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This study aims to examine how young consumers perceive the advertising effectiveness of endorsements by virtual idols and how endorsements by virtual idols differ from endorsements by real human celebrities such as traditional celebrities and online influencers.

An experimental study was conducted with 400 randomly selected young respondents in China in December 2022. A 3 × 2 factorial design was used to test how the type of celebrity endorser and level of product involvement influence the persuasiveness of advertising aimed at young adults. Among 400 respondents, the average age was 21.5 years. A total of 193 male and 207 female respondents participated in the experiment.

Young consumers find virtual idols, online influencers and traditional celebrities attractive. Although virtual idols are the least credible among the three types of celebrity endorsers, young consumers tend to be more convinced by their endorsements of products with low levels of consumer involvement than those with high levels of involvement. Among the three types of celebrity endorsements, young consumers find traditional celebrities the most effective. In addition, young consumers’ attitudes toward celebrity endorsers mediate the impact of celebrity endorsers’ attractiveness and credibility on their attitudes toward the advertisements. The perceived level of product involvement moderates the transfer of meaning from the attitude toward the celebrity endorsers to the attitude toward the advertisement.

First, when choosing celebrity endorsers to advertise products targeting young consumers, marketing communication practitioners should give priority to the endorsers’ perceived credibility, as young consumers have a variety of views about them that can significantly affect their attitudes toward the advertisement. Second, real human celebrity endorsers are more effective than virtual idols in celebrity endorsements. However, virtual idols may be suited for use in advertisements to promote products with low involvement levels, such as soft drinks.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first experimental study to attempt to analyze the effectiveness of virtual idols in advertising aimed at young consumers. This is also the first comparative study to introduce virtual idols as celebrity endorsers in product advertising and to compare their effectiveness with that of the two other types of commonly discussed celebrity endorsers, traditional celebrities and online influencers.

This study explores the influence of heritage brand extension on consumer purchase intention and analyses the effects of pop culture involvement. The extension of heritage brands is becoming increasingly difficult because such an extension needs to be consistent with the unique characteristics of brands and resonate with consumers. However, few scholars discuss the influence of consumers' level of pop culture involvement on brand extension and purchasing behaviour.

Taking time-honoured brands as an example, this study established a conceptual model based on a comprehensive review of the literature, and then tested the model using a sample of 255 respondents who were familiar with one of the selected Chinese time-honoured brands. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the relationships amongst brand extension fit, pop culture involvement, perceived value and purchase intention.

Time-honoured brand extension fit has a positive impact on consumer purchase intention, and this path is significantly influenced by the mediation mechanisms of perceived value. Situational pop culture involvement can significantly strengthen the relationship between time-honoured brand extension fit and perceived value, whereas enduring pop culture involvement does not.

The results clarify and expand on the different roles of cultural involvement in time-honoured brands and broaden research on the influence of cultural involvement in this regard. This study has significant theoretical value for the inheritance and revival of heritage brands and provides a reference for the practice of time-honoured brands.

Children’s sensory involvement refers to the degree to which children engage their senses, such as sight, touch, taste, smell and hearing, in their interactions with the environment. In the context of parents' purchase decisions, children’s sensory involvement pertains to how children's sensory involvement influences the purchasing decisions made by their parents. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of children's sensory involvement on parents’ purchase decisions considering the mediating role of the parent’s attitude.

In this study, a structured questionnaire survey was conducted with parents of children aged 7–12 in Isfahan, Iran. The sample consisted of 210 parents, aimed at elucidating the relationship between variables. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was employed to analyze the relationship between variables.

Results showed a significant relationship between children’s sensory involvement and parents’ purchase decisions, children’s sensory involvement and parents’ attitudes and parents’ attitudes and purchase decisions. It was concluded that children’s sensory involvement could indirectly influence the parents’ purchase decisions considering the mediating role of parents' attitudes.

In today's business landscape, it is imperative for organizations to discern the multitude of factors influencing consumers' purchasing decisions. Among these, family dynamics play a substantial role, with children often exerting a strong influence on their parents' buying choices. Despite the acknowledged importance of this dynamic in existing literature, the specific impact of children's sensory involvement on parental purchasing decisions remains largely unexplored. Therefore, this paper aims to fill this gap in the literature by shedding light on the role of children's sensory involvement in shaping parental buying behaviors.

Developing green innovative services is critical to the restaurant industry to achieve significant benefits as well as environmental sustainability. This study aims to explore the mechanisms through which employees’ green involvement can foster green service innovation behavior.

The data set garnered from employees who worked in restaurants was used to test these mechanisms. A partial least square technique was conducted on this data set.

The results revealed the employees’ green involvement significantly influences their green service innovation intention, which subsequently influences their green service innovation behavior. Furthermore, information technology (IT) adoption was found to fortify the linkage of employee green involvement with green service innovation intention.

The results suggest to the restaurant industry that awareness of green service innovation and IT adoption practices can help restaurants to develop effective sustainability work practices and meet societal expectations.

This study extends the restaurant management literature by linking the green involvement of restaurant employees to green service innovation intention as well as identifying the moderating role of IT adoption underlying this link.

