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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of brand strategies and spokesperson expertise on consumer responses to hypermarket private-label products by combining concepts from consumer attitude change, resistance to persuasion and construal level theory (CLT).

Two experiments were conducted to test the propositions.

Consumers perceived the low-price (low-quality) characteristic of private-label products as a high-level (low-level) construal consideration when forming purchase decisions. Product relevance negatively affected consumers’ perceived product distance. Compared with store brands, separate brands enhanced consumer product attitudes and purchase intentions. Brand strategies and product distance affected consumer message-processing mindset (i.e. resistant to persuasion or open to persuasion) when processing advertisements, ultimately moderating the effect of spokesperson expertise.

The findings are useful for hypermarkets seeking to implement brand strategies and select spokespersons for private-label products. Additionally, the findings show that advertisers should design advertising elements to match consumers’ construal approaches to product-related information.

This study contrasts two common hypermarket brand strategies, identifies the construal levels corresponding to the dual roles of private-label products and expands CLT dimensions. Additionally, the results bridge two research approaches (persuasion and resistance to persuasion) and demonstrate the pivotal influence of brand strategies. The findings also advance understanding of the effects of spokesperson expertise and contribute to resistance theory by showing how to effectively reduce attitude certainty after resistance to persuasion.

This paper aims to investigate the effect of product-related description abstractness/concreteness on perceived trustworthiness and the role of consumer product expertise and shopping-stage mindset in the persuasiveness of abstract vs concrete product descriptions.

Two online experiments were conducted: Study 1 (description abstractness – manipulated between-subject; consumer product expertise, perceived trustworthiness, purchase intent – measured), Study 2 (consumer shopping-stage mindset – manipulated between-subject; description abstractness – manipulated within-subject; consumer product expertise, perceived trustworthiness, abstract/concrete description preference – measured).

The negative effect of the abstractness (abstract descriptions vs the ones supplemented with relevant product details) on description trustworthiness was evidenced in Study 1. Trustworthiness was positively related to purchase intent, especially for high product expertise. Study 2 replicated the effect of product description abstractness on its trustworthiness in terms of two other forms of abstractness (abstract descriptions vs the ones supplemented with irrelevant product details and product benefits vs attributes). The goal-oriented (vs comparative) mindset had a positive effect on the benefit (vs attribute) description preference, especially for high product expertise.

For marketers, the results suggest the positive consequences of presenting concrete information on product attributes and the conditions enhancing the effectiveness of presenting product benefits.

The paper integrates the existing views on consumer response to abstract vs concrete information (lexical abstractness/concreteness, means-end chain theory) and links them to consumer product expertise and shopping-stage mindset.

This paper aims to evaluate the relationships among consumer expertise, hedonic orientation, price consciousness, and consumption using wine as the focal product. While these variables' impact on decision making within this industry have been examined in isolation, this is believed to be the first study marrying these hedonic and non‐hedonic characteristics.

Data were collected from a convenience sample of wine purchasers consisting of faculty, staff and upper level students at a major southwestern university using a 95 item questionnaire. In total, 241 usable surveys were included in the analysis.

The findings indicate support for all five hypothesized relationships. The importance of hedonic orientation as a psychographic characteristic emerges. The relationship between expertise and consumption is moderated by hedonic orientation as is the relationship between expertise and price consciousness. Price consciousness mediates the relationship between expertise and consumption, but only for those consumers who have a high hedonic orientation.

The results may not be generalizable across all consumers given the convenience nature of the sample. Additionally only one product category, wine, is included.

This study examines wine consumers' hedonic orientation and its impact on ultimate consumption. Further, this study is also valuable to the field of consumer behavior through development of a scale to capture the dimensions underlying the construct of hedonic orientation. Previous researchers have established profiles of persons who engage in hedonic consumption, but have not assessed an individual's hedonic orientation.

Considering the growth of the at-home smart technology industry and the increasing power of social media influencers, this study aims to examine how influencer endorsements affect individuals’ attitudes and trial intentions toward smart technology products.

An online experiment was conducted to investigate the impact of follower number and expertise domain of influencers and the trust propensity of individuals on their attitudinal and behavioral responses to influencer endorsements of smart technology products. The moderated mediation effect of perceived credibility was further examined.

The results demonstrated that individuals with lower trust propensity responded more positively to a microinfluencer with fewer followers and a specific area of expertise, which led to favorable attitudes and increased intention to try a smart technology product. However, the expertise domain was not a significant factor for the megainfluencer condition with a more extensive follower base. Interestingly, the interaction effects were not observed for individuals with higher trust propensity.

