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This study aims to apply McCornack’s (1992) information manipulation theory to the context of fraud and investigates the effects of culture on perceived deceptiveness.

In total, 400 Chinese consumers and an equal-size sample of Canadian consumers were recruited to fill an online survey. The survey integrates four scenarios of insurance fraud and measures of perceived deceptiveness, cultural tightness and horizontal-vertical idiocentrism allocentrism, in addition to some control variables.

Results show that at the societal level of culture, perceived deceptiveness is higher in individualistic than in collectivistic cultures. When accounting for the level of situational constraint, cultural tightness was found to magnify the perceived deceptiveness. At the individual level of culture, vertical-allocentrism and vertical-idiocentrism were found to weigh against the perception of deceptiveness.

Understanding cultural differences in perceived deceptiveness is helpful to spot sources of consumers’ vulnerability to fraud tolerance among a culturally diverse public.

This paper aims to use a negative perspective to investigate the effects of perceived deceptiveness and pressure on consumer donation and their underlying mechanisms in the context of asking for donations.

Study 1 used a qualitative approach to clarify the categories and dimensions of the research variables and explore their relationships. Study 2 empirically tested the hypotheses by combining a fictitious context and a real context related to asking for donations.

In the qualitative study, the data provided sufficient evidence to support the relationships in the theoretical model. The results of the empirical study showed that perceived deceptiveness negatively influences consumer donation, while perceived pressure positively affects donation amount. Notably, the discomfort of potential donors plays an important role in mediating these relationships.

This paper suggests a way for charities to raise more money, i.e. by cooperating with companies with good reputations, limited scandals and transparent supervisory mechanisms. Meanwhile, solicitors should pay attention to the adverse effects of discomfort to avoid generating resentment among consumers.

First, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to use a negative perspective to examine the effects of perceived deceptiveness and pressure on consumer donation. Second, the use of cognitive dissonance theory to highlight the role of discomfort represents a novel contribution to the literature. Third, using a mixed-methods approach to achieve a robust conclusion provides valuable insights and extends the existing literature.

This paper aims to explore content-related factors that can foster beneficial consumer responses to one kind of native advertising: in-feed sponsored articles. Specifically, studies examine how informational versus entertaining content interact with the content’s brand image congruity to affect brand attitudes through brand trustworthiness and identify the roles played by advertising value and perceived deceptiveness.

Experimental survey-based research with a between-subjects design was conducted, manipulating the content type (entertaining/informational) and brand image congruity (low/high) and measuring brand attitude, brand trustworthiness, advertising value and perceived deceptiveness. Participants were recruited via Amazon’s MTurk, and data were collected via online surveys in Qualtrics.

Results reveal that high brand image congruity generates more favorable brand attitudes for informational in-feed sponsored articles, and low brand image congruity generates more favorable brand attitudes for entertaining in-feed sponsored articles, through perceptions of brand trustworthiness. Enhanced brand trustworthiness results from increased advertising value for informational in-feed sponsored articles that are high in brand image congruity. Reduced brand trustworthiness results from increased perceptions of deceptiveness for entertaining in-feed sponsored articles that are high in brand image congruity.

While much academic research on native advertising focuses on its negative aspects, the present research identifies content-related factors that foster beneficial consumer responses to in-feed sponsored articles, including enhanced perceptions of brand trustworthiness and more favorable brand attitudes, due to differences in consumers’ perceptions of advertising value and deceptiveness. Managerially, this work can help branded content creators design effective in-feed sponsored articles.

To influence consumer perceptions, firms often manipulate online product reviews on their own websites or third-party forums by anonymously adding positive reviews, deleting unfavorable reviews or offering rewards to encourage favorable reviews. This study aims to investigate consumer perceptions of online review deceptions and how these perceptions influence their subsequent purchase behavior. In particular, consumers’ awareness, suspicion and detection are studied and specific manipulation tactics are evaluated.

Both qualitative and quantitative studies are relied upon to understand consumer perceptions of online review deceptions. In-depth interviews with 16 experienced online shoppers were conducted to collect the illustrative accounts concerning consumer awareness of online review deceptions, their suspicion, detection and evaluation of different manipulation tactics. A survey of 199 consumers was then followed to validate and corroborate the findings from the qualitative study and generalize the interview results onto the general public.

The results from in-depth interviews suggest that consumers take a negative view toward online review deceptions, but the degree of negativity varies across different manipulation tactics. Moreover, different types of manipulations vary in terms of perceived deceptiveness, ease of detection and unethicality, as well as their effect on consumer purchase intention and perceived helpfulness of online product reviews. The findings from the survey further confirmed the qualitative findings.