This paper shows how organisational agility allows companies to adopt the necessary changes to remain competitive and produce with a lower environmental impact, implying customers in the value chain.

This investigation uses a cross-sectional design to collect data on the study variables from a sample of 260 Spanish manufacturing organisations. Structural equations with PLS are applied to test hypotheses.

Results show that organisational agility is positively related to eco-innovation. Furthermore, eco-innovation results in a positive relationship with organisational performance. Finally, it has been found that customer involvement positively moderates the effect of organisational agility on new green processes and products and makes green product innovations more successful.

Conclusions indicate that would be advisable that innovative companies promote capabilities such as organisational agility, and integrating customer involvement throughout their value chain, for developing successful new green products increasing their results with a lower environmental impact. Likewise, the customer’s involvement in eco-innovation projects has been found, in companies with agile behaviours, that could aim to increase their performance, helping to react more quickly to market trends and saving money in product development.

This investigation addresses three gaps previously identified in the literature. Firstly, it covers a lack of research on how agility could foster green innovation and how this could positively affect their performance outcomes. Secondly, it studies a moderating factor, customer involvement, and its effects on the relationship between organisational agility and eco-innovation in product and process and between eco-innovation in product and organisational performance. Thirdly, it introduces dynamic capabilities theory through agility concept to study the dynamic context of the eco-environment.

This study aims to empirically test how sponsored video customization (i.e. the degree to which a sponsored video is customized for a sponsoring brand) affects video shares differently depending on influencer characteristics (i.e. mega influencer and expert influencer) and brand characteristics (i.e. brand establishment and product involvement).

This study uses a unique real-world data set that combines coded variables (e.g. customization) and objective video performance (e.g. sharing) of 365 sponsored videos to test the hypotheses. A negative binomial model is used to analyze the data set.

This study finds that the effect of video customization on video shares varies across contexts. Video customization positively affects shares if they are made for well-established brands and high-involvement products but negatively influences shares if they are produced by mega and expert influencers.

This study extends the influencer marketing literature by focusing on a new media modality – sponsored video. Drawing on the multiple inference model and the persuasion knowledge theory, this study teases out different conditions under which video customization is more or less likely to foster audience engagement, which both influencers and brands care about. The chosen research setting may limit the generalizability of the findings of this study.

The findings suggest that mega and expert influencers need to consider if their endorsement would backfire on a highly customized video. Brands that aim to engage customers with highly-customized videos should gauge their decision by taking into consideration their years of establishment and product involvement. For video-sharing platforms, especially those that are planning to expand their businesses to include “matching-making services” for brands and influencers, the findings provide theory-based guidance on optimizing such matches.

This paper fulfills an urgent research need to study how brands and influencers should produce sponsored videos to achieve optimal outcomes.

Consumers are assumed to engage in external information search only after exhausting their internal information sources. Guided by the accessibility/diagnosticity and ease-of-retrieval frameworks, and the elaboration likelihood model, the current study investigates this phenomenon.

To test the relationships between internal information accessibility/diagnosticity and the importance of external search, and the moderating role of involvement in these relationships, 308 responses were collected on Amazon MTurk. Then, structural equation modeling was employed to analyze the data.

The analyses showed that while accessibility and diagnosticity of internal information have an impact on external information search, involvement with the product class has a consequential moderating effect on these relationships. In particular, in the low-involvement group, only the diagnosticity of internal information had a negative effect on external information search. On the contrary, in the high-involvement group, only accessibility of internal information had a negative effect.

These findings highlight the possibility of drawing erroneous conclusions resulting from not incorporating involvement, in conjunction with information accessibility and diagnosticity, in the study of the consumer external information search behavior.

The findings also imply that if practitioners aim to prime consumers to engage in external information search, they need to take into account that the effects of internal information's accessibility and diagnosticity on consumers' external search behavior may be different depending on their levels of involvement.

This study's results showed that without considering the moderating effect of involvement, spurious conclusions may be made about the relationships between accessibility and diagnosticity of internal and external information importance. This finding may explain the discrepancy between the accessibility/diagnosticity and ease-of-retrieval frameworks, thus enriching the literature.

Impulsive buyers are a dream segment for retailers and marketers. Stimulants in the retail environment and cognitive aspects evoke a sudden urge the acquisition of products spontaneously. This paper aims to examine key cognitive aspects of impulsive buying behaviour and purchase regret in an online context.

An online survey was conducted to collect the data of 317 online consumers with the help of a convenience sampling technique. The structural equation modelling technique was carried out to establish the validity and reliability of measures and examine the proposed relational paths.

The study results suggest that cognitive aspects recede impulsive buying, resulting in purchase regret. The empirical findings on the impulsive buying behaviour and purchase regret to yield several important implications, including developing marketing strategies and policies to evoke the intentions for impulsive buying behaviour, consumer innovation and balancing the feelings of regret.

The study also provides some significant contributions to the literature on online impulse buying and its related paradigms.

