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A growing stream of consumer research has examined the intersection of family dynamics, consumption practices and the marketplace. The purpose of this paper is to make sense of the complex nature of family for senior families (adult children and their elderly parents) who employ the use of elder care services and facilities.

This research analyses data gathered from in-depth interviews with adult siblings and their elderly parents through the lens of assemblage theory.

This paper advances a conceptulisation of the family as an evolving assemblage of components, including individual members; material possessions and home(s); shared values, goals, memories and practices; prominent familial attributes of love and care; and marketplace resources. Three features of the assemblage come to the fore in senior families: the fluid meaning of independence for the elderly parent, the evolution of shared family practices and the trajectory of the assemblage that is a function of its history and future.

This research focuses on a stage of family life that has been under-theorised; applies assemblage theory to the family collective, demonstrating that a family can be conceptualised as an ever-evolving assemblage of human and non-human components, and this is a useful lens for understanding how senior families “do” family; and argues for a broader notion of family – one that is not household-centric or focused on families with young children, that encompasses members and materiality and that foregrounds the dynamic, evolving nature of family life.

As the leisure industry matures, it is important for marketers to have a clear understanding of why people choose to consume specific leisure services. The paper proposes that “timestyle”, or how a person customarily perceives and uses time, influences the choice of leisure goals and resultant leisure services. Individuals’ timestyles can be characterized in terms of social, temporal, planning, and polychronic orientations. Data from qualitative research suggest that all four dimensions of timestyle can have systematic effects on leisure choices. Knowledge of the timestyle concept and its antecedent influences should allow leisure marketers to better understand and target the motivations that underlie consumer decisions on leisure services.

Presents a conceptual framework for understanding the meanings of polychronic behavior for individuals. A “created” meaning perspective, arguing that cultural, social, and personality differences influence how the meaning of polychronic behavior is interpreted at the individual level is presented. These meanings through a phenomenological study of polychronic behavior in the workplace for both traditional, “mainstream” Americans and recent Latin American immigrants are explored. Implications for managers and workgroups are also explored.

This study aims to investigate the effects of hotel customers’ perceived utilitarian and hedonic values on their intention to use service robots. In addition, the influences of innovativeness, ease of use and compatibility on hotel customers’ perceived utilitarian and hedonic values were examined.

The data of the current study was collected from 11 countries including the USA, UK, Turkey, Spain, Romania, Japan, Israel, India, Greece, Canada and Brazil. A structural equation modeling was used to test the study hypotheses.

The results indicated that hotel customers’ intention to use service robots was positively influenced by their utilitarian and hedonic value perceptions. In addition, customers’ perceptions of robots’ ease of use and compatibility had a positive impact on their perceived utilitarian and hedonic values.

The findings of the current study provide unique contributions in the context of hospitality robotics technology adoption literature. In addition, this study provides valuable insights and novel opportunities for hospitality decision-makers to capitalize on, as they strive to strategize the integration of robot-based services into their operations.

本研究调查了酒店顾客感知功能性价值和享乐性价值对服务机器人使用意向的影响。此外, 本研究考察了创新性、易用性和兼容性对酒店顾客感知功能性价值和享乐性价值的影响。

本研究的数据来自美国、英国、土耳其、西班牙、罗马尼亚、日本、以色列、印度、希腊、加拿大和巴西等十一个国家, 采用结构方程模型（SEM）对研究假设进行测试。

结果表明, 酒店顾客使用服务机器人的意向受到他们对功能性价值和享乐性价值的感知的积极影响。此外, 机器人易用性和兼容性对功能性价值和享乐性价值有积极影响。

本研究的发现对酒店行业机器人技术应用文献提供了独特的贡献。此外, 本研究为酒店业的决策者提供了宝贵的见解和新机遇, 使他们能够在将机器人服务的优势整合到酒店运营中。

This paper aims to investigate the paradox of whether prestigious goods help or inhibit a consumer’s social affinity. The goal of this research is to explore whether pursuit of prestigious goods increases consumers’ social affinity or decreases their social affinity, and, more importantly, to understand the mechanisms that drive this process.

Three laboratory experimental studies and a social network study are conducted to show that consumers hold inconsistent beliefs about the social implication of prestigious goods.

In Study 1, the authors showed that prestigious goods evoked stronger social affinity for the self than for the other. In Study 2, the authors showed that people evaluated themselves high in social affinity when they brought a prestigious wine to a party compared to when they brought a cheaper, generic wine, but evaluated others low in social affinity when they brought the same prestigious wine. In Study 3, the authors showed the mediating effects of social image and boastfulness on social affinity. Study 4 utilizes social network study to further validate previous findings in a field setting.

For high-end retailers, the authors suggest framing their promotional messages to explicitly highlight how owning prestigious goods will benefit them (i.e. social image). It is important that these retail managers (and salespeople alike) make it more salient on how their prestigious goods socially benefit the consumer (the self). Thus, it is important to get consumers to think about how a prestigious item looks on them and not on others. However, marketers must be prudent when constructing these messages, as the link between prestigious consumption and network development is merely perceptual.

The findings demonstrate that consuming prestigious goods increases social affinity via positive social image for the self. When evaluating others, the authors demonstrate that consuming prestigious goods decreases social affinity via boastfulness. In sum, owning prestigious items may seem beneficial socially to the self, but people have negative perceptions (boastfulness) of those who own the same prestigious goods. Hence, there seems to be a discrepancy in how the authors evaluate themselves versus how they evaluate others with the same prestigious goods.

