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This article investigated the relationship between loneliness and anthropomorphic products.

The authors conducted three studies to examine their hypotheses.

The authors confirmed that highly lonely people would like to seek for social relationship. What's more, they may try to compensate by creating a sense of connection with nonhuman products so they will prefer anthropomorphic products. Further, the authors demonstrated that information framework can moderate this effect. Highly lonely consumers would increase their preference to anthropomorphic product under promotion-focus information, whereas they would decrease their preference to anthropomorphic product under prevention-focus information. These effects do not exist in lowly lonely consumers. At the same time, the authors demonstrate that the effect is mediated by perceived social connection.

This article contributes to loneliness literature in the consumer behavior field and proves the moderation effect of the information framework, which can deepen our understanding of the relationship between loneliness and anthropomorphic products.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate what may influence participation in mobile collaborative consumption (CC). In particular, the authors investigate the effects of individual sociability and psychological antecedents including enjoyment, social connection, altruistic motivation, reputation, trust and embarrassment on the participation intention in this emerging phenomenon, as well as their relationships.

Survey approach was employed to validate the research model.

Hedonic factor, i.e. enjoyment, and social-related factors including altruistic motivation, reputation and embarrassment emerge as important antecedents of participation in mobile CC. On top of these factors, individual sociability plays an important role, by acting as a direct antecedent of the dependent variable, while also influencing their perceived greater altruistic motivation and reputation from participating in the CC. Yet, sociability has no significant effect on perceived enjoyment and embarrassment associated with the activity, suggesting that addressing these factors may encourage individuals with low sociability to participate.

This study taps into mobile technology to support CC in daily consumption activities, and highlights the factors that influence people’s participation in such activities. More importantly, the findings suggest that while it is more likely for individuals with high sociability to participate in this emerging form of social activities, for consumers with low sociability, addressing the enjoyment aspect and embarrassment issue of the activities may nonetheless promote their participation.

This study adopts self-determination theory and stimulus-organism-response framework to develop a model that explores the motivations of such donors by considering their self-determination needs and extrinsic and intrinsic motivations.

Based on online survey data collected from 436 crowdfunding donors in China, this study follows a structural equation modeling analysis to test hypotheses.

The results indicate that perceived ease of use, perceived self-efficacy and social connection have positive effects on the donation intentions of backers through a combination of extrinsic and intrinsic motivations.

The findings shed light on various extrinsic and intrinsic motivations advancing knowledge of individual fund motivation in donation-based crowdfunding and provide guidelines for the development of donation-based crowdfunding theory and practice.

Recent years have documented the growing interest in using WhatsApp in higher education. However, the determinants of students’ satisfaction and loyalty towards WhatsApp groups have received less attention. This study aims to extend the Delone and McLean information system success model by incorporating social and emotional factors to investigate the drivers of satisfaction.

Data were collected through questionnaires completed by 308 undergraduate students. The partial least squares technique was used for data analysis.

The findings reveal that information quality, trust in members and social usefulness play crucial roles in shaping students’ satisfaction and loyalty to WhatsApp groups. System quality has no significant effect on satisfaction. Furthermore, emotional connection negatively moderates the relationship between social usefulness and satisfaction.

The findings of this study will be useful for educators and practitioners seeking to integrate WhatsApp into their pedagogical repertoire. The results demonstrate the importance of considering the social and emotional needs of students in addition to the quality of the information provided.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first attempt to integrate system characteristics, particularly with social and emotional factors. Furthermore, this study extends the literature on WhatsApp use in higher education by testing the drivers of students’ satisfaction and loyalty.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the influence of perceived quality and customer engagement on perceived value and satisfaction in a model to evaluate loyalty in users of fitness centres.

Through an online questionnaire, the study uses a large sample of 6,584 users from 44 low-cost fitness centres from different cities in Spain. After validating the measurement model, the hypotheses were tested through structural equation (SEM) modelling technique, noting the existence of significant relationships.

The results showed that two dimensions of perceived quality have a positive influence on perceived value (employees) and satisfaction (facilities). However, the enthused participation dimension of customer engagement also indicated an important impact on perceived value and satisfaction, thus confirming the influence of this dimension in the context of sports services for users' loyalty.

With a large sample, the importance of this study lies in the use of strategies to achieve a greater influence on perceived value and satisfaction, with the aim of increasing customer loyalty in fitness centres. This is why, in addition to the service quality, the influence of the customer engagement dimensions is included, which have not been previously analysed in this emerging business model.

El propósito de este trabajo es analizar la influencia de la calidad percibida y el compromiso del cliente sobre el valor percibido y la satisfacción en un modelo para evaluar la lealtad en usuarios de centros de fitness.

A través de un cuestionario online, el estudio utiliza una muestra amplia de 6.584 usuarios de 44 centros de fitness low-cost de diferentes ciudades de España. Tras validar el modelo de medida, las hipótesis fueron contrastadas utilizando análisis de ecuaciones estructurales, observándose la existencia de relaciones significativas.

