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Given that existing retail brand research tends to treat each level of a retail brand as a separate concept, this paper aims to unveil the holistic nature of a multi-level retail brand, considering the distinctiveness of each level and the interrelationships between the images of different levels.

This study uses a scoping review approach that includes 478 retail brand articles. Subsequently, a thematic analysis method is applied.

The brand attributes that shape the distinct image of each retail brand level encompass diverse intrinsic and extrinsic attributes. Moreover, the holistic nature of a multi-level retail brand is formed by the interrelationships between the images of different levels, which are reflected in the presence of common extrinsic attributes and their interplay at attribute, benefit and attitude levels.

Theoretically, this review provides conceptual clarity by unveiling the multi-level yet holistic nature of a retail brand, helping researchers refine and extend existing theories in retail branding, while also providing new research opportunities in this field. Practically, the findings could guide retailers in implementing differentiated branding strategies at each level while achieving synergy across all levels.

Employees facing challenges in their careers – i.e. female, migrant, elderly and lower-educated employees – might expect job searches to have a low likelihood of success and might therefore more often stay in unsatisfactory positions. The goal of this study is to discover inequalities in job mobility for these employees.

We rely on a large sample of Dutch public sector employees (N = 30,709) and study whether employees with challenges in their careers are hampered in translating job dissatisfaction into job searches. Additionally, we assess whether this is due to their perceptions of labor market alternatives.

Findings show that non-Western migrant, elderly and lower-educated employees are less likely to act on job dissatisfaction than their advantaged counterparts, whereas women are more likely than men to do so. Additionally, we find that although they perceive labor market opportunities as limited, this does not affect their propensity to search for different jobs.

This paper is novel in discovering inequalities in job mobility by analyzing whether employees facing challenges in their careers are less likely to act on job dissatisfaction and therefore more likely to remain in unsatisfactory positions.

Given the importance of the growing segmentation of ageing consumers and their increasing interaction with the Internet, digital marketing scholars are becoming more interested in this market. Prior research needs to pay more attention to this market in many contexts of digital marketing. This study aims to provide insights into ageing consumers’ content usage, content typology choices, and online brand advocacy (OBA).

Semi-structured interviews were applied, and 16 consumers from Southern Europe aged 55+ were included. The interviews were transcribed and examined following the principles of content analysis.

According to the research, older consumers display their usage and concerns regarding online content. They have different decision-making processes depending on whether they are purchasing products or services. Likewise, their choices of content typology vary based on the utilitarian or hedonic product category.

This study contributes to the literature by providing insights into this growing segmentation and proposing an OBA framework for older consumers related to content marketing. Finally, the study suggests that older consumers are passive online and active offline brand advocates.

Effectively engaging patients is critical for the sustainable development of online health communities (OHCs). Although physicians’ general knowledge-sharing, which is free to the public, represents essential resources of OHCs that have been shown to promote patient engagement, little is known about whether such knowledge-sharing can backfire when superfluous knowledge-sharing is perceived as overwhelming and anxiety-provoking. Thus, this study aims to gain a comprehensive understanding of the role of general knowledge-sharing in OHCs by exploring the spillover effects of the depth and breadth of general knowledge-sharing on patient engagement.

The research model is established based on a knowledge-based view and the literature on knowledge-sharing in OHCs. Then the authors test the research model and associated hypotheses with objective data from a leading OHC.

Although counterintuitive, the findings revealed an inverted U-shape relationship between general knowledge-sharing (depth and breadth of knowledge-sharing) and patient engagement that is positively associated with physicians’ number of patients. Specifically, the positive effects of depth and breadth of general knowledge-sharing increase and then decrease as the quantity of general knowledge-sharing grows. In addition, physicians’ offline and online professional status negatively moderated these curvilinear relationships.

This study further enriches the literature on knowledge-sharing and the operations of OHCs from a novel perspective while also offering significant specific implications for OHCs practitioners.

By integrating uses and gratification theory (UGT) and online buying behavior theory (OBBT), this study aims to examine the impact of escapism motives (self-suppression and self-expansion) and attitude toward online shopping (ATS) on eCart abandonment. In addition, the mediating role of ATS between escapism motives and eCart abandonment is examined.

Structural equations modeling was performed on the data of 400 consumers using AMOS 26.

