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The purpose of this paper is to explore the main effect of brand perception (brand warmth vs brand competence) on purchase intention, the mediating effect of brand love and the moderating effects of the emotional polarity of online reviews.

This paper utilizes experimental design and machine learning to collect and clean data. The ANOVA, t-test and bootstrap analysis methods are used to verify the assumed hypotheses.

Findings demonstrate that brand perception influences purchase intention with the mediating effect of brand love and the moderating effect of the emotional polarity of online reviews. In particular, brand perception can promote brand love and further enhance purchase intention. When consumers browse positive online reviews, brand warmth (vs brand competence) will lead to higher purchase intention. However, when consumers browse negative online reviews, brand competence (vs brand warmth) will weaken purchase intention more.

The findings of the current research contribute to purchase intention in the context of online reviews by highlighting the importance of brand love and the key role of brand perception, to which prior studies have paid little attention. The authors' research also provides some suggestions for enterprises about how to strengthen brand love by investigating consumers' perceptions of brand warmth and brand competence and further increasing purchase intention while consumers face positive or negative online reviews.

The extant literature highlights the significant role of brand perceptions in buying behavior and brand equity. Despite the importance of brand perceptions and the proliferation of online brands, research in an online context is still scarce. The purpose of this paper is to address this gap by investigating the effect of positive and negative comparative affective states (online vs offline) on online brand perceptions. Consistent with existing evidence, highlighting the role of culture on brand perceptions and affective states, this research is conducted in a cross-national setting to identify the stability of the hypothesized relationships among countries.

The study uses consumer survey data from five countries (UK, USA, Australia, Canada and China). After imposing metric and factor variance invariance, we used multi-group CFA to test the hypotheses regarding the impact of positive and negative comparative affective states on online brand perceptions across the five countries in the sample.

The results show that positive comparative affective states have a significant and positive impact on online brand perceptions across the countries studied, although the impact size varies by country. The findings also show that negative comparative affective states, which are context-specific and not induced by any particular brand, have no effect on online brand perceptions across the country samples.

Managers can use the findings reported in this research to inform their branding strategies. For instance, managers may focus on triggering feelings of comfort online as these lead to more favorable online brand perceptions rather than on supressing feelings of caution, as the latter do not directly impact online brand perceptions.

The study builds on and extends the recent work of Christodoulides et al. (2013) by focussing on online brand perceptions and looking into the role of affective states in a cross-national setting.

In recent years, brands have increasingly engaged in corporate political advocacy (CPA; also termed brand activism or corporate sociopolitical activity) by taking positions on polarizing sociopolitical issues. Recent experimental research suggests that consumers respond to CPA based on its alignment with their own values, and that it typically induces an overall negative response. This study aims to provide additional insights by exploring consumer brand perceptions following CPA.

An event study of 106 CPA events and weekly consumer brand perception data was conducted. A regression model was used to investigate the moderating effects of CPA effort, concurrence and the strength of the online protests evoked by the CPA.

The results show that CPA had a negative effect on consumers’ brand perceptions and that the effect was stronger for customers relative to non-customers. The negative effect was attenuated by CPA concurrence and amplified by effort. Additionally, online protests were driven by the CPA effort and had a strong negative effect on brand perception. Online protests were stronger in the past, and, in turn, the negative effects of CPA on brand perceptions have slightly weakened in recent years.

This study contributes to the existing literature by highlighting the role of online protests following CPA and distinguishing consumer and customer responses. This study also provides converging evidence of the moderating effects of effort and concurrence identified in previous studies.

To derive an applicable conceptual framework of branding via the internet form; to show how that framework can, by organising and integrating current knowledge, assist marketing planners in the development of successful internet‐based branding strategies.

The conceptual framework presented here derives from a thorough analytical and critical review of the literature on branding in the conventional and virtual marketing environments.

There are three key themes in the mainstream branding literature, supplemented in the proposed framework by a fourth research stream self‐evidently relevant to internet‐based branding. It is clear that the resulting four main elements of the framework are strongly interrelated in the practice of brand management in the online environment.

The “Four Pillars of i‐Branding” should be of intellectual interest and practical value to marketing planners and those advising them, providing a more systematic approach to the understanding and application of branding, online.

The literature of “i‐Branding” is at present at a formative stage, with limited integration among its themes. The framework described here provides the basis for the rational formulation and implementation of branding strategies, applying internet‐based tools to the tasks of marketing communication and customer relationship‐building in particular.

The role of affective states in consumer behaviour is well established. However, no study to date has examined online affective states empirically as a basis for constructing typologies of internet users and for assessing the invariance of clusters across national cultures. This paper aims to address this issue.

Four focus groups were carried out with internet users to adapt a set of affective states identified from the literature to the online environment. An online survey was then designed to collect data from internet users in four Western and four East Asian countries.

Based on a cluster analysis, six cross‐national market segments are identified and labelled “Positive Online Affectivists”, “Offline Affectivists”, “On/Off‐line Negative Affectivists”, “Online Affectivists”, “Indistinguishable Affectivists”, and “Negative Offline Affectivists”. The resulting clusters discriminate on the basis of national culture, gender, working status and perceptions towards online brands.

Marketers may use this typology to segment internet users in order to predict their perceptions towards online brands. Also, a standardised approach to e‐marketing is not recommended on the basis of affective state‐based segmentation.

This is the first study proposing affective state‐based typologies of internet users using comparable samples from four Western and four East Asian countries.

A phenomenon that has revolutionized society is the technological millennial approach to communication. Social media has matured into a prime channel for regular interactions and development of brand–customer relationships that enrich a social identity. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how this affects business communications.