Los resultados mostraron que dos dimensiones de la calidad percibida tienen una influencia positiva en el valor percibido (empleados) y la satisfacción (instalaciones). Sin embargo, la dimensión de participación entusiasta del compromiso del cliente también indicó un impacto importante en el valor percibido y la satisfacción, lo que confirma la influencia de esta dimensión en el contexto de los servicios deportivos para la fidelización de los usuarios.

Con una extensa muestra, la importancia de este estudio radica en el uso de estrategias para lograr una mayor influencia en el valor percibido y la satisfacción, con el objetivo de fidelizar a los clientes de los centros de fitness. Por eso, además de la calidad del servicio, se incluye la influencia de las dimensiones del compromiso con el cliente, que no han sido analizadas previamente en este modelo de negocio emergente.

The surge in coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases in India raises the need to study the variables that affect product and category choices, consumer buying preferences and consumrs' future spending. The purpose of the research is to analyse the purchasing behaviour of Indian consumers with regard to health and hygiene products, taking into consideration the impact of the current pandemic crisis.

Using purposive sampling criteria, a web-based questionnaire was circulated and a total of 411 responses were received.

The results assert that variables such as awareness of social distancing, brand-cause fit, word-of-mouth (WOM) publicity, altruist attribution, perceived usefulness and social norms have significant impact on trust and perceived values, which ultimately leads to consumer's purchase intention towards health and hygiene products. In addition, the model detects the moderating role of health consciousness.

The empirical findings will help marketers in designing their strategies to enhance consumer purchase intention with regard to health and hygiene products in the current pandemic situation.

The study enriches the emerging literature with regard to the impact of COVID-19 on health and hygiene products retailing.

This article aims to report the results of an international survey (USA and New Zealand) that tested relationship effects on ethical behaviour. The findings point to the impact of perceived social bonds on ethical decision‐making. They also reinforce the cultural specificity of ethics. Both these findings confirm the importance of participatory, ground‐up, discussion‐based approaches to developing organisational ethical standards. The article discusses some implications of these findings for internal communicators involved with ethics programmes in organisations.

The research used an established scenario‐style survey to test respondents' ethical decision‐making behaviours under different circumstances.

This article discusses two results that will impact on internal communication approaches to stimulating ethical attitudes and behaviours: the positive influence on people making ethics‐related decisions of a perceived relationship with those affected by the decision, and cultural differences.

The research is limited by the functionalist, hypothetical, descriptive survey design which identifies responses but not motivations, and findings are limited to the specific scenarios described. The results show the importance of future research to elaborate connections between perceived relationships, ethics, and culture.

The paper offers practitioners a research method, which they can use to stimulate personal and group reflection among staff about ethical decision‐making and the different factors that can influence ethical choices. In confirming a connection between perceived relationships and choosing more ethical behaviour towards others, the findings may also reinforce the importance of internal relationship building as an important aspect of organisational investment in ethics‐related outcomes such as fraud reduction and reputation management.

The research provides evidence for some connections that have not previously been explored in the organisational context, between perceived relationships and ethical outcomes. It also confirms the cultural diversity of ethics, but shows that enhancing perceived relationships may help bridge cultural differences on ethical norms.

This research focuses on the role of product acquisition cues in positive word-of-mouth (PWOM) content on social media, comparing the characteristics of different sources of product acquisition (purchased vs. gifted) and exploring whether and how they affect consumers' reliance on word-of-mouth (WOM).

The research model was developed based on the mental imagery theory. Two offline experiments and two online experiments were used to test the proposed hypotheses.

The results show that, compared to the purchased source, the gifted source evokes more positive mental imagery and greater emotional attachment to the product, resulting in greater consumer reliance on PWOM. In addition, the effect of the source of product acquisition on reliance on PWOM was stronger for experiential (vs. material) products and for consumers with higher interdependent (vs. independent) self-construal.

This research highlights the role of product acquisition cues in PWOM in influencing consumers' evaluation of WOM, while also revealing the processes inherent in how consumers process information through mental imagery. The findings provide a more comprehensive understanding of the antecedents of reliance on WOM and offer new insights and recommendations for management practitioners.

With little empirical attention devoted to the consequences of loneliness in the workplace, the present study investigated the effect of workplace loneliness on creative performance, organizational citizenship behaviors and work-family family conflict. Furthermore, psychological capital was examined as a moderator of these relationships.

The proposed model was tested in two different studies on a sample of employees from manufacturing (Sample 1: n = 379) and service (Sample 2: n = 559) organizations in India. Data were collected using self-administered questionnaires at two different points in time. Confirmatory factor analysis and multiple hierarchical regressions were used to test the hypothesized model.

While workplace loneliness was found to negatively affect creative performance and organizational citizenship behavior, its impact on work-family conflict was positive. Results revealed a significant moderating effect of psychological capital on these relationships. Psychological capital buffered the impact of loneliness in a way that the detrimental effect of loneliness on performance behaviors was less severe for the individuals with high psychological capital.

The study makes an original and noteworthy contribution to the loneliness and negative emotions literature by advancing the understanding around the consequences and boundary conditions of loneliness in the workplace. It carries important implications for managing loneliness in the organizations by identifying psychological capital as an important personal resource for mitigating the effects of workplace loneliness on creativity and extra-role behaviors.