Search results

This research examines the effect of team diversity on customer behavior (purchase likelihood) associated with sustainable luxury products and further considers the mediating role of customer skepticism and the moderating role of the growth mindset in these relationships.

Study 1 aims to confirm the direct effect of team diversity on purchase intention and the mediating effect of customer skepticism. Featuring a fictitious brand, Study 2 seeks to test the moderating effects of a growth mindset. This research recruits participants located in the USA who have shopping experiences with a luxury product.

The findings support the notion that team diversity can mitigate customers' skepticism while enhancing purchase likelihood. Moreover, this effect is stronger among those with a growth mindset. As such, the findings suggest that communicating the heterogeneous composition of team members can benefit sustainable luxury brands.

Underpinned by the signaling theory and incremental theory, this research examines the effects of team diversity on customer behavior (purchase likelihood) related to sustainable luxury products, as well as the role of customer skepticism (as a mediator) and a growth mindset (as a moderator) in these relationships. Thus, the findings broaden the current diversity research which has predominantly focused on team decision-making and performance.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the motives of online sellers of counterfeit products in online social networking sites.

The study uses a sample of 22 in-depth interviews with counterfeit sellers.

Based on the findings, the authors have developed a framework called “Dark motives-counterfeit selling.” The framework includes ten motives for selling online counterfeit products organized into four main themes. Personal characteristics include self-interest priority and sense of adventure. Moral justifications consist of denial of responsibility, and inequality hypothesis of self-deception process, and social acceptance. Operational aspects include: low-cost investment, free riding on luxury brands’ marketing effort, and invisibility from regulators. Finally, relationship management involves projecting image using volitional cues and interpersonal relationship with buyers. The themes regarding personal characteristics and morality are associated with their choice of counterfeit business. The other two themes are associated with the use of social networking sites for counterfeit business. Finally, some outcomes of online counterfeit retailing were revealed as value creation for the counterfeit buyers and value destruction for genuine brands’ customers.

This study investigates different rationalization strategies and motives behind selling counterfeit products with a special focus on online platforms. This is among the first to investigate the perspectives of counterfeit retailers in social network sites.

Adopting exchange theory and social orientation of loyalty, this research investigates the antecedents of customer loyalty consisting of (1) loyalty layers (i.e. personal loyalty, relationship with consumption communities and local network effects) and (2) loyalty expectations (i.e. service quality, reciprocity and firm innovativeness) and how these relationships are moderated by customer knowledge.

The data were collected from 4,208 customers in the mobile services industry using mall intercept technique.

The findings reveal that loyalty layers, including personal loyalty and relationship with consumption communities, can influence customers' expectations of service providers. The degree to which the firm is able to handle and meet customers' expectations over time would result in the strength of customer loyalty. Customer expectations also mediate the relationships between different loyalty layers and customer loyalty. In addition, customer knowledge significantly moderates the effects of loyalty layers and expectations on both attitudinal loyalty and behavioural loyalty.

The study extends the current body of knowledge by incorporating a sociological perspective to examine the relationships between loyalty layers and customer expectations and customer loyalty. This research enables service operators to establish strategies to sustain customer loyalty across different customer segments with various levels of knowledge.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the antecedents of fanaticism through the lens of attribution theory and “norm of reciprocity”. It is proposed that consumers will reward firms with high perceived effort, including both general and specific effort by increasing their loyalty and becoming a fan of the company.

The data are collected in a high-tech services industry, mobile phone services. A paper-based survey using mall intercept technique was employed in this study. The sampling design was a combination of convenience sampling (any adult who happened to be at a given location on a given day and time) and system probability sampling (every fifth adult who passed the data collection point was approached and asked to participate in the study). The final sample size is 600.

The antecedents of fanaticism are identified as both firm’s general effort (i.e. service quality and innovativeness) and specific effort (i.e. perceived reciprocity). In addition, perceived regulatory control moderated the relationship between innovativeness, part of firm’s general effort and customer fanaticism. To be more specific, perceived regulatory control increased the effect of perceived innovativeness on fanatical loyalty.

The introduction of the role of perceived regulatory control in the interactions between firms and customers has not been adopted in previous research and can contribute a new body of knowledge to the current literature. This research has implications for service providers, especially in high-tech industries.

The purpose of this paper is to review the past, current and future trends in empirical research and theoretical insights into online relationship marketing.

Review over 100 empirical and theoretical studies in the online relationship marketing from top marketing and management journals.

This paper examined three areas pertinent to online relationship marketing: first, the evolution of online relationship marketing from pre-1990s to the present, which offers a temporal snapshot of changes in and an overview of the critical components that make up the structure of online relationship marketing; second, key theoretical perspectives are underlying the development of online relationship marketing; and third, empirical insights into online relationship marketing. In general, online relationship marketing has evolved from customers being passive receivers of online information and services to active co-producers and value co-creators.

The paper identifies future research areas, including multiple layers of interactions, use of new technologies and platforms and the dark side of online communications.

The authors dedicated summary tables for each area, highlighting key findings, which in turn suggest a series of managerial recommendations for facilitating efficient, effective buyer–seller interactions and maximising firm performance in relation to online relationship marketing.

The purpose of this study is to investigate visual comprehension in memory for 360-degree video advertisements amongst adolescents under single and repeated viewing conditions.

