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This paper aims to analyze the effects of web communities vs company websites in providing tactile information considering different types of product in terms of touch diagnosticity (low- vs. high-touch products).

Three experimental studies were conducted to examine the effect of online information sources (i.e. web communities vs. company websites) in providing tactile information on consumer responses, considering the moderation role of product type in terms of touch diagnosticity (low- vs. high-touch products, Study 1), the moderating role of type of information (tactile vs. generic, Study 2a); and the moderating role of need for touch (NFT) (Study 2a and 2b).

While previous research converges on the idea that the provision of a written description of tactile properties deriving from the product usage is particularly effective for products for which tactile information is diagnostic and for individuals high in NFT, the results demonstrated that the presence (vs. the absence) of the description of the tactile properties provided by web communities (vs. company websites) matters for those products for which touch is not diagnostic and for individuals low in NFT.

The findings have particular relevance for emerging brands intending to commercialize their products in the digital environment. These companies should be present in web communities to describe a product’s tactile characteristics, especially if not diagnostic.

This paper significantly contributes to a better understanding of a little studied area, namely, consumer responses toward haptic compensational strategies providing haptic cues (e.g. written description of tactile information along with pictures of products) aiming at compensating for the absence of touch, underlining the differential influence of online sources of tactile information on consumer responses across different types of products.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a research approach to investigate brand alignment by exploiting textual data from online brand communities in the coffee industry. Specifically, consumer brand associations from user-generated content (UGC) and company brand associations from firm-generated content (FGC) are explored to measure the alignment between brand identity and brand image. The selected context of research is the beverage industry wherein companies are called on to develop appropriate digital websites and brand communication strategies to enhance the consumers' brand experience.

The authors introduce a research approach that integrates netnography with text mining analysis. Since brand associations were the basis of the study’s analysis, the authors focused on text mining procedures, providing data (co-occurrences) corresponding to brand associations that consumers perceive and that the company communicates. Data were used to develop the measurements of brand alignment.

The main findings of this research highlight the importance for both scholars and practitioners of determining brand alignment of beverage products in online communities. Knowing the alignment between the way a company communicates its brand identity and how this is perceived by consumers allows for effectively reviewing brand communication.

Although the combined analysis of the alignment between brand image and brand identification has received attention in marketing literature, most scholars have neglected how to measure brand alignment. This is a need for many marketing managers in the coffee industry who are now moving in digital environments where the role of consumers is not that of receivers of brand communication but rather that of cocreators of brand value.

This study aims to understand the perceived emotions of human–artificial intelligence (AI) interactions in the private sector. Moreover, this research discusses the transferability of these lessons to the public sector.

This research analysed the comments posted between June 2022 and June 2023 in the global open Reddit online community. A data mining approach was conducted, including a sentiment analysis technique and a qualitative approach.

The results show a prevalence of positive emotions. In addition, a pertinent percentage of negative emotions were found, such as hate, anger and frustration, due to human–AI interactions.

The insights from human–AI interactions in the private sector can be transferred to the governmental sector to leverage organisational performance, governmental decision-making, public service delivery and the creation of economic and social value.

Beyond the positive impacts of AI in government strategies, implementing AI can elicit negative emotions in users and potentially negatively impact the brand of private and government organisations. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research bridging the gap by identifying the predominant negative emotions after a human–AI interaction.

The National Football League (NFL), the most lucrative sports league in the world, has its second largest foreign audience in Brazil. Its Brazilian broadcasts stimulate the audience to extrapolate television reception and interact through a social media platform, seeking to integrate a collective consumption. Thus, attachments are established between consumers and league. Based on this, this study aims to analyze how the interaction in social media of the Brazilian NFL audience, during the transmissions of its games, results in consumption attachments.

The method undertaken was Netnography, commonly used to investigate cultural practices occurring in online environments. The research corpus consisted of messages posted on Twitterhashtags created by the ESPN Brazil channels to reverberate its broadcasts of the league between 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 seasons.

The findings of this study indicate that Brazilian audience interaction in social media establishes consumer attachment with the NFL by means of the brand elements and aspects of social life, mediated by the league.

The research observed only the part of the Brazilian audience of the NFL that engages in the broadcasts of the games through social media.

The research of this study demonstrates how brands can use social media to enable social interactions that create or improve consumer attachments with them.

The study presents how a media brand imbricated in the American culture has been the target of attachment by Brazilian fans through social media interactions.

Collaborating with consumers during new product development can provide companies with significant benefits and competitive advantages. Although several studies have been conducted on the design of co-innovation platforms, there is still a need for a more comprehensive understanding of the co-innovation phenomenon. To address this gap, this research aims to identify the critical success factors of co-innovation platforms and provide an extensive analysis of the variables that determine their effectiveness.

This study presents a systematic literature review of co-innovation platforms based on an analysis of 89 articles published in 50 scholarly journals in the disciplines of information systems, marketing and business, covering the years from 2006 to 2022.

The review synthesizes the current state of scientific knowledge and groups prior studies thematically as critical success factors of co-innovation platforms. As a result, eight success factors have been identified in terms of quantity and quality of contributions. These factors include product involvement, perceived fairness, sense of community, interactive environment, employee involvement, participant diversity, assessment structure and task design.

