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The purpose of this article is to explore the relationship between the attributes of Olympic mascots and their impact on sponsorship effectiveness. Based on a multiattribute model and the introduction of engagement theory and the meaning transfer model, this article uses the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics mascot “Bing Dwen Dwen” as the research object to empirically analyze the effects and mechanisms of the mascot's attributes on preference, event engagement, sponsorship enterprise trust and sponsorship enterprise attitude, ultimately constructing a sponsorship effectiveness model.

The survey method was used to examine 238 respondents' emotions and attitudes towards companies participating in sponsoring Olympic mascots.

The study found that the main attributes of the mascot include visual and emotional factors, both of which have a positive impact on preference, with emotional factors having a greater influence than visual factors. Visual and emotional factors indirectly affect engagement through preference. Preference and engagement play a completely mediating role in the effect of mascot attributes on sponsorship enterprise trust and sponsorship enterprise attitude.

This study provides practical recommendations for managers to achieve marketing success in sports sponsorship through mascots.

This paper provides a measurement tool for the study of mascot attributes and important support for subsequent research in sponsorship marketing.

Food marketing has long been recognized to influence food preferences, consumption and health, yet little is known about the nature and extent of food marketing to young adults – especially with respect to their real-world encounters with food marketing and the appeals they find persuasive. This study aims to engage young adults to explore the persuasive power of food marketing and its platforms of exposure.

Participatory research with 45 young adults, who used a specially designed mobile app to capture the food marketing they encountered for seven days, including information on brand, product, platform and “power” (i.e. the specific techniques that made the advertisement persuasive).

A total of 618 ads were captured for analysis. Results revealed the dominance of digital platforms (especially Instagram, comprising 43% of ads), fast food and beverage brands (48% of ads) and the top persuasive techniques of visual style, special offer and theme.

This study uniquely draws from framing theory to advance the notions of selection and salience to understand food marketing power. It is the first study of its kind to provide a comprehensive look at the platforms and persuasive techniques of food marketing to adults as selected, captured and tagged by participants. It provides timely insights into young adults and food marketing to adults, including where it is encountered, the (generally unhealthy) brands and products promoted and how it is made meaningful.

This study aims to answer two significant questions: What are the relative consumer and firm-level effects of marketing through metaverse compared to conventional marketing endeavours? What are the current trends in utilizing the metaverse as reported in the recent literature?

This study uses a systematic literature review methodology, using a Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses flowchart to synthesize existing research. A total of 35 articles written in English were selected and analysed from two databases, Web of Science and EBSCO Host.

The findings indicate that consumer-level effects of the metaverse include consumer loyalty and brand attachment. The firm-level benefits are decentralization and cost reductions. The paper proposes a framework indicating variables that could attenuate or enhance the association between immersive components of the metaverse and their resultant effects.

This study contributes to understanding the role of metaverse in marketing practices related to the marketing mix components. The study conceptualizes a novel framework for the metaverse and its resultant effects.

In the tourism industry, immersive technologies become increasingly vital, amplifying traveler experiences and industry growth. By studying “e-booking” applications prevalent in hotels, this study aims to analyze the impact of integrating an anthropomorphic virtual agent (AVA) on user perceptions of humanness and service usage intent.

Two experiments were conducted to examine the effects of using an AVA and explain the psychological mechanism of how AVA’s attributes increase intention to use “e-booking” application.

The results highlight the positive influence of AVA on the intention to use. They illustrate the psychological mechanism of how AVA’s attributes (agency and emotionality) influence perceived humanness and intention to use. More specifically, the results indicate that perceived humanness mediated the effect of an AVA on intention to use.

Further research should delve into additional capabilities related to humanness.

This study provides useful insights for hotels’ managers about incorporating AVAs in digital services to enhance the perceived humanness of AVAs. The findings suggest that such efforts could yield benefits, especially when they involve conveying that AVAs possess agency and emotionality.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first to investigate how AVA impacts hotel human–computer interaction. It examines agency and emotionality features on humanness perception and behavioral intent. It also guides successful digitalized hotel service development and design, expanding existing research on human–virtual agent digital services, which mainly focuses on superficial traits like face and gender.

The study aims to draw on the self-congruity theory to investigate the relationship among destination personality (DP), self-congruity and tourists’ pro-environmental behavioral intention (BI) among Guangzhou citizens who have experienced nature-based tourism (NBT).

The survey-based quantitative research was divided into two rounds, namely, a preliminary study exploring the dimensions of DP and the verification of whether the DP dimensions that significantly affect pro-environmental BI in step one would be selected for the main research to validate the conceptual model.