This study mainly attempted to determine the precursors of online impulse buying and purchase regret from the perspective of hedonic and experiential consumption motivation and consumer innovation. Getting reflections from cognitive dissonance theory and the post purchase evaluation, a theoretical model was developed and empirically tested for impulsive online buyers.

The purpose of the study is to explore the role of affective commitment (AC) consumer empowerment on webrooming behaviour (WB) in a multichannel context of the fashion industry, with mediating (attitude [ATT]) and moderating (product involvement [PT]) effect. We used the stimulus– organism–responses theory as a theoretical underpinning.

We collected 307 responses from fashionable consumer who was purposed fashion products recently through convenience sampling approach and analysed the data with structural equation modelling and PROCESS macro.

The results illustrated that AC and consumer empowerment had a significant impact on consumer attitude and their WB. Likewise, consumer attitude had a positive mediating association between AC, consumer empowerment and WB. PI significantly moderated the relationship between ACs, consumer empowerment with attitude and attitude with WB.

This study is one of the new research works of its kind, which examines the role of AC and consumer empowerment on WB in the fashion industry. This study contributes to the growing amount of literature on fashion marketing by analysing the rapidly growing phenomena of WB in a multichannel context of the fashion industry.

The purpose of this study is to critically review consumer knowledge in marketing and propose a future research agenda. Despite the many works that have examined this variable, given its strong influence on behaviour, it has generally been studied in association with other constructs, and no studies have focused on it in a specific way. Its definition, measurement and approaches to its role and usefulness are superficial and underdeveloped. After structuring and analysing the existing literature, the authors establish, (I) which aspects are of little use to the discipline, and (II) which research lines have the most potential and should be developed and studied in greater depth, to advance and complete the existing consumer knowledge framework.

A search was undertaken for documents in the main databases in which the term “consumer knowledge” appears in a marketing or consumer context, and a critical and reflexive approach was taken to analyse the main contributions and to structure them by content blocks.

Five main content blocks were identified. A set of research gaps were detected, mainly related to the lax conceptualisation of the topic, measurement problems and the scarcity of more useful works connected with business management, and several research lines are proposed that complement the existing framework to make it more complete and operational.

This paper offers a critical review and proposes a research agenda for one of the most used but little studied variables in the field of marketing, which may help academics and professionals in the discipline to continue developing useful theories and models.

El objetivo de este trabajo es revisar críticamente el conocimiento del consumidor en marketing y proponer una agenda de investigación futura. A pesar de los numerosos trabajos que han examinado esta variable, dada su fuerte influencia en el comportamiento, generalmente se ha estudiado en asociación con otros constructos, y ningún estudio se ha centrado en ella de manera específica. Su definición, medición y aproximaciones sobre su papel y utilidad son superficiales y poco desarrollados. Después de estructurar y analizar la literatura existente, establecemos (I) qué aspectos tienen poco uso para la disciplina y (II) qué líneas de investigación tienen más potencial y deben ser desarrolladas y estudiadas con mayor profundidad; para avanzar y completar el marco existente sobre conocimiento del consumidor.

Se realizó una búsqueda de documentos en las principales bases de datos en las que aparece el término “conocimiento del consumidor” en un contexto de marketing o consumo, y se adoptó un enfoque crítico y reflexivo para analizar las principales contribuciones y estructurarlas por bloques de contenido.

Se identificaron cinco bloques principales de contenido. Se detectó un conjunto de huecos de investigación, principalmente relacionados con la laxa conceptualización del tema, problemas de medición y la escasez de trabajos más útiles conectados con la gestión empresarial; y se proponen varias líneas de investigación que complementan el marco existente para hacerlo más completo y operativo.

Este documento ofrece una revisión crítica y propone una agenda de investigación para una de las variables más utilizadas pero poco estudiadas en el campo del marketing, lo que puede ayudar a académicos y profesionales en la disciplina a continuar desarrollando teorías y modelos útiles.

本文旨在对市场营销中的消费者知识进行批判性审视, 并提出未来的研究议程。虽然已有许多研究检验了该变量, 但由于其对行为产生强大影响, 通常会与其他结构变量一起研究, 而没有以特定方式专注于该变量。对其定义、测量以及其作用和用途的方法仍旧存在研究空白。通过对现有文献进行结构化分析后, 确定了以下两个方面：（I）哪些方面对该学科意义不大, （II）哪些研究方向最具研究潜力, 并且应该进一步深入发展和研究, 以推进和完善现有的消费者知识框架。

通过主要数据库检索市场营销或消费者背景下涉及“消费者知识”一词的文献, 采取批判性和反思性方法来分析其主要贡献, 并通过内容块对其进行结构化。

识别了五个主要内容块, 并发现存在一定程度的研究空白, 主要涉及该主题的概念松散化、测量问题以及与商业管理相关的有效研究的稀缺性。此外, 本文提出了几个研究线索, 这些线索为现有框架补充了信息, 使其更加完整且具备更强的操作性。

本文对市场营销领域中广泛使用但研究较少的变量进行了批判性评述, 并提出了相关研究议程。这一工作有助于学术界和专业人士继续发展实用的理论和模型。