The findings have a number of meaningful managerial implications for industry associations and policymakers on whether and how to regulate online review deceptions.

This study applies and extends information manipulation theory and deception detection literature to an online context to increase the richness of the relevant theories. It is among the first to empirically investigate online review deceptions from a consumer’s perspective, as opposed to a firm’s perspective as previous studies have done.

The present study aims to demonstrate that providing a free gift upon purchase may induce consumers to devaluate the main product promoted with the offer. The mediating role of persuasion knowledge and the moderating role of consumer shopping orientation are also examined.

Three studies with between-subject designs are conducted to test the influence of product–gift fit on evaluations of the promoted product.

When a low-fit gift (vs a high-fit gift) is provided as a promotional offer, consumers’ evaluations of the promoted product are undermined. These negative effects are driven by consumers’ activation of persuasion knowledge on the company’s ulterior motive to entice consumers to make a purchase. Such devaluation effects occur especially for consumers with a task-focused shopping orientation, whereas they are mitigated for consumers with an experiential shopping orientation.

This research extends the conceptualization of product–gift fit and challenges the common claim that free gift promotions maintain the value of the promoted product. By instigating a mechanism underlying consumers’ objections toward low-fit gifts, this research implies that consumers may think of an implicit cost to a free offer based on their knowledge of companies’ tactics.

Marketers should be aware of the fact that a certain gift may come at a cost for companies and bring about negative inferences regarding the main product. They need not only to select a gift that drives sales but also to be cautious about the gift’s influence on perceptions of the main product. Marketers should ensure that the gift has a good fit with the product while trying to discover a unique gift for consumers. Marketers should also provide an offer that matches shopping orientation of the target consumers.

This research reveals counterevidence to prior research claiming that free gift promotion does not hurt the perceived value of the promoted product. It enhances a theoretical understanding of devaluation effects and provides useful implications for designing and targeting free gift promotion.

The study aims to drive conceptual clarity around resistance to information technology projects, integrating multiple facets of the phenomenon from earlier studies.

The study conducts a meta-synthesis of qualitative studies on resistance to technology projects; it analyzes those studies at a case-specific level, compares and contrasts emergent concepts against each other, and “translates” those to the rest of the studies. The study uses the seven-step meta-ethnography method by Noblit and Hare to reciprocally translate emergent concepts to construct the conceptual model.

Through meta-synthesis, the study derives a new conceptual model for resistance to information technology projects, exemplifying how the identified antecedents create user resistance and how the phenomenon progresses within organizations.

This study enriches the observations and conclusions of past individual studies while explicating various facets of the mechanisms that generate and progress technology resistance within organizations. It offers fresh insights into the equivocal nature of the phenomenon and the distinctive ways it progresses from individual to group level.

Many ambitious and costly digital transformation efforts do not succeed due to user resistance. Understanding the mechanisms that create user resistance can help organizations manage technology projects better, thereby reducing the technology assimilation gap and protecting returns on related investments.

There have been extensive studies on technology acceptance (enablers) within organizations, while those relating to technology inhibitors are somewhat limited. However, the symmetry of understanding between enablers and inhibitors is vital for organizations to assimilate promising technologies and transform their business models. This model uses a new lens of sensemaking theory to explain how the antecedents trigger perceived threats and resistance behavior; it highlights the nuances around the development of resistance within individuals and its progression to groups. The resultant model offers better generalizability in organizational contexts.

This study aims to explore the role of brand personality traits in explaining how different levels of brand favorability evoke affect from and forge connections to consumers.

The authors used a quantitative approach consisting of within-subjects (Study 1) and between-subjects (Study 2) experimental designs. Mediation analyses were tested using OLS regression with the MEMORE and PROCESS macros.

Findings suggest increases in brand excitement and sincerity to be related to differences in positive affect evoked by favorable and unfavorable brands; decreases in brand sincerity to be related to differences in negative affect between favorable and unfavorable brands (Study 1); brand competence and excitement to be related to the relationship between brand favorability and self-brand connection; and brand competence and excitement to best distinguish favorable brands from unfavorable brands (Study 2).

These results support the importance of brand personality traits that are considered to be universally positive and provide managers with an initial roadmap for which brand personality traits should be prioritized when communicating with consumers.

This study aims to investigate Muslims’ online infaq intention during COVID-19 deadly outbreak. This study examined the model comprising two major theories, namely, the theory of reasoned action (TRA) with additional Muslim intrinsic religiosity and social presence theory (SPT).

