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This study aims to examine the moderating role of private label product type (organic vs non-organic) on the relationships between trust transfer, price fairness, perceived value and brand loyalty.

The empirical data were gathered with the structured questionnaire from two groups of respondents who had previously purchased organic and conventional private label products. The direct, mediating and moderating effects were analysed with structural equation modelling.

The findings confirmed the trust transfer between the retail store and private label brand. The results revealed that both store trust and trust in private label brand positively influence price fairness and which, in turn, elicits higher perceived value. Perceived value was also found to influence private label brand loyalty. The multi-group analyses revealed that the magnitude of the trust transfer was accentuated by organic food private label. Furthermore, the relation between trust in private label brand, price fairness and perceived value was also greater in organic food private label.

This study utilized the trust transfer theory and equity theory as a theoretical foundation to provide novel insights into the moderating influence of private label product type on the relationships between the antecedents of private label brand loyalty. The results of the research can help retailers to develop successful private label brand marketing strategies.

Consumers consider retailers' standard private labels (PLs) as relevant choices, compared to national brands (NBs), and their demand for private label products has increased significantly over the past decade. At the same time, PLs have undergone a profound transformation as retailers have enhanced their quality. The goal of this research is to investigate the impact of claims used to highlight the enhanced quality of standard PL products on consumers' perceptions and behaviours.

A between-subjects experiment, set in a store laboratory, was used to study consumers' perceptions and behaviours. The impact of six non-nutrition claims – linked, according to the self-other trade-off, either to concern for consumers' health (internal to the self) or for the environment (external to the self) – on consumers' reactions has been studied. Then, the data collected were analysed with partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM).

This research indicates that health claims retailers make to echo consumers' own concerns have positive impacts at three basic levels: the brand, the retail chain and the store. It also highlights the central role of trust in standard PLs, which, once activated by the non-nutrition claims made by retailers and the increase in the quality of standard PLs thus inferred by consumers, can improve consumers' attitude toward the food retailers' stores and reinforce their intentions to visit again and recommend them.

From a theoretical perspective, this research supplements cue utilisation theory as it applies this framework to standard PLs and establishes that consumers use extrinsic cues (i.e. communications on non-nutrition claims) to infer the quality of standard PL brand products. It also complements scant studies on retailers' corporate social responsibility (CSR) with quality aspects of their own labels as it specifies the levers (i.e. the claims) to use to improve retailers' CSR image and consumers' behaviours.

From a managerial perspective, this research highlights the superiority of retailers' claims related to consumer health and, more specifically, of claims highlighting the natural origin of ingredients. For this specific assertion, trust in the standard PL and the CSR image of the brand have direct and indirect impacts, via attitude toward the stores, on consumers' intentions to return to and to recommend these stores.

Despite the increasing importance of products as effective tools for communicating companies' CSR policies, scant research has been conducted on consumers' reactions to non-nutrition claims, which are increasingly prominent in the marketplace.

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.

The purpose of this study is to explore the comparative effects of mainstream celebrities and social media influencers on consumer advocacy and relationship intentions. The study also examines the direct and serial mediation effects on those relationships.

The survey questionnaire was used to collect data from 718 respondents throughout Malaysia, with convenience and snowball sampling techniques employed. The data were analyzed based on the structural equation modeling (SEM) approach through the AMOS version 24. The PROCESS MACRO v-4.20 was applied to evaluate mediating effects in the model.

The results reveal that celebrity endorsers' involvement in social media significantly influences the uses of social media, which also impacts the attitudes and, subsequently, consumer relationship and advocacy intentions. The study found that mainstream celebrities and social media influencers effectively promote brands, and it discovered insignificant differences in their effects on the analyzed relationships.

This study has been conducted on consumers in Malaysia; it may have different effects on consumers in other countries.

Brand managers and policymakers may benefit from following the study's guidelines for making consumer relationship and advocacy intentions by celebrity endorsers and uses of social media.

The brand community can benefit from tightening their social bondage by sharing and managing crucial information from celebrities and using social media.

The study explores the effects of mainstream celebrities on consumer relationship and advocacy intentions using social media networks and managing consumer attitudes.

This paper aims to illuminate a mechanism of positive word of mouth (PWOM) toward mobile banking (m-banking) by extending the fairness theory (FAT) with satisfaction (SAT) and value-in-use (VIU).

A research model is examined by obtaining data from a web-based survey of 398 respondents who have used m-banking in Vietnam. AMOS 21.0 software is applied to analyze the hypothetical model with covariance-based structural equation modeling.

The results reveal that price fairness (PRI) is of primary importance of fairness perception (FAI) in m-banking, followed by informative fairness, procedural fairness, interactional fairness and distributive fairness. Furthermore, SAT and VIU play a vital role in developing PWOM. In addition, FAI exerts a positive influence on SAT and VIU.

This study would help practitioners have the deep insights into affective and behavioral responses among customers and develop effective marketing trajectories to spur SAT, VIU and PWOM toward m-banking. The results hint that marketers may be tempted to simultaneously focus on the important dimensions of FAIs as they are indispensable to derive SAT and VIU from a customer perspective. This research assists governments and banks to adopt training programs and policies that will incite customer behaviors toward m-banking.