The results indicated that escapism motivations impacted users’ eCart abandonment, and the attitude toward online shopping mediated this relationship.

The findings of this study imply that online sellers should understand the consumer motives for website use. In response, better strategies should be developed to reduce eCart abandonment.

This study extends knowledge of eCart abandonment by theoretical integration of UGT and OBBT and identification of the intrinsic predictors of virtual cart abandonment behavior. In addition, it is one of the early attempts to examine the dimensional impact of escapism on eCart abandonment.

Emphasizing the increasing need for social presence in interpersonal interactions and the irreplaceable aspects of face-to-face communications, this study aims to explore the emotional impact of interpersonal influence on consumers after purchase. As individuals respond differently to others’ feedback (positive and negative/verbal and nonverbal), the author investigates potential moderating factors of the impact of feedback on consumer’s emotions in a postpurchase context.

A qualitative study was conducted using the method of semistructured individual interviews to collect data. The author selected a heterogeneous group of 30 consumers belonging to two categories: 13 adults (including seven women and six men) and 17 adolescents (including eight girls and nine boys). The author took into account this type of sampling in the selection of respondents, as investigating the influence of the respondent’s gender is one of the research objectives.

The thematic content analysis method released a set of propositions the author suggests for future validation: five moderating factors the author established from the literature review (strength of social ties, level of expertise, type of the product and consumer’s age and gender), while four factors sprang from the collected data (consumer’s level of conviction, repetition of the feedback, the feedback’s argumentation and its level of discretion).

The subjectivity of the interviewees’ personal descriptions of their felt internal states affects the accuracy of their responses. In addition, the psychological aspect of the study provoked reluctance and discretion from some respondents. Further research studies could target these limitations to study each identified moderating factor separately and search for the secondary variables that tend to be linked to these factors (e.g. the expertise level is linked to personality variables, such as the perceived level of self-confidence). Furthermore, subsequent studies can go beyond the affective impact of feedback and investigate the behavioral aspect (repurchase intentions).

This study is of great importance in providing more explanations for the reasons why consumers repurchase or abandon a product. The importance of the emotional power of others’ feedback suggests that, when positioning their offers, marketers must ensure that their product has a strong chance of acceptance by consumer’s significant other. In addition, companies must argue their offers, allowing consumers to increase their knowledge about the product. Moreover, interpersonal cues and expertise level are more important competences to find in employees. Who is more than a vendor, for example, to be perceived as having a high level of expertise in his field?

This study stresses the importance of face-to-face interpersonal interaction in a time when social lives are submerged by social media and virtual communications. The findings suggest that offline social power still matters, and its impact is relative to multiple factors that count for consumers. Face-to-face interaction has been viewed as the most efficient way to satisfy individuals’ social needs for connectedness.

This paper provides new insights into the impact of offline interpersonal verbal and nonverbal feedbacks. The feedback-affect process within consumers was explored, and the postpurchase context was precisely emphasized.

Understanding the effect of assortment composition on attentional levels is an essential topic for academic researchers and practitioners. This work has important implications when analyzing the influence of shopping frame time and search effort on the relationship between the reaction to assortment composition and visual attention to stock-keeping units (SKUs) pricing.

Two experimental studies through gauze behavior analysis technology (using eye-tracking equipment) analyze the variable's large assortment, visual attention to SKU pricing, search effort and shopping frame time.

The results suggest that, although it increases the search effort, a large assortment decreases the visual attention to SKU pricing. Further, our results indicate a moderating effect associated with mitigating the negative effect by medium-low levels of search effort and a moderating impact of time in this relation.

Marketing professionals can carefully optimize the in-store experience by managing the assortment and variety and by influencing consumers' visual attention to SKU pricing along the journey as part of the experience. Assortment and SKU pricing strategies need to be aligned with consumer journey design.

Our findings contribute to assortment theory and management by detailing the relationship between consumers' reactions to assortment perception and visual attention to SKU pricing in time flow. We reinforce the importance of considering assortment strategies from the consumer perspective and giving reliable information about in-store behavior.

This study develops an empirical framework to address how large third-party sellers (TPSs) can apply customer acquisition strategies to improve their performance in consumers’ person-goods matching process and how the platform firm’s similar strategies moderate the effects of TPSs’ strategies.