A structural equation modeling (SEM) approach is used to test the measurement and structural model. In the structural model, SEM is chosen due to its effectivity in estimating direct and indirect effects in a single model. An online questionnaire is distributed to respondents who are purposively selected all over Indonesia regions comprising all major islands. In total, there are 571 respondents collected; however, only 560 of them are usable.

This study shows that all hypotheses generated from the TRA and SPT significantly affect online infaq intention. Surprisingly, Muslim intrinsic religiosity does not affect both attitude toward online infaq and online infaq intention. To further explain the result, a post hoc analysis is conducted. Accordingly, it is found that Muslim intrinsic religiosity has an indirect significant effect on online infaq intention through social presence.

This study has several limitations. First, even though the sample already represented all parts of Indonesia, the sample is distributed mainly to those live in Java Island. Second, due to its difficulty in pursuing proportional distribution of the sample, the results are more subjective to more dominant respondent demographics. Third, this study captures cross-sectioned phenomena of an online infaq intention during COVID-19 pandemic. Fourth, as the topic of this study is concerned about Islamic charity, the Qur’an- and sunnah-based research framework will make this study more valuable. However, such a framework has not been widely developed.

This study provides a managerial implication for online infaq fundraisers in Indonesia, in which trustworthiness and “social touch” are important to drive the Muslims in making a monetary donation. The online infaq can be an efficient Islamic philanthropic tool to solve social problems during the COVID-19 outbreak. Therefore, the central authority should encourage profit and non-profit social organizations in Indonesia to make a strategic collaboration in providing online infaq service and its distribution. Collaboration may increase perceived trust and social presence.

Due to a limited study on the topic of online infaq behavioral intention during COVID-19 situation, therefore, this study provides added value to the literature by examining factors determining online infaq intention during COVID-19 pandemic in Indonesia. This study combines the extended TRA and SPT in a single model.

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of unsubstantiated claims that a product is “ecological.”

A between-subjects experimental design was used in which the absence versus the presence of an (unsubstantiated) ecological claim regarding a product was a manipulated factor. The design comprised four products, representing non-ingestible/ingestible products and familiar/unfamiliar brands. These two aspects were seen as potentially moderating factors with respect to the impact of ecological claims.

The results show that ecological product claims boosted beliefs that a product is indeed ecological. This influence was not moderated by non-ingestible/ingestible and familiar/unfamiliar product characteristics. Moreover, ecological product claims enhanced conceptually related product beliefs, namely, beliefs that the product is natural, environmentally friendly and healthy. Ecological claims also had a positive impact on the attitude toward the product.

The results imply that influencers who want a receiver to believe that a product is ecological can expect to be successful by merely claiming that a product is ecological.

From a societal point of view, however, and in an era in which “alternative facts” and “post-truths” are becoming the subject of increasing concern, the results are problematic, because they underline that customers can be made to believe in claims even though no supporting evidence is provided.

The results imply that influencers who want a receiver to believe that a product is ecological can expect to be successful by merely claiming that a product is ecological. From a societal point of view, however, and in an era in which “alternative facts” and “post-truths” are becoming the subject of increasing concern, the results are problematic, because they underline that customers can be made to believe in claims even though no supporting evidence is provided.

The paper explores consumers' responsiveness to marketing communication about various services and products in three different media. Communication value is seen as an element of service value and is measured as consumer responsiveness to marketing communication.

The empirical data is based on interviews with consumers concerning their perceptions of the relevance and acceptance of marketing communication of 15 different services/products in three media, traditional direct mail, e‐mail and SMS. The consumers have responded to scenarios of marketing communication.

Findings showed differences in consumer responsiveness to different services and physical products. The overall responsiveness was relatively low for the offerings in all media. A division into responsiveness groups demonstrates that there are also consumers that are positive to communication. The share of positive consumers varies considerably over offerings.

The present study did not account for some important aspects in marketing communication. Firstly, the communication was not considered as part of a firm's integrated marketing communication. The creative element was omitted even if it in practice is important in planned marketing communication. Moreover, the respondents have evaluated scenarios based on their general attitudes toward the communication. The consumer's relationship to the company/brand/offering was excluded. However, despite these limitations it shows that it is necessary to consider that products and services may have different responsiveness patterns.

The emergence of digital media has increased the number of ways to interact with consumers. The variation in the responsiveness to products and services for different media indicates that it is important to have an understanding of how the media adds and subtracts value. The analysis points to the need for companies to measure the responsiveness of consumers in order to understand and enhance consumer perceived value of the communication as a part of the service.

The paper contributes to service marketing research by introducing the communication value and responsiveness conceptualisations that have an interest both for academic research and practitioners. This includes a new perspective on the role of communication on one hand and on the empirical findings of differences in digital interactive media on the other hand.