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Although there is a growing body of literature on how celebrity involvement impacts the effectiveness of destination marketing, the underlying mechanisms of that relationship are still underexplored. Based on the affect transfer and meaning transfer theories, this study aims to examine the impact of celebrity attachment on customer delight toward K-culture and K-culture attachment, affective and cognitive images of Korea, and the intention to visit Korea.

Online survey data were collected from 2,614 US residents, representing various demographic characteristics. For the data analysis, the partial least squares-structural equation modeling was conducted to evaluate the structural model and test the hypotheses.

The results showed that celebrity attachment is positively related to customer delight toward K-culture and K-culture attachment, which, in turn, positively influences affective and cognitive images of Korea. Additionally, K-culture attachment positively influences cognitive and affective images of Korea, which are positively related to the intention to visit Korea.

By using the affect transfer theory and meaning transfer theory, this study provides valuable insights into how consumer’s attachment to celebrities has spillover effects on the decision-making process. This study also adds a new concept, customer delight connected to cultural experience, in the context of destination marketing.

By understanding the importance and influence of people’s intimacy with media characters, practitioners can apply parasocial relationship theory, affect transfer theory and meaning transfer theory to their marketing strategies.

As one of the few empirical studies that examines the impact of celebrity attachment on consumers’ perceptions and behaviors, this study can make significant contributions to the destination marketing literature.

The purpose of this study is to identify the process of virtual influencer stickiness in the age of influencer marketing, which has received little attention in the literature. This is essential because the research creates a theoretical model of follower loyalty/stickiness to virtual influencer techniques from the standpoint of influencer marketing, which has a substantial effect on the evolution of the global marketing world.

In 2022, 302 people who currently follow an Instafamous virtual influencer took part in an Instagram self-administered online survey.

The findings show that both expertise and trustworthiness have a positive and significant influence on parasocial interaction, which in turn has a significant influence on virtual engagement and stickiness.

This research will specifically assist international readers in understanding how to harness and increase the efficiency and efficacy of interactive marketing strategies and methods to engage and retain followers of Instafamous virtual influencer. Moreover, the findings will be beneficial to opinion leaders, brand managers, company investors, entrepreneurs and service designers.

1. The study pioneers a holistic virtual follower stickiness mechanism that comprises the role of source credibility, parasocial interaction, informational influence and virtual follower’s engagement and their interrelationship to each other.

2. This study is based on parasocial interaction theory and source credibility theory to understand the relationship between virtual followers and influencers stickiness process at social media platforms.

3. In addition, the study examined the subsequent effects of sources of credibility components on parasocial interaction; as well as, on virtual follower engagement and stickiness.

4. This study also categorized and examined the moderating effects exerted by the genres of informative influence of virtual influencer.

The study pioneers a holistic virtual follower stickiness mechanism that comprises the role of source credibility, parasocial interaction, informational influence and virtual follower’s engagement and their interrelationship to each other.

This study is based on parasocial interaction theory and source credibility theory to understand the relationship between virtual followers and influencers stickiness process at social media platforms.

In addition, the study examined the subsequent effects of sources of credibility components on parasocial interaction; as well as, on virtual follower engagement and stickiness.

This study also categorized and examined the moderating effects exerted by the genres of informative influence of virtual influencer.

This study aims to investigate consumer decision-making styles (CDMS) in the context of street food. In addition to the original CDMS constructs, two additional constructs, namely food safety risks and environmental risks, were included based on relevant literature. Furthermore, the study explores the moderating role of social media celebrities (SMCs) in bridging the intention-behaviour gap in street food consumption behaviour.

The data were collected through an online survey, with 300 participants providing useable responses. Partial least squares (PLS) analysis was employed to analyse the data.

The findings indicate that out of the eight identified CDMS, six styles, specifically recreational (hedonistic shopping consciousness), price consciousness, novelty-seeking, impulsiveness, confusion due to over-choice and brand loyalty, significantly influence consumers' intention to consume street foods. Additionally, the results support the moderating role of SMCs. This suggests that the presence and influence of SMCs play a significant role in shaping consumers' intention and behaviours towards street food consumption.

This study contributes significantly to the literature by adding two additional constructs, namely safety risks and environmental risks in CDMS. Moreover, this study fulfils the intention-behaviour gap in street food literature by exploring the moderation effect of SMCs.