The results of this research provide practical implications for marketers who look for effective strategies for influencer marketing by demonstrating the significant impact of source-related cues, including follower number and expertise domain.

Based on the modality, agency, interactivity and navigability; source credibility; and persuasion knowledge models, this research explains how source-related cues of influencers affect credibility judgment, attitude formation and trial intentions for new technology products and how trust propensity as a personal dispositional factor varies the relationship.

This study aims to distinguish between Muslim and non-Muslim consumers regarding celebrity influence on brands and purchase intention, and assess the relative importance of celebrity credibility, in terms of physical attractiveness, trustworthiness, expertise and product–brand congruency. The study also researches attitudes towards brands, and purchase intention and their ability to predict consumers’ religion.

The research aim was achieved through an empirical study involving a self-administered questionnaire distributed to members of the public recruited from the Federal Territory of Labuan, Malaysia. Data were collected from 250 Muslim and non-Muslim consumers using a convenience sampling method. Their participation was purely voluntary. Multiple discriminant analysis via Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) computer program version 20 was used to answer the research questions.

Empirical results of the multiple discriminant analysis indicated that celebrity expertise and attitudes towards brands strongly predict allocation to Muslim consumers rather than non-Muslim consumers. The relative importance of the celebrity credibility aspects from Muslim consumers’ perspectives was: celebrity expertise, celebrity attitudes towards brands, purchase intention, product–brand congruency and physical attractiveness. Muslim consumers are found to choose expertise but not trustworthiness. Muslim consumers’ faith or trust may be linked to the perception that products and services endorsed by the celebrities are in line with Shariah principles which are consistent with Islamic principles.

Respondents were randomly drawn from the Muslim and non-Muslim population of the Federal Territory of Labuan, Malaysia. Consequently, they may not represent the entire population of Malaysia. Future researchers could overcome the limits of generalizability by increasing sample coverage.

The paper empirically justified the discriminating function among celebrity credibility elements in terms of physical attractiveness, trustworthiness, expertise, and product–brand congruency of Muslim and non-Muslim consumer attitudes towards brands and purchase intention. Thus, the results of this study offer a new forward motion to the findings of prior studies on consumer perception of celebrity credibility, which is not much covered in the literature in the Malaysian context between Muslim and non-Muslim consumer perspectives. The findings are able to add literature on Muslim consumer behaviour in the use of celebrities, as these celebrities could act as inspirational to the consumers.

The study examines consumer expertise for services and its measurement. Specifically, measures of subjective expertise or confidence, experience or frequency of usage, and two measures of objective expertise are used for two services varying in degree of tangibility. As hypothesised, positive relationships between the different types of expertise do not always exist, particularly as intangibility of the service increases.

The purpose of this paper is to study two aspects of new product development (NPD) success – the impact of learning and the impact of structure – are studied.

A multiple case study method within a single setting consisting of in-depth interviews of two teams that developed successful, award-winning products and two teams that developed unsuccessful products.

Case 1: flexibility and expertise permitted learning and radical redefinition of the product mid-project and commercial success. Case 2: flexibility enabled adding expertise which was instrumental in success, iterating permitted optimizing pricing. Case 3: flexibility led to focusing on technical issues to the exclusion of commercial viability. Case 4: flexibility led to skipping market definition and partnering with a particular customer whose situation was idiosyncratic. Cross-case analysis: flexibility in teams with both technical and commercial expertise yielded success. Flexibility permitted teams consisting of narrow experts to invest development resources in products with insufficient market.

This paper argues that the right balance between structure and flexibility is dependent on the level of expertise of the members of the NPD project teams. However, getting this balance right is not a sufficient condition for NPD success. The cases were theoretically blocked to develop theoretical insight, but additional cases are needed for a strong test of theory.

The more experienced team members are, the more the project benefits from flexibility. Conversely, an inexperienced team will benefit from a more structured process. Projects require iteration. The dichotomy between structure and flexibility is false: the most expert teams benefit from some structure. The most inexperienced teams must employ flexibility to learn.

The analysis combines the virtues of the stage-gate school and the flexibility school previously thought mutually exclusive.

Customers often want to learn about a product/service, and companies can benefit from such a learning desire. While prior research has shed light on firm-beneficial outcomes of customer learning and explored the motivational factors of business partners’ learning behavior, less is known about the critical antecedents of individual customers’ learning behavior. This study aims to explore the key drivers of individual customers’ learning desires and identified customers with a stronger learning desire.

This research used both a lab experiment (Study 1, N = 148) and surveys (Study 2, N = 553; Study 3, N = 703) across different participant populations and product contexts.