The value of the work lies in the combination between FAT with SAT to enlighten FAI and PWOM toward m-banking in a developing country. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this work is among the first to consider VIU that motivates PWOM. Moreover, this study links PRI to FAI to understand PWOM among Vietnamese customers.

The purpose of this study is to understand the psychological mechanism that affects consumer trust by focusing on the formation and influence process of psychological contracts, and taking this opportunity, explore the influence paths of food quality, food safety and service quality on consumer trust in the online food market, and provide theoretical suggestions for building trust in food businesses' consumers.

This study is based on an empirical investigation and uses partial least square structural equation modeling for analysis. Survey data were collected online from 359 APP users of online food transaction platforms in China.

Food quality, food safety and service quality influence consumer trust through the mediating effects of relational and transactional psychological contracts. However, the differences between these influencing paths are obvious and shift with changes in the marketing channels.

This study contributes to the body of consumer trust research by exploring online food transactions as an emerging trend in China. Some optimization strategies for food quality, food safety and service quality are provided for enterprises involved in online food transactions.

This is a pioneering study revealing psychological contracts as a missing but significant mediator between consumer trust and its antecedents.

This study aims to investigate the impact of social risk and inter-tier brand competition across traditional retailers and discounters on consumers' purchase intentions in the UK.

The authors conduct a 2 (social risk) × 3 (brand type) × 2 (retailer type) between-subjects design (n = 309; UK) experiment employing a Qualtrics online panel in the UK.

The study shows that while premium private labels (PPLs) are on par with national brands, discounter's PPLs outperform mainstream retailer's PPLs. Furthermore, consumers appear to purchase standard private labels and PPLs for themselves when shopping at a discounter but turn to national brands when shopping for socially risky situations.

While Tesco's premium (Tesco Finest*) and standard private label (Tesco Everyday Value) explicitly make reference to the retailer's name, for Lidl's premium (Deluxe) and standard private label (e.g. Milbona), the discounter's name is not visible. This is something this study did not control for.

Given that Lidl has opened its first US store in 2017 with ambitious expansion plans, our findings provide in particular practical guidelines for how to promote PPLs in countries where the discounter landscape is less saturated than in Germany.

This study provides insights into the understanding of the influence of social risk on purchasing intentions of premium private labels vs standard private labels vs national brands offered by mainstream retailers or discounters in the UK.

This research attempts to investigate the differences of consumer perceptions on product quality, price, brand leadership and brand personality among national brands, international private labels and local private labels. It aims to use product categories as the moderator of the preceding perceptions.

Data were collected outside the entrances of the main rail station of Taipei, Taiwan. A systematic sampling was adopted and 254 questionnaires were eventually collected.

The findings revealed that on the whole national brands were perceived as significantly superior to international private labels, while international private labels were perceived as being superior to local private labels in terms of all perceptions except price perception. The findings also revealed that product categories moderated price and brand personality perceptions across the three brand types, while product categories failed to moderate the effect of the three brands types on quality and brand leadership perceptions.

This research represents one of the few pioneer works that empirically investigate the aforementioned issues.

Eliminating overpackaging is a central question in sustainable development, and poses a dilemma for retailers. Since packaging is a differentiation tool for private labels, eliminating it could limit the capacity to give those labels an equivalent image to national brands just as much as it could be a sustainable development opportunity and a positioning instrument. Drawing on the attribution theory framework, the purpose of this paper is to examine how eliminating overpackaging influences consumers’ perception of products sold under generic and mimic private labels, and their purchase intention.

This research uses a 2 (overpackaging: present vs absent)×2 (brand concept: generic vs mimic private label) between-subjects experiment on a convenience sample of 217 French consumers. The conceptual framework was tested using ANCOVA and mediation analyses.

The experiment shows that eliminating overpackaging does have an influence on mimic private labels’ image, particularly on perceived quality, convenience and environmental friendliness. The authors also find that this influence negatively transfers to purchase intention for mimic private labels through lower perceived quality and convenience. No such effect appears for generic private labels’ image.

This study addresses an issue as yet unexplored in marketing – the effect of overpackaging on private label products – and proposes areas for managerial and societal reflection relevant to retail chains interested in eliminating overpackaging.

Private label brands have achieved double-digit growth in the Thai market. To expand market share, private label brands need to identify clearly what triggers consumer purchases. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between consumer decision-making styles and actual purchases of private label products in a Thai market context, using price consciousness, quality consciousness, brand consciousness, value consciousness, and risk perception as factors for investigation.

Responses from a total of 240 respondents from four product categories were collected through mall intercepts in five hypermarkets and supermarkets in Bangkok, and a regression-based model was employed to identify the associations.

The results indicate a significant relationship between price-conscious and brand-conscious consumers, and private label purchases and show that the relationship between quality-conscious, value-conscious, and risk-adverse consumers and private label purchases is insignificant. It concludes that price-conscious consumers are the ones most likely to purchase private label products in low-differentiation categories. An opposite relationship prevails for consumers who are brand conscious in low-differentiation, high-risk, and low-risk categories.

The outcomes of this research suggest that private label brands should maintain a low-price strategy while striving for continuous improvement in quality to capture additional quality- and value-conscious consumers. It also suggests that national brands invest in brand-building strategies rather than competing on price.

This study enhances an understanding of consumer decision-making characteristics for actual private label purchases rather than the intention to purchase and is useful in suggesting an alternative to socio-economic factors as a method of identifying private label purchasers.