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The world has been forced to implement movement restriction strategy because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and industries have to embrace online technologies and social media marketing activities (SMMAs) to continue their business operations. Considering the aftermath of COVID-19 on the business world, this study aims to explore the determining elements of SMMAs and analyse how these factors affect brand equity (BE), relationship equity (RE) and purchase intention (PI) among smartphone consumers in China. Five constructs of SMMAs, namely, entertainment (EN), interactivity (IN), trendiness (TR), customisation (CU) and electronic word-of-mouth (WM), were examined to examine the effects of SMMAs on BE and RE. Subsequently, the mediation effects of BE and RE on the relationships of all constructs of SMMAs with PI were analysed.

An online survey was conducted with the participation of 347 Chinese consumers who used social media platform managed by the smartphone brands as their marketing activities during COVID-19. The data were analysed via structural equation modelling using SmartPLS.

This study’s result showed the significant and positive influence of CU, TR and WM on BE and the strong and positive influence of CU, IN and TR on RE. Furthermore, BE was found to fully mediate the relationships of CU, TR and WM with PI, while RE was found to mediate the relationships of TR and CU with PI. The performance and impact factor analysis revealed RE as the most important factor for PI, followed by BE, CU and TR.

This study extended the authors’ knowledge and understanding about social media marketing, BE and smart phone PI during COVID-19. Findings of this study can assist smartphone brands in China to develop the most effective strategies for SMMAs, which can be tailored for consumers to maximise profits, even during any crisis when physical business activities are deemed difficult. Moreover, this study’s findings can benefit the government and policymakers in developing and regulating rules and regulations for e-commerce and social media commerce for all industries and areas.

The young generation (Gen Z and Millennials) has a different set of values that the brand needs to interpret better. There is evidence of a correlation between luxury brands and sustainability. The purpose of this study is to assess the impact of consumers’ consumption values (functional, experiential, and symbolic) and ethical values (ascribed responsibility) through flow experience (FE) on consumers’ attitudes towards sustainable luxury brands (SLB) in the young generation based on stimulus-organism-response theory.

The research design consists of Studies 1 and 2. Study 1 used a structured questionnaire on a sample of 396 respondents based on the scales of luxury consumption values. For Study 2, the authors collected 30 qualitative responses from the target group (young Indian shoppers who indulge in luxury fashion shopping frequently) via open-ended essays. PLS-SEM was used to test the hypothesised relationship.

As per the results, functional values are the most significant predictors of FE, followed by AR, experiential values and symbolic values. The study also discovered that FE has a substantial influence on the formation of attitudes towards sustainable luxury fashion brands. The qualitative findings were in line with the quantitative findings, except that the respondents have reservations with respect to the authenticity of sustainable initiatives by the brands.

As the young consumer represents the future development of the luxury market, it is crucial to fully comprehend their view with respect to consumption value and AR in an emerging economy like India, which constitutes one of the highest populations of young consumers. The new research framework will also assist luxury brand managers in the formulation of efficient brand marketing strategies for sustainable luxury apparel.

Previous studies have mainly focused on FE in the context of the service industry. There are limited studies exploring the impact of achieving FE in framing the attitude towards sustainable luxury fashion brands. Academic research in the area so far has limited its scope to quantitative and a few qualitative studies, but this study provides a mixed-methods approach in a luxury setting, contributing to the study’s distinctiveness.

This empirical paper is an endeavor to explore the relationship between social media advertising (SMA) and customers' purchase intention (CPI) in three South Asian countries. SMA was further divided into three relevant dimensions: perceived relevance (PR), perceived informativeness (PI) and perceived credibility (PC). Furthermore, the authors incorporated a single mediator: customers' brand consciousness (CBC) to test the mediating effects on the direct relationships.

The authors purposively selected 1937 fashion-conscious individuals based on a cross-sectional survey design. The authors applied SPSS 25 for explanatory statistics and structural equation modeling (SEM) (through AMOS 25) for testing the hypothesized relationships.

Based on the responses and the application of statistical measures, the authors revealed that all of the three dimensions of SMA have significant positive relationships with CPI. CBC is also significantly and positively related to CPI. Regarding the mediating effects, CBC was identified to have full mediation effects on the relationships between PR and CPI and PI and CPI. On the contrary, the same variable was found to have partial mediation on the relationship between PC and CPI.

South Asia is a growing business hub and the largest consumer market in terms of population. This empirical study was undertaken to reveal the role of SMA on CPI in the three highly populated South Asian countries, which is rare in academia. The outcomes of this empirical study are expected to be useful for further research attempts regarding SMA and consumer behavior. Businesses and policymakers are also expected to benefit from formulating SMA-related strategies to retain present buyers as well as attract the prospective ones.

This study aims to investigate the role of social media in increasing trust, self-perceived creativity and millennial entrepreneurial satisfaction.

The empirical analysis was conducted using a sample of 385 millennial entrepreneurs that were recruited for online survey. After conducting reliability and validity tests, the data were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The results showed that the quality of social media information had a direct and indirect positive and significant effect on trust and satisfaction. Social media marketing activities had a direct and indirect positive and significant effect on trust and self-perceived creativity. System Quality of social media also has a significant direct influence on trust. However, there is no direct relationship to satisfaction. Finally, social media marketing activities have a significant direct effect on trust and satisfaction.

This research can contribute to marketing experts and millennial entrepreneurs in improving the quality of advertising information and the credibility of social media used to support creativity, trust and satisfaction. In addition, marketing experts and millennial entrepreneurs with online-based communities should optimize their marketing activities on social media.

This study has shown a more comprehensive model of the relationship between information quality, system quality, social media marketing activities, self-perceived creativity, trust and satisfaction. This study also reveals a significant direct and indirect effect of social media marketing activities on satisfaction.