Using data collected from the top ten TPSs from a Chinese e-commerce platform, the fixed effect model is used to validate the conceptual model and hypotheses.

The study results show that both market detection strategy and matching optimization strategy can help large TPSs improve their sales performance. Moreover, the similar market detection strategy applied by the platform firm weakens the effect of large TPSs’ customer acquisition strategies, while the similar matching optimization strategy applied by the platform firm strengthens the effect of large TPSs’ customer acquisition strategies.

This study provides firsthand evidence on the performance of large TPSs’ and the platform firm’s strategies. It demonstrates the effectiveness of large TPSs’ market detection strategy and matching optimization strategy, which can be adopted to meet consumers’ search and evaluation motivations in their person-goods matching process respectively. Moreover, it identifies the role of platform firms by showing the moderating effect of similar strategies adopted by the platform firm on the effect of large TPSs’ customer acquisition strategies.

Online impulsive purchasing is growing exponentially, and website-related factors play a substantial role in this phenomenon. This study provides a comprehensive and integrative framework encompassing a variety of website-related factors influencing impulsive purchase behaviour.

The study is a systematic literature review, which includes literature search from two prominent databases. This article consolidates the results of 60 relevant research papers, and thematic analysis is performed on various website-related aspects classified into five research topics.

The different website qualities have been classified into broad themes and their role in online impulse buying has been explored. The antecedents, moderators, mediators, and outcomes are portrayed in an integrated research framework. Possible research gaps have been identified, and a future research agenda has been proposed, representing potential research areas.

As we have included only studies published in the English language, this review may be limited by language bias. Relevant research published in other languages might have been excluded.

This literature review may provide management insights to marketers and practitioners managing online retail websites. To sustain an online business in the long term, it is critical for online retailers to have a thorough understanding of all conceivable website stimuli and develop them in a way that compels consumers to make impulsive purchases.

This study represents an original contribution to the realm of systematic literature reviews. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first SLR that elaborately delineates the influence of website-related factors on online impulse buying behaviour.

Based on the perspective of knowledge management capability, this paper aims to reveal the internal mechanism of the digital empowerment of mobile social platforms to improve the operational performance of Chinese traditional retail enterprises. Such improvements have crucial theoretical value and practical implications for Chinese traditional retail enterprises to achieve transformation and sustainable development.

This study applied the typical analysis method, selected China’s leading mobile social platform, WeChat, as a typical case, and observed and analyzed the public data of the traditional retail industry and social platforms and interviews with relevant enterprises. On this basis, this study used the inductive and deductive methods of qualitative research to conduct an in-depth analysis of the mechanism by which WeChat’s digital empowerment improves the operational performance of Chinese traditional retail enterprises. It also discussed the critical role and path knowledge management capabilities play in this mechanism.

This research demonstrated that mobile social platforms empower Chinese traditional retail enterprises to build diversified digital channels, enhance the knowledge acquisition capability of enterprises and thus improve their performance; empower Chinese traditional retail enterprises to build digital community networks, enhance the knowledge diffusion capability of enterprises and thus improve their performance; and empower Chinese traditional retail enterprises to integrate online and offline businesses, enhance the knowledge integration capability of enterprises and thus improve their performance.

This study clarifies the internal mechanism of how the digital empowerment of mobile social platforms can improve the performance of Chinese traditional retail enterprises. This mechanism implies that knowledge management capabilities (knowledge acquisition, diffusion and integration capability) are the underlying logic for Chinese traditional retail enterprises to achieve higher performance levels. This has important practical implications for managers of Chinese traditional retail enterprises to leverage the digital infrastructure of mobile social platforms to achieve the sustainable development of enterprises.

This study provides an in-depth analysis of how the traditional retail industry uses digital social platforms to improve operational performance from the perspective of knowledge management capabilities, which can further promote the theoretical research and practical development of digitalization and knowledge management. At the same time, this study explored the research on the operational performance of Chinese traditional retail enterprises from the perspective of knowledge management capabilities and expanded the research on knowledge management in related fields. The authors have initially sorted out the impact of knowledge management capabilities on the operational performance of Chinese traditional retail enterprises in the digital era. This will help better understand the role and function of knowledge management in strategic transformation and expand the application of knowledge management theory.