The study utilized a social constructivist perspective, adopting an inductive and embedded case study strategy.

Drawing on the social identity theory, this paper examines how evolving social media platforms have impacted on brand perceptions in the fashion apparel and accessories industries. Fashion brands’ online presence provide a platform for customers to supplement social identity based on associations with brands, and ultimately this can shape brand perceptions among customers through promised functional and symbolic benefits.

The paper investigates a specialized marketing activity in the UK. A broader internationally based study would add strength to these findings.

The paper focuses on theoretical and managerial implications and proffers significant roles that social media and identity may play in keeping up with the design and development of marketing communications programs.

Multinational corporations have embraced internet technologies and social media in adopting platforms that their brands can use to contribute content to followers.

In total, 30 potential participants, drawn from diverse backgrounds, were contacted via social networking sites, e-mails and telephone. In total, 22 agreed to participate and their mean age was 26. An open-ended questionnaire allowed for elaboration, providing appropriate responses for a second interviewing phase. Four industry professionals were recruited through the researchers’ personal networks to participate in in-depth interviews that sought to investigate the significance of social media as a marketing tool from an industry perspective.

Examines the Web sites of online fashion retailers. It evaluates the role of the Internet as a distribution channel and in particular discusses issues of Web page design. Retailer and consumer views within the fashion sector are explored in a three‐stage qualitative research process. This research highlights the differences in retail and consumer perception of fashion Web sites. While retailers are satisfied by their online offer they lack an understanding of consumer needs. Consumers are disappointed in the lack of service and product provision provided by fashion Web sites. Areas of concern include overall Web page design, level of interactivity, absence of information about fashion trends and inconsistency across Web sites.

Despite an increasing interest in online brand advocacy (OBA) and the importance of online brand conversations, OBA’s conceptualization, dimensionality and measurement are unclear, which has created confusion. This paper aims to answer calls from researchers and practitioners for a better understanding and measurement of OBA. The development and validation of a parsimonious and practical OBA scale is outlined in this paper.

A multi-methods, multi-stage approach was followed to develop a parsimonious OBA scale. From an initial pool of 96 items obtained from qualitative research and from items used in prior general brand advocacy scales, a test-retest reliability study is followed. Academic judges were consulted to verify dimensionality, followed by two separate online surveys to further purify the scale and assess criterion-related validity. Programs including SPSS, AMOS and WarpPLS were used.

This research extends the knowledge of OBA by developing and testing a parsimonious and practical 16-item, four-dimensional OBA scale. Unlike previous attempts to measure OBA, this study suggested OBA as a multidimensional construct with four dimensions (i.e. brand defense, brand information sharing, brand positivity and virtual positive expression). Further, this study showed that OBA is conceptually different from consumer–brand engagement and electronic word-of-mouth.

Future research is encouraged to validate the OBA scale in various contexts and locations. Researchers can use the new OBA scale to examine potential brand-related antecedents and consequences of OBA.

This study provides brand and marketing practitioners with a better understanding of brand advocacy occurring online. The OBA scale offers clear markers or trademarks that will be useful in assessing any brand’s health online and to track and better manage online brand communications and performance.

This research provides the first empirical investigation of Wilk et al.’s (2018) exploratory insights into OBA. The resulting parsimonious scale has furthered OBA as a new area for academic enquiry and presented practitioners with a practical way of measuring OBA.

This study aims to examine the impact of customer brand value dimensions on relationship marketing dimensions through consumer hope in the context of digital payment applications (apps) services. The study considers the role of consumer engagement using a moderated mediation, and applies customer perceived value, affect theory of social exchange and relationship marketing theories.

The study is based on data collected from 301 digital payment app users. Structural equation modeling results were analyzed using Smart PLS. The authors performed moderated mediation, with different levels of customer engagement as a moderating variable, using Model 8 of PROCESS. The authors considered customer perceived value dimensions, digital quality value, perceived value, hedonic value and social value as antecedents to consumer hope and explored the role of trust, commitment and continued usage as a consequence of consumer hope.

Three levels of perceived consumer value, digital quality, price value and social value, positively influenced consumer hope, which has positively influenced trust, commitment and continuance usage. Using moderated mediation analysis, consumer hope influenced continuance usage through trust at different levels of engagement, but consumer hope did not influence continuance usage through commitment at different levels of engagement.

The study highlights the role of consumer hope in linking customer value dimensions with relationship marketing dimensions. The study can guide managers to ensure continued usage of digital payment apps, which is a strategic objective. The results are relevant for the digital setting.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze customers’ perceptions about brand personality in different cultural environments, checking if the archetypal framework of Mark and Pearson (2001) applies to different brands across countries.

The authors measured consumers’ perceptions in different cultural contexts through a survey, and received 537 valid questionnaires from Portugal, Brazil, Colombia and Peru, countries that have some similar indicators of cultural proximity. The authors wanted to verify if the words and sentences that respondents related to each brand were coherent with the archetype/brand, and the homogeneity of the results in different cultural contexts.

Empirical evidence shows that there is proximity between the literature review and the associations – words and sentences – that consumers from different countries make with those brands. This consistency of results is significantly higher for word associations.

Regardless of the results, the perceptions of consumers expressed through the selected words were often diverse and heterogeneous among countries. This could possibly indicate insufficient efforts from global brands toward a coherent brand personality/global-archetypal approach. Therefore, managing brand personality deserves more attention and marketers must understand consumer behavior patterns in different markets.