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This research is conducted in the context of beauty salons in India, to investigate how enhanced perceived acceptance in interpersonal relationships through consuming beauty salon services can generate narcissistic brand love among consumers via the mediation of brand happiness. It also investigates the moderating impact of consumer's anxious interpersonal attachment style and cynicism on the relationship between perceived salon brand-interpersonal acceptance goal congruence and salon brand happiness.

To test the hypothesized relationships, a survey was conducted among 225 regular consumers of beauty salon brands. The data were analyzed using Hayes' (2017) process macro in SPSS.

The results suggest that perceived goal congruence between beauty salon brand-interpersonal acceptance positively influences brand happiness, which in turn predicts consumer's narcissistic brand love. Consumer's anxious interpersonal attachment style positively moderates the effect of brand-interpersonal acceptance goal congruence on brand happiness, while cynicism negatively moderates the path.

Value of the study lies in extending interpersonal acceptance and rejection (IPAR) theory to the domain of consumer–salon brand relationship, to posit that if salon brands satisfy consumers' interpersonal acceptance goals, there is a potential for such happy consumers to love the salon brand, albeit narcissistically.

Deepfakes are fabricated content created by replacing an original image or video with someone else. Deepfakes have recently become commonplace in politics, posing serious challenges to democratic integrity. The advancement of AI-enabled technology and machine learning has made creating synthetic videos relatively easy. This study explores the role of political brand hate and individual moral consciousness in influencing electorates' intention to share political deepfake content.

The study creates and uses a fictional deepfake video to test the proposed model. Data are collected from N = 310 respondents in India and tested using partial least square–structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) with SmartPLS v3.

The findings support that ideological incompatibility with the political party leads to political brand hate, positively affecting the electorates' intention to share political deepfake videos. This effect is partially mediated by users' reduced intention to verify political deepfake videos. In addition, it is observed that individual moral consciousness positively moderates the effect of political brand hate on the intention to share political deepfake videos. Intention to share political deepfake videos thus becomes a motive to seek revenge on the hated party, an expression of an individual's ideological hate and a means to preserve one's moral self-concept and strengthen their ideologies and moral beliefs.

The study expands the growing discussion about disseminating political deepfake videos using the theoretical lens of the negative consumer-brand relationship. It validates the effect of political brand hate on irrational behavior that is intended to cause harm to the hated party. Further, it provides a novel perspective that individual moral consciousness may fuel the haters' desire to engage in anti-branding behavior. Political ideological incompatibility reflects ethical reasons for brand hate. Therefore, hate among individuals with high moral consciousness serves to preserve their moral self.

The emergence of mHealth applications has led to the rise of health-based services delivered over smartphones. Younger people are often found to be more innovative toward technology, especially related to smartphones (Rai et al., 2013). Most mHealth application downloaders are continually shifting between applications because of the hyper-competition making achieving loyal consumers challenging (Racherla et al., 2012). The purpose of this paper is to study the determinants that help increase young consumers mHealth application loyalty. This study integrates self-determination theory (SDT), gamification elements and engagement to examine loyalty.

A valid sample of 263 college student’s data was obtained for data analysis from a survey conducted in multiple campuses of the Delhi University in India.

The three psychological needs: need for autonomy, need for competence and need for relatedness, showed a positive impact on intrinsic motivation. From the gamification factors; perceived playfulness, the level of challenge and social interaction, only the first two showed a positive impact on extrinsic motivation. Both motivation factors influence engagement, showing a frequent interaction with the application, leading to loyalty.

Previous studies examined the adoption of mHealth services, this study is one of the first to examine young consumers’ loyalty in using mhealth apps. It sheds light on the existing literature and contributes to research on mHealth applications by determining the factors that lead to loyalty by the young consumers.

The goal of this paper is to identify the main factors influencing mobile service adoption and define a universally applicable holistic concept capable of explaining all types of mobile service adoption that will be useful to all stakeholders.