This study indicated that both involvement and knowledge-sharing intention drove customer learning desire. Customer expertise further strengthened these main effects. Moreover, a stronger learning desire led to greater customer satisfaction.

This study identified key factors involved in customer learning desire and its potential benefits for companies. Additional research to investigate customer learning in specific environments and forms and regarding specific brands is warranted.

This study emphasizes the importance of supporting customer learning and encourages businesses to manage customer learning proactively. It also provides suggestions for effective learning support for targeted customer groups.

This study contributes to the customer learning literature by exploring key influencing factors of individual customers’ learning desires, based on self-determination theory. It also identified the role of customer expertise in shaping customers’ learning processes. Moreover, this study examined customer learning as a novel way to enhance customer satisfaction.

This study aims to investigate a randomized 3 (endorser type: celebrity vs CEO vs expert) × 2 (product type: hedonic vs utility) between-respondents factorial experiment to inspect the effects of the endorsers and product types on consumers’ engagement in BRM through brand-relationship variables [i.e. self-brand connection (SBC), perceived product attachment (PPA) and source credibility (SC)]. Marketing in a digital era is witnessing a rising trend of “brand resurrection as revolution” led by consumer power. The successful revitalization of various dead brands provides some new opportunities for companies to engage millennial consumers in brand resurrection movements (BRM) through the right choice of brand endorsers. The new-found love of companies for the revitalization of long-forgotten brands has attracted considerable interest among scholars and marketing practitioners. Despite the brand resurrection’s high practical relevance, little is known in marketing research about how to revive failing brands back to life.

Using source credibility theory (SCT) as a lens, this study conducted two studies (i.e. Study 1, N = 300; Study 2, N = 300) and builds on an analysis of data from Pakistani millennials. The hypotheses were inspected using both structural equation modeling and SPSS’s PROCESS macro.

Through two studies, the authors find that the match between endorser types and product types affects customer motivation to engage in BRM via SBC, PPA and SC (i.e. attractiveness, trustworthiness and expertise).[AQ2] The results showed that for utilitarian products, both SBC and PPA mediate the link between endorser types and BRM, but for hedonic products, PPA does not play a role. Similarly, the authors’ results indicate that for hedonic products, attractiveness, trustworthiness and expertise mediate the link between endorser types and BRM, but for utilitarian products, trustworthiness does not play a role.

The results of this research will help marketing managers devise effective brand endorsers strategies in reviving failing brands. Specifically, this endeavor highlights that understanding brand advertisements merely in terms of celebrity endorsement restricts the full potential that brand advertisements could have and also that a comprehensive understanding must include expert and chief executive officers (CEO) endorsers. Therefore, one of the central contributions of this research is the introduction of expert and CEO endorsers and the evidence that both celebrity (i.e. celebrity and CEO) and non-celebrity endorsers (i.e. experts) have an impact on consumers’ motivation to engage in BRM.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first endeavors of its kind to empirically explore consumer attitude/motivation behind participation in reviving failing brands. The significance of this work is underscored by the fact that numerous dead brands are being brought back by companies because of consumer–brand co-creation movements.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the moderating roles of brand name attitude and product expertise on the impact of different corporate rebranding strategies on consumer brand preference. Rebranding strategies include evolutionary and revolutionary rebranding strategies, while brand name attitude is consumer attitude towards a firm's original brand name and consumer product expertise refers to the consumer knowledge related to the brand's product or service.

A 2×2 factorial experimental design is used to examine the proposed hypotheses. In total, 220 undergraduates from a public university in Taipei of Taiwan participate in the experiment.

The findings indicate that given brand repositioning is preferable, the use of evolutionary rebranding strategies is superior in enhancing consumer brand preference in the case of pleasant original brand name attitude, while the use of revolutionary strategies is superior when consumers hold less pleasant attitude. In addition, expert consumers show similar responses towards the two rebranding strategies, whereas evolutionary strategies seem to be more effective than revolutionary ones in enhancing consumer brand preferences in the case of novice consumers.

A convenient sampling method was employed and undergraduate students were the research subjects. Besides, a fictitious brand was used in the experiment design. As a result, the generalisability and applicability of the current research findings should be considered and carried out with cautions.

The findings of the research provide empirical understanding on the use of rebranding strategies to generate higher levels of brand preference under contingencies, thus helping brand managers apply a more appropriate type of rebranding strategies when necessary.

The current study is the preliminary causal-oriented work to provide guidance with appropriate rebranding strategies under the contingencies of consumers’ original brand name attitude and product expertise.