The study consolidates existing research about the critical success of co-innovation platforms. It also provides a research framework that incorporates a diverse set of variables that can be used to assess co-innovation performance in future studies.

Considering the ongoing discourse on diversity, equity and inclusion, brands aim to develop marketing campaigns that demonstrate respect for all individuals. Despite these intentions, many advertisements still provoke strong negative reactions from consumers due to brand transgressions in social media marketing campaigns that violate these values. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the repercussions that such social media marketing campaigns have on brands, categorizing these campaigns as brand transgressions in social media advertising.

This research uses a mixed-method design that includes semi-structured interviews (Study 1), a content analysis (Study 2) and an online experiment (Study 3).

This paper clarifies the elements that qualify as brand transgressions in advertising within the diversity, equity and inclusion discourse. The negative electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) associated with brand transgressions in advertising comprises negative emotions (e.g. anger, contempt, disgust and hate) and behavioural intentions to penalize the brand (e.g. negative word-of-mouth, brand avoidance and protest behaviours). The negative e-WOM stemming from these transgressions amplifies the adverse consequences for consumer–brand relationships by negatively influencing other consumers through sympathy towards the offended parties.

This paper offers brand managers guidelines for preventing and managing negative consumer reactions towards brands based on their responses to marketing campaigns that contradict the principles of diversity, equity and inclusion.

This paper contributes to the literature on brand transgressions related to diversity, equity and inclusion values by exploring their impact on consumer–brand relationships and highlighting the pivotal role of sympathy in perpetuating negative consequences.

The purpose of this study is to define and analyse the emergence of collaborative engagement platforms (CEPs) as part of a rising platformisation phenomenon. Contrary to previous literature on engagement platforms (EPs), this study distinguishes between formalised and self-organised EPs and sheds light on collaborative EPs on which heterogeneous actors operate without central control by legislated firm actors.

Drawing on institutional work theory, this paper explores the institutional rules, norms and practices involved in the emergence of a new platform. This paper implements a longitudinal case study of a local food network called REKO and explores how engagement practices and institutional work patterns catalysed its emergence during 2013–2020.

The findings of this study show that actors engaged within the REKO platform participated in institutional work patterns of disruption, creation and maintenance, which drove the development of the platform and ensured its viability.

This paper encourages future research to further explore how different types of EPs emerge and function.

The rise of CEPs pushes the dominant managerial orientation to progress from the management “of” a platform to managing “within” a platform. For managers, this means developing novel practices for engaging and committing a versatile set of actors to nurture open-ended, multi-sided collaboration.

This study contributes by conceptualising different types of platforms with a particular focus on CEPs and explicating the engagement practices and institutional work patterns that catalyse their emergence.

This paper aims to illustrate the scope and challenges of using computer-aided content analysis in international marketing with the aim to capture consumer sentiments about COVID-19 from multi-lingual tweets.

The study is based on some 35 million original COVID-19-related tweets. The study methodology illustrates the use of supervised machine learning and artificial neural network techniques to conduct extensive information extraction.

The authors identified more than two million tweets from six countries and categorized them into PESTEL (i.e. Political, Economic, Social, Technological, Environmental and Legal) dimensions. The extracted consumer sentiments and associated emotions show substantial differences across countries. Our analyses highlight opportunities and challenges inherent in using multi-lingual online sentiment analysis in international marketing. Based on these insights, several future research directions are proposed.

First, the authors contribute to methodology development in international marketing by providing a “use-case” for computer-aided text mining in a multi-lingual context. Second, the authors add to the knowledge on differences in COVID-19-related consumer sentiments in different countries. Third, the authors provide avenues for future research on the analysis of unstructured multi-media posts.

The role of retailers in influencing consumer attitude during a brand scandal is quite complex, as retailers are in direct contact with both marketers and consumers. The purpose of the exploratory research is to propose a theoretical model to capture the influences retailers exercise on consumers during brand scandals.

A qualitative approach has been adopted in the study. The study employs the grounded theory approach on the data collected by conducting in-depth interviews with 25 retailers.

Four contextual conditions and six behavioral antecedents of the retailer's role in the context of the brand scandal were identified. Then, the study finds that companies tend to follow two broad approaches during a brand scandal to address retailers' queries and apprehensions. On these bases, the study proposes a six-pronged typology to better understand retailers' role in shaping consumers' brand perception.

Existing literature has not paid adequate attention to this aspect of retailers' role in influencing consumer choices during brand scandal. To the best of the authors' knowledge, there is no prior research which investigates the role and influence of retailers in shaping consumer attitude during brand scandals. It is important to underline that the current research advocates retailers' significant role during a performance-based brand scandal. Specifically, the authors explored a health-related defective scandal of a well-known food brand. In addition, the study focuses on traditional grocery retailers, which already have special relationships with their consumers. Based on retailer perspectives, the authors' contribution is also updating the discussion of branding theory in case of scandals. The identified variables and constructs may be used for empirical investigation on the role of retailers in shaping consumer attitudes toward the scandalized brand.