This study aims to provide a holistic review of social media influencers (SMIs) research based on a unique approach of bibliometric analysis and content analysis between 2011 and 2020. The review examines the main influential aspects, themes and research streams to identify research directions for the future.

The sample selection and data collection were done from the Scopus database. The sample dataset was refined based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria to determine the final dataset of 183 articles. The dataset was exported in the BibTeX format and then imported into the BiblioShiny app for bibliometric analysis. The content analysis was done following the theory-context-methodology framework.

The several findings of this study include (1) Co-word analysis of most used keywords; (2) Longitudinal thematic evolution; (3) The focus of the research papers as per the theory-context-methodology review protocol are persuasion knowledge model, fashion and beauty industries, Instagram and content analysis, respectively; and (4) The network analysis of the research studies is known as the co-citation analysis and depicts the intellectual structure in the domain. This analysis resulted in four clusters of the research streams from the literature and two emergent themes (Chen et al., 2010)

In general, the previous reviews in the area are either domain, method or theory-based. Thus, this study aims to complement and extend the existing literature by presenting the overall picture of the SMI research with the help of a unique combined approach and further highlighting the trends and future research directions based on the findings of this study.

Although governments have used social media platforms to interact with the public in an attempt to minimize anxiety and provide a forum for public discussion during the pandemic, governments require sufficient crisis communication skills to engage citizens in taking appropriate action effectively. This study aims to examine how the National Health Commission of China (NHCC) has used TikTok, the leading short video–based platform, to facilitate public engagement during COVID-19.

Building upon dual process theories, this study integrates the activation of information exposure, prosocial interaction theory and social sharing of emotion theory to explore how public engagement is related to message sensation value (MSV), media character, content theme and emotional valence. A total of 354 TikTok videos posted by NHCC were collected during the pandemic to explore the determinants of public engagement in crises.

The findings demonstrate that MSV negatively predicts public engagement with government TikTok, but that instructional information increases engagement. The presence of celebrities and health-care professionals negatively affects public engagement with government TikTok accounts. In addition, emotional valence serves a moderating role between MSV, media characters and public engagement.

Government agencies must be fully aware of the different combinations of MSV and emotion use in the video title when releasing crisis-related videos. Government agencies can also leverage media characters – health professionals in particular – to enhance public engagement. Government agencies are encouraged to solicit public demand for the specific content of instructing information through data mining techniques.

This study aims to reveal the knowledge structure of social media influencer marketing literature by performing science mapping analysis through a state-of-the-art bibliometric approach to determine the current and future trends. Social media influencer marketing is one of the most effective approaches to presenting a brand and offering value to consumers via social media.

This study evaluates the knowledge structure to uncover the emerging trends and future predictions in social media influencer marketing through bibliographic coupling and co-word analysis. In total, 917 journal publications were retrieved from the Web of Science database and analyzed using VOSviewer software.

The central theme in social media influencer marketing reflects digital engagement between influencers and followers and communication between influencers and followers. The theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

This study unleashes the knowledge structure according to the fundamental literature of social media influencer marketing and the underlying themes related to the phenomenon.

This research draws on drive reduction theory and mental accounting theory to understand how the prospect of reselling used items can influence consumer feelings of consumption guilt and impact their willingness to purchase new products.

We conducted two studies with between-subjects designs to explore this relationship. In Study 1, we examined the correlation between consumers' perceived guilt and their willingness to buy a new product, considering their awareness of the product’s resale potential. Study 2 delved into the aspect of reselling a similar old product already owned by the consumer.

The findings suggest three key insights. First, consumers' awareness of resale potential significantly affects their guilt perception and purchasing decisions. Second, the resale reference price (RRP) can decrease guilt perception but increase the intention to buy a new product. Lastly, when consumers are aware of the resale value of a previously owned product that is similar to the desired new product, the effect of the RRP on their purchasing intent is mediated by consumer guilt.

This research fills a theoretical gap by empirically exploring the emotional motivations behind consumer resale behavior. It presents a novel perspective on how resale activities can shape feelings of guilt and impact purchasing decisions. This offers important implications for understanding the dynamics of consumer behavior in the second-hand market.