A systematic method was used to identify and select relevant articles for appraisal and analysis of their data, as well as to summarize existing research in mobile service adoption studies.

After reviewing and analyzing the articles, 25 major variables were identified. According to the article analysis, usefulness and experience were identified as the primary motivators for adoption, and that negative barriers to adoption must be controlled in order to improve adoption. Demographics play a role in adoption and technology acceptance model (TAM) emerged as the most suitable model to study the variables affecting mobile service adoption.

The generic concept of mobile services adoption will help industry stakeholders and researchers to use a more focused approach to study and encourage adoption and use of mobile services. Empirical testing of the proposed concept is a limitation which can also be a future scope of the study.

The review provides a holistic mobile services adoption process which is able to define adoption for all kinds of mobile services and is universally applicable as well. The study presents potential implications and relevant insights in mobile services adoption and contributes to a better understanding of mobile service adoption process.

The study investigates the effect of an uncivil comment made by a party representative on social media and tests whether it can lead to a change in observers' attitude toward the party.

Data are collected from 196 respondents using a scenario-based survey. Proposed model is tested using partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

It is found that individual's moral identity and issue involvement influence perceived civility of the online post, which in turn affects attitude toward the party as well as the individual. It is observed that for high partisans, effect of perceived civility on attitude toward the party is stronger compared to low partisans. Party's lack of responsiveness to address the uncivil comment from its representative increases party's incivility accountability and lowers the partisan attitude toward the party.

The study presents a novel understanding of how political party representatives can influence the image of the party by engaging in an uncivil discourse on social media. Results support that strong partisan would react more unfavorably indicating that loyalty toward the party cannot be taken for granted.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-03-2020-0084

Consumer–brand relationship literature has seen a recent surge of work on the concept of brand hate. Considering that hate is not easily acknowledged, it is challenging to uncover the psychological mechanisms that underpin its development. Using the concept of “self” as over-arching theory, this study aims to uncover consumers’ psychological triggers for hating a brand by providing contextualized perspectives from the informants.

The authors use an interpretive approach focused on exploring the role of self in explaining the development of brand hate. Data is collected through 25 in-depth interviews and inductively analysed using the NVivo 12.

The findings of the study align with the motivational perspective of hate discussed in psychology literature. Six psychological strategies (coping, moral consciousness, ego defense, self-esteem protection, power reinstatement, and self-concept strengthening) cater to three motives of the self (self-preservation, self-defense, and self-enhancement).

The current study uses an interdisciplinary approach and draws perspectives from psychology, sociology and interpersonal relationship theories to study consumer brand hate. It uncovers the subconscious mechanisms that lead to the germination of brand hate and provides answers to unexplained and missing pieces in the existing literature. In particular, it offers a detailed perspective on how self-related motives can explain the psychology of brand hate.

Consumer brand relationship literature has recently seen a surge of studies on brand hate, its antecedents and outcomes. Hate alone will not drive consumers to engage in negative electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) and indicates the interplay of other social relationship factors that can strengthen the effect of brand hate on negative eWOM. The purpose of this study is to integrate the emerging concept of brand hate and perceived social media power with the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to expand the understanding of negative eWOM.

Data is collected through a survey conducted among university students based in the National Capital Region of Delhi in India. The research model is empirically tested using structural equation modeling in AMOSv23.

The three TPB dimensions, including brand attitude, subjective norms and individual’s propensity to anthropomorphize, are found to influence brand to hate significantly. The other perceived control factors included in the model, perceived homophily and social media self-efficacy, were found to affect perceived social media power, which, in turn, is crucial in predicting consumers’ engagement in negative eWOM behavior, both directly and through interaction with brand hate.

The study contributes to brand hate literature and offers a novel perspective by advocating the role of consumers’ propensity to anthropomorphize in augmenting feelings of brand hate.

The study explores the readiness of government agencies to adopt artificial intelligence (AI) to improve the efficiency of disaster relief operations (DRO). For understanding the behavior of state-level and national-level government agencies involved in DRO, this study grounds its theoretical arguments on the civic voluntarism model (CVM) and the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT).