The results suggest that wholesome, one of the destination personalities, strongly predicts tourists’ pro-environmental BI, while actual self-congruity plays a mediating role between sincere, another DP, and tourists’ pro-environmental BI.

In practice, it offers multidimensional knowledge and robust evidence-based recommendations for the sustainable development and destination branding of NBT destinations in the post-epidemic era.

The study presents pioneering work that reveals previously underestimated factors influencing pro-environmental BI.

In the increasingly competitive leisure food market, Lyfen has become a well-known leisure food brand in Shanghai after long-term independent operation. Insisting on chain retail specializing in various kinds of leisure food, Lyfen captures the consumption habits of consumers, timely launches new products in line with consumers' preferences, and leads the consumption trend. Its main competitors include other leading enterprises in China's leisure food chain industry, such as Three Squirrels, BESTORE and Baiweilin. The company's products are mainly divided into nine categories, totaling more than 900 special products. Some products under Lyfen's name have established good reputation in East China. Regarding business model, Lyfen has devoted its full energy to the construction of brand and channel, and created a unique asset-light model, which mainly involves sourcing and sales two chains.

This study aims to clarify identity building and authenticity management in human brand research, focusing on inside operators managing corporate accounts on social media. Conventional human brand research analyzes online influencers, and there is a research gap in whether these previous findings apply to corporate accounts.

Using netnography and interview data, this study analyzes Japanese corporate accounts on Twitter.

A corporate account’s identity is constructed under the influence of not only the brand but also the actual inside operator, called naka-no-hito, and other accounts that interact on social media. Corporate accounts are able to exhibit humanistic passion through the inside operator’s personality and maintain a distance from commerciality – to manage their authenticity. These activities attract general and other corporate and media accounts, and interactions with them re-create promotion effects.

This study observed that corporate accounts’ authenticity is not a trade-off between passion and commercial transparency but a compatibility achieved by coordinating interests among actors, together with the presence of inside operators.

From 2000 to 2021, the Malaysian corruption perception index demonstrated a declining tendency, identifying Malaysia as a highly corrupt nation. Corruption in the nation has become a social cancer that has impacted the workplace and political climate. Using Dewey’s (1937) theory of education and social change, this paper argues that anti-corruption education is a tool for reforming the corruption culture of a nation. Consequently, the purpose of this study is to explore and understand the current anti-corruption education in Malaysian educational institutions.

The results of this study were derived from a qualitative content analysis of 20 Google News articles, an interview with the sole implementation agency, the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC) and a literature assessment of MACC publications. Due to a dearth of preceding study and journal publications on the topic, this type of qualitative content analysis of news has been applied in prior studies.

The results indicate that anti-corruption education has been implemented in the primary, secondary and higher education institutions in Malaysia. Nonetheless, the concept and implementation are inadequate, superficial and insufficient. The analysis advises more inclusive techniques for delivering anti-corruption education for social transformation.

Prior research has focussed on laws and regulations to prosecute the corrupt, but has underrated the ability of education to alter the corruption culture. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first journal paper, written on anti-corruption education in Malaysia. This study sets the way for further anti-corruption education studies in the future. This line of research will provide insights for the nation’s policymaking, which aims to create a nation free of corruption and capable of sustaining itself.

The service industry is facing the huge impact of digital transformation, in which artificial intelligence (AI) plays one of the most important roles. This study aims to expand the understanding of the AI acceptance framework and confirm whether consumers’ digital skills have a moderating effect on the research model.

Hypotheses were tested using a data set of 1,641 individuals. Partial least squares structural equation modeling and multi-group analysis were used to estimate the model.

The results indicate that antecedent factors influence consumers’ willingness to use AI devices in services. The two groups of different digitally savvy respondents differ because the influence of anthropomorphism, social influence and hedonic motivation on respondents’ perceived efforts to use AI devices in service delivery depends on respondents’ digital skills.

The novel contribution of this study is reflected in a comprehensive model that explains the moderating effect of individual digital skills on willingness to use AI devices. The attitudes of experienced and digitally skilled consumers are valuable and highlight some important theoretical, practical implications and future lines of research.

Three scenario-based experiments were conducted to explore the influence of the base option’s price format (just-at vs just-below) on tourists’ upgrade intention. The findings of this research indicated that tourists are more inclined to upgrade the option when the base option’s price is presented in a just-at condition due to the mediating role of tourists’ price perceptions of the upgrade option. This study discovered that the just-at (vs just-below) pricing strategy can lower tourists’ price perceptions of the upgrade choice. This research further explored the moderating of tourists’ mindsets. It was found the threshold-crossing effect will disappear for tourists with fixed mindsets. This study also provides practical implications for travel service providers to set up appropriate pricing strategies to attract tourists to make upgrade decisions.