Brands are investing heavily in content marketing within digital communication channels, yet there is limited understanding of the effectiveness of this content on consumer engagement. This paper aims to examine how consumer engagement with branded content is created through consumer-initiated online brand communities (OBCs) and brand-initiated digital content marketing (DCM) communications. Self-brand connections are examined as an important antecedent to the cognitive, affective, behavioural and social dimensions of consumer engagement and the subsequent impact of engagement on loyalty is explored across these two channels.

A survey approach was used with two consumer samples for one focal retail brand, namely, a consumer-initiated OBC (Facebook) and email subscribers of the retail brand’s DCM communications. A multi-group analysis of structural invariance procedure was used to comparatively examine the formation of engagement for consumers within the OBC and DCM channels.

This study demonstrates the different ways in which engagement forms across different digital communication channels. Self-brand connection (SBC) was found to strongly drive behavioural, cognitive, affective and social engagement. The cognitive, affective and behavioural engagement was found to mediate the self-brand connection and consumer loyalty relationship. Overall, this relationship was most strongly and significantly mediated by affective and cognitive engagement within the OBC channel when compared to the DCM channel.

The findings of this study should be interpreted with several limitations in mind. First, the research was conducted within the confines of one OBC, within one social networking site platform characterised by self-selected membership based on a passion and immersion with the brand. This means that consumers within the OBC were highly connected to one another and the retail brand and highly socialised in-group norms and mores. This type and intensity of connection may not be the case for all forms of OBCs. Second, this study was limited to one retail brand, from one brand category. Future research should examine OBCs across a range of utilitarian and hedonic brands to comprehensively contextualise the dimensions of engagement. Third, the data for this study was cross-sectional. The use of netnographic analysis and qualitative interviews across a range of OBCs would support the triangulation of the findings of this research, especially with regard to the narrative that consumers’ express when discussing how their SBC manifests through the dimensions of engagement. Fourth, this study explored a single antecedent of engagement, namely, self-brand connections. Future research may consider how SBC operates in conjunction with other complementary factors to enhance consumers’ affective, cognitive, social and behavioural engagement such as brand awareness, satisfaction and participation/interactivity. In addition, future research could examine an expanded array of engagement outcomes such as purchase intention, the share of wallet and reputation. Finally, future research should examine the operationalisation and validation of the dimensions of engagement using multiple competing scales to assess the suitability of these engagement scales across multiple brand categories and contexts.

Given the increasing investment in branding within social media and the fragmentation of brand communications across multiple communications platforms, the management of effective brand communications remains a significant challenge. This study found that the relationship between self-brand connections, affective, social, behavioural and cognitive engagement and loyalty was context-specific and moderated by a digital communication channel (OBC vs DCM email marketing), thus providing insights as to the effectiveness of OBCs and DCMs as two tools for enhancing consumer loyalty.

This study makes a novel contribution to the engagement literature by examining the antecedent role of self-brand connections in predicting consumers’ engagement; the moderating role of digital communication platforms (OBC vs DCM) on the formation of cognitive, affective, behavioural and social engagement; and the mediating effect of these dimensions on loyalty.

Language plays an important role in a successful service exchange, but it can become a source of discrimination if one party is a non-native speaker in the host country. This study aims to examine the linguistic racism that non-native customers experience in Inter Culture Service Encounters (ICSEs) and delves into factors that contribute to the underlying psychological responses and the behavioral outcomes.

A phenomenological approach was used where 16 individuals were interviewed to discover themes through non-native customers' lens using an inductive process. Next, the emerged categories were classified based on extant literature, using a deductive approach.

The findings highlight the role of language varieties as a strong social identity cue for non-native customers where the associated stigma makes them see ICSE as a stereotype threat. Most importantly, these experiences shape their future behavior by avoiding direct interactions with the servers and adopting other service channels. Several “social others” influence this process.

This study explores the notion of linguistic racism in an ICSE from a non-native consumers’ lens and thus adds to this under-researched literature. Using a phenomenological approach, the authors propose a framework focusing on the perception of language-related stigma and discrimination experienced by non-native consumers’ along with possible behavioral responses.

The present article focuses on crises that arise from provocative advertisement images and products and introduces the shooting star crisis. Moreover, it aims to shed some light on the interconnection between the boomerang effect, crisis, crisis management and workforce diversity.

By examining the cases of two leading organizations of the fashion industry that found themselves involved in crises and how they confronted them, it seeks to explore whether investments in workforce diversity is a solution for these problems.

Sometimes provocative products and images that intend to spark customers' imagination can backfire and initiate a crisis. Based on the findings, organizations that admit their wrongdoing and react promptly to their stakeholders' demands tend to overcome a crisis relatively faster than organizations with passive behavior. By understanding the need for a proactive approach, fashion organizations can evade future crises and avoid creating products or images that can be perceived as racist and invoke public outrage. Additionally, the study revealed that workforce diversity initiatives can mitigate a crisis and its aftermath.

Its novelty is that it deals with the interrelationship between boomerang effect, crisis, crisis management and workforce diversity. Moreover, it introduces a new type of crisis, the shooting star crisis, in order to capture new crises that emerge in modern era, as a result of the extensive power of modern social media.