social sharing can interact to reduce the moral licensing effect. In practice, this research contributes to the development of effective marketing strategies, particularly for those companies that aim to integrate sustainability into their business practices.

In contrast to previous research examining the cognitive approach to curbing moral licensing, this research explores a new, powerful behavioral approach to alleviating the moral licensing effect. Furthermore, this research consolidates previous findings on the relationship between identity signaling and self-regard, increases the scope of identity signaling research and offers a bridge between research on identity signaling and research on moral licensing. Finally, this research adds to understanding of moral licensing by showing that the moral licensing effect may vary depending on contextual factors and, therefore, is more malleable than previously thought, which opens up future research opportunities to explore when and how the moral licensing effect can be alleviated.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze to what extent and in what ways signaling theory has been explored within the field of international marketing. This paper systematically reviews the use of signaling theory in the field of international marketing. Communication is a core aspect of the international marketing process. Research in this field has explored effective and unique ways of improving the communication flow to reduce the asymmetry of information between international consumers and the firm. This notion is adopted, enhanced and strengthened by signaling theory. Signaling theory has recently received the attention of international marketing scholars.

The systematic review methodology was applied for the purpose of identifying the relevant studies. We extracted academic articles over the last 23 years from the domain of international marketing that directly contribute to signaling theory based on 57 journal articles extracted through the systematic review process.

Based on systematic research the results reveal that the topic has grown and continues to expand within the broader international marketing field. We offer a theoretical conceptual framework to better understand signaling theory in the context of international marketing.

The authors map and critically evaluate the use of signaling theory in international marketing. Relevance of signaling theory in international marketing is growing and authors present an integrative framework that organizes the existing literature, and provides scholars to further expand on emerging themes of the domain. The paper offers some useful future research directions.

The present research aims to investigate the influence of organizational positioning by drawing upon moral foundations theory in relation to driving charitable giving, and the moderating role of recognition in this regard.

Two experimental studies were conducted to examine the interactive effect of organizational positioning emphasizing a binding (vs an individualizing) moral foundation and donation recognition on charitable giving. Study 1 was conducted in Indonesia, while Study 2 was conducted in the US.

This research demonstrates that individuals will give higher donations to an organization with a binding (vs an individualizing) moral foundation that provides donation recognition. Further, this effect is mediated by social identity signaling.

The findings of this research provide a novel perspective on how organizational positioning can influence whether donation recognition increases charitable giving. Moreover, the findings offer managerial implications to non-profit organizations developing effective charitable campaigns in terms of combining appropriate organizational positioning and donation recognition strategies.