This study explored visual comprehension in memory for 360-degree video advertisements using the theoretical assumptions of the social psychology theory of social information processing by Wyer (2003). The authors conducted two experiments over a timeline of three months. In the first experiment, participants watched the 360-degree video advertisement once, and after one week, the same set of participants watched the same advertisement again. The theoretical assumptions in the comprehension unit were used to design the experiments and to explore visual comprehension in memory for 360-degree video advertisements. The data were collected using surveys and interviews through an experimental research design approach. NVivo software was used to analyse the data.

This study found that while female participants were able to comprehend colours in the visuals better, male participants were better able to comprehend facial expressions presented in the visuals. Further, both female and male participants were able to comprehend locations within the advertisement visuals. It was found that participants understood the plot or the story of the advertisement better after the second viewing than after the first viewing.

The two main contributions from this study are as follows: from a theoretical perspective, the application of a social psychology theory for the advertising sector enables us to gather more insights about the social cognition stages of a human mindset such as information retrieval, judgement, decision making, goal stimulation and short- and long-term memory. In doing so, this study not only explored adolescents' visual comprehension memory of 360-degree video advertisements, but it also contributed to the theory of social information processing by Wyer (2003) by exploring consumer visual comprehension memory. From a practical perspective, the findings of this study provide a solid foundation for future advertising firms or agencies, marketers, and salespeople on how to design effective advertisements using 360-degree video versions in a way that appeals to consumer visual memory.

This paper can be considered as amongst the first studies which combine social psychology with advertising to investigate visual comprehension memory for 360-degree video advertisements amongst adolescents.

The study aims to investigate customers' emotional and behavioral responses to price promotion in omnichannel retailing through the integration of the expectancy-disconfirmation theory, feelings-as-information-theory and regret regulation theory.

An online survey was designed in Qualtrics and distributed by an online survey to collect data from 786 (main study) and 150 (a follow-up study) customers from the USA. The participants were randomly assigned to different scenarios related to the need to purchase a toothbrush, laptop or health supplement. After the first purchase, the participants received a discount on the same product that has just been purchased. The discount can be used at an online store or a physical store. The three levels of price promotion after the purchase were 10% (low), 25% (moderate) and 50% (high).

The study found that consumers are likely to feel more surprised and less discontented when being offered a higher discount. The emotions further significantly impact their anticipated regret. Further, different discount levels influence patronage intention and omnichannel usage via emotional responses and anticipated regret. These relationships are moderated by product involvement.

The study extends knowledge of price promotion and provides insights that can assist retailers in increasing the effectiveness of their sales promotion strategy. Addressing the lacuna in the current literature, which predominantly focuses on the cost and benefits analysis of sales promotion, the study revealed that cross-channel price promotion results in consumers' sophisticated emotional responses.

Underpinned by the fit-fluency framework, this research aims to explore the effect of visual entropy (i.e. the neatness or disorder of food presentation) on the likelihood to purchase under different time-related positioning conditions.

Two experiments were conducted with customers who are located in the USA via Amazon Mechanical Turk. Study 1 employed a 2 (visual entropy: neat vs non-neat) × 2 (time-related positioning: traditional vs modern) between-subjects design using four advertisements for a fictitious ice cream brand. Study 2 employed a 2 (visual entropy: neat vs non-neat) × 2 (time-related positioning: traditional vs modern) between-subjects design using four book covers for fruit salad recipes.

The findings demonstrate low entropy (i.e. neatness) increases purchase likelihood when being paired with modern positioning, whilst high entropy (i.e. non-neat presentation) positively influences the propensity to purchase a traditional product on account of temporal fit. These relationships are mediated by perceived quality and nostalgia.

This research extends the understanding of visual entropy and addresses the inconclusive evidence of the impact of the neatness of product presentation on consumer behavior. The authors elucidate the mechanisms behind which neatness and non-neatness of food presentation affect purchase likelihood when different types of time-related positioning are featured.

This study aims to examine the effects of likeability of service agents on perceived justice and reconciliation and retaliation as consequences of service failures, taking into consideration the conflict resolution styles that is showing empathy and issuing an apology.

An online survey was administered to 630 residents in the United States. The participants were US residents, had experienced a service failure in the prior six months and had complained either in person or by phone call.

It was found that likeability had a positive effect on both reconciliation and retaliation. Given the likeability of the service agent, interactional justice mitigated retaliation, whereas distributive justice enhanced reconciliation. Furthermore, when a service agent displays a high level of empathy and apology, the positive effect of likeability on distributive justice is intensified.

This study extends the current knowledge concerning the effects of likeability in service recovery by offering a comprehensive framework and practical implications for managers to restore business relationships following a service failure.

This study aims to examine the effect of country of origin (COO) on customers' value expectation and willingness to pay by employing signalling theory and cue utilisation.

The data were collected from 386 customers via an online survey in the context of Australian food retail franchise stores in China.

The findings indicate that COO origin is an important determinant of customer expectations including service quality, social value, emotional value, monetary price, behavioural price and reputation. Furthermore, the only social value was a significant predictor of willingness to pay. Although the direct effect of COO on willingness to purchase was not significant, the COO had a significant indirect effect on willingness to pay via social value. Finally, the COO has a stronger effect on monetary price expectation among customers who were aware of the country brands than those who were unaware.

The study extends the body of knowledge related to the effect of COO during the pre-purchase process and provides important implications for retailers who are looking to enter an overseas market such as China.