We collected the primary data for this study from government agencies involved in DRO in India. To test the proposed theoretical model, we administered an online survey questionnaire to 184 government agency employees. To test the hypotheses, we employed partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

Our findings confirm that resources (time, money and skills) significantly influence the behavioral intentions related to the adoption of AI tools for DRO. Additionally, we identified that the behavioral intentions positively translate into the actual adoption of AI tools.

Our study provides a unique viewpoint suited to understand the context of the adoption of AI in a governmental context. Companies often strive to invest in state-of-the-art technologies, but it is important to understand how government bodies involved in DRO strategize to adopt AI to improve efficiency.

Our study offers a fresh perspective in understanding how the organizational culture and perspectives of government officials influence their inclinations to adopt AI for DRO. Additionally, it offers a multidimensional perspective by integrating the theoretical frameworks of CVM and UTAUT for a greater understanding of the adoption and deployment of AI tools with organizational culture and voluntariness as critical moderators.

Brands today operate in a dynamic business environment, which often requires them to take courageous actions, from taking a stand on controversial issues to responding to changing market needs. However, these actions are not merely strategic but also represent a unique aspect of the brands’ identity, which includes holding up to their core values and being resilient to social pressure. To better understand this positive virtue, the current study introduces the concept of brand bravery – a novel brand archetype that emulates the brand’s distinct identity. This study aims to conceptualize brand bravery and develop a psychometrically sound scale to measure it and investigate its relationship with positive brand relationship outcomes.

Two qualitative studies were conducted to identify the dimensions of perceived brand bravery. Three empirical studies develop and validate the proposed measurement scale and confirm the construct’s nomological validity by proposing a framework that explains the outcomes of perceived brand bravery.

Results from multiple studies support a seven-factor second-order reflective scale of perceived brand bravery, with dimensions altruism, bold, courageous, determined, enduring, fearless and gritty. The construct of brand bravery is found discriminant from other conceptually distinct but related brand attributes. Nomological validity tests further suggest that perceived brand bravery leads to positive consumer-related outcomes such as brand advocacy behaviors, positive attitude and consumer brand identification.

Brand bravery provides a vital roadmap to marketers who have sought to create a leading brand that can stay relevant in times of disruption. The multi-factor scale can help managers track, which dimension of the brand bravery scale is more relevant for shaping overall bravery perception.

The study introduces a novel brand attribute that has not been previously discussed beyond social and moral psychology literature. It conceptualizes brand bravery that will strengthen the understanding of this specific brand characteristic and provides a practical scale to measure brand bravery.

This paper aims to understand how strong brand attachment can intensify the feeling of perceived betrayal, leading to brand hate after a negative experience with the brand. The study further investigates how consumers make causal attributions for negative experiences when strong brand attachment exists. The moderating effect of a narcissistic personality in the dissemination of negative electronic word of mouth (eWOM) following brand hate is also tested.

The study uses a within-the-subject repeated measures experimental design. A total of 202 college students were exposed to two treatments (high versus no brand attachment), involving a situation of product failure of a smart phone brand. A total of 135 responses were used to compare the outcomes of the two treatments using multivariate analysis. The data of high brand attachment treatment (N = 202) were used to test the proposed research model using partial least square-structural equation modelling.

The results suggest that having a strong positive relationship with the brand can generate stronger feelings of perceived betrayal and brand hate after the brand transgresses the consumer’s expectations. The results indicate that resentful customers can resort to eWOM after feeling betrayed, even though the prior relationship with the brand was strong.

This paper extends the work on perceived betrayal to study brand hate and proposes that brand hate can arise even if there is a strong brand attachment. It contributes to the growing body of literature on brand hate and its possible antecedents. Additionally, the study poses some crucial managerial implications for the brand managers by suggesting that strong brand relationships not always ensure loyalty or commitment and can lead to consequences that are damaging for the brand equity.