Search results

This paper aims to examine under what conditions consumers develop emotional attachment toward authentic brands. It proposes that authentic brands’ ability to evoke attachment is contingent upon situational (i.e. need to belong and need to express the authentic self) and consumer individual difference variables (i.e. brand engagement in self-concept [BESC] and personal authenticity).

Two experiments empirically test the effects of brand authenticity on emotional brand attachment. Experiment 1 considers the moderating roles of social exclusion and BESC. Experiment 2 examines the moderating roles of situationally induced feelings of self-inauthenticity and enduring personal authenticity.

Consumers with a high level of BESC show greater emotional brand attachment to authentic (versus less authentic) brands when they feel socially excluded. Consumers with a high level of enduring personal authenticity show greater emotional brand attachment to authentic (versus less authentic) brands when they experience situations that make them feel inauthentic.

This paper has implications for brand communication strategies adopted by brands that are positioned strongly on authenticity.

This paper is one of the few to examine the effect of brand authenticity on brand attachment taking into account the moderating role of situational and individual difference variables. The findings contribute to the brand attachment and brand authenticity literatures.

The purpose of this paper is to delve into the intricate relationships between hijab culture and consumption. The research questions whether the hijab consumption phenomenon is an icon of fashion or an authentic blend of religious and cultural tenets.

The research uses a netnographic approach in a qualitative manner similar to ethnography on the internet. An online forum is created on social media for Egyptian hijabista consumers, who reflect on their self-transformations with respect to the hijab phenomenon.

The findings of the study provide insights relevant to the consumer experiences of the hijab fashion phenomenon. The results are analyzed using Holt’s (1995) consumption parabola, where the insights show the consumption as experience, integration, play and classification metaphors in action. Most insights show that the hijab fashion experience combines authentic religious meanings with cultural ones.

The study methodology used is qualitative, thereby putting limitations on generalizing the findings to other consumers and contexts.

The findings are relevant to fashion designers and fashion marketers who aim at understanding the hijabista culture.

The results are relevant to consumer culture theorists as well as to macromarketing researchers looking at authenticity in the hijab fashion phenomenon. The research is also relevant in understanding the hijabista culture, which is a growing consumer culture around the globe.

The research combines the literatures on consumer culture theory, self-transformations and authenticity with regards to the hijab consumption phenomenon. Such relationships were not explored previously in the literature. The methodological approach is also novel.

This paper aims to report that authenticity is a crucial factor in determining consumer behavior. To ensure that customers feel a sense of authenticity, service organizations and researchers must understand the factors that convey perceived authenticity. Therefore, this study uses multiple features of perceived service authenticity (i.e. continuity, consistency, uniqueness, talent, scarcity, honesty and traditional) and examines their effects on positive emotions in a traditional restaurant service context.

A total of 342 surveys were collected using a panel data service in China. This study examined the structural relationships among perceived service authenticity, positive emotions and revisit intention using AMOS. Additionally, a multigroup analysis was conducted to identify the moderating effect of individuals’ psychological traits (i.e. nostalgia proneness).

The results indicated that all service authenticity dimensions except continuity significantly enhance positive emotions. Furthermore, positive emotions significantly enhanced revisit intention. The results also revealed that nostalgia proneness moderates the effects of service authenticity on positive emotions.

The results provide important insights into how to increase customers’ perceived service authenticity and positive emotions.

This research is a pioneering effort to conceptualize a multiple-dimensional structure of the authenticity model and test its appropriateness in a traditional restaurant context. Furthermore, this study is one of the first attempts to develop an authenticity model that links service authenticity, positive emotions, revisit intention and the moderator of nostalgia proneness based on the Mehrabian and Russell model.

Authenticity has been studied from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, leading to a rich but confused literature. This study, a review, aims to compare the psychology and sociology/tourism definitions of authenticity to clarify the concept. From a psychological perspective, authenticity is a mental appraisal of an object or experience as valued leading to feelings and summative judgements (such as satisfaction or perceived value). In objective authenticity, a person values the object due to belief in an expert’s opinion, constructive authenticity relies on socially constructed values, while existential authenticity is based on one’s self-identity. The resultant achievement of a valued goal, such as seeing a valued object, leads to feelings of pleasure. Sociological definitions are similar but based on different theoretical antecedent causes of constructed and existential authenticity. The paper further discusses the use of theory in tourism and the project to develop tourism as a discipline. This project is considered unlikely to be successful and in turn, as argued, it is more useful to apply theory from other disciplines in a multidisciplinary manner. The results emphasise that it is necessary for tourism researchers to understand the origins and development of the concepts they use and their various definitions.

Drawing from in-depth ethnographic interviews conducted at an American public research university with 46 professors I analyze the meanings that faculty in the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities assign to the aspect of their work known as service and institutional governance. Regardless of disciplinary affiliation, almost all faculties perceive feelings of self-inauthenticity when they engage in service and governance and view this aspect of their work as meaningless, inconsequential, trite, and as a waste of time. Yet, interviews with two professors show that service and governance work leads them to feel true to themselves because they view it as of a meaningful symbolic space where a truly effectual cultural politics of resistance against alienating institutional forces can take place. I reflect on the latter two professors’ agency and power to redefine symbolic occupational spaces within and outside their selves and occupation.

This study aims to follow a rigorous approach to identify, critically analyze and synthesize 75 papers published from 2000 to 2022.

The study presents a systematic literature review on identity expressiveness (IE), clarifying and expanding what is currently known about the concept.

To synthesize current knowledge on IE, the study uses the overarching framework of antecedents-phenomenon-consequences, using this same framework to identify gaps and future research directions. The findings show individual and brand-related factors such as the need for uniqueness and anthropomorphism as antecedents of IE, and eWOM/WOM, impulse purchases and upgrading to more exclusive lines as consequences of IE.

The study contributes to theory by synthesizing and mapping current understanding of the state of knowledge on the concept of IE while highlighting gaps in the extant literature and paving future research directions for scholars in the field.

The study offers useful insights for practitioners, broadening marketers’ actionable options in identity-based marketing. Marketers can use insights from this study to inform marketing strategy and communication campaigns for different types of brands.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first of its kind and offers an integrative review of the current literature on IE, thus enhancing understanding of the concept, its antecedents and consequences. The study also contributes to knowledge by highlighting future research priorities for researchers in this field of enquiry.

The role of customers has moved from reactive to proactive, and they require more control over digital touchpoints. The quest for authenticity is their response to the dark side of interactive marketing – forms of faking, manipulation and exploitation. Authenticity becomes a key topic in interactive marketing as it reflects how customers assess digital touchpoints. However, there is a lack of comprehensive knowledge of authenticity in the interactive environment.

This article consolidates the authenticity studies in various digital touchpoints using the entity-referent correspondence framework. This research employs bibliometric analysis and thematic analysis of 103 articles in the last 15 years.

Five research clusters are identified: (1) human, (2) brand-generated content, (3) user-generated content, (4) branded platforms and (5) new technologies-based touchpoints (artificial intelligence, augmented reality and virtual reality). Most interactive marketing studies focus on human and content authenticity, and new technologies-based touchpoints lack comprehensive conceptualization. The review synthesizes the types of authenticity used in each touchpoint and highlights the importance of true-to-creator-self and true-to-customer-self in customer evaluation. We further propose a research framework with four antecedent groups and outcomes.

Our research supports managers by highlighting the type of authenticity prioritized in each touchpoint's development.

To answer the call from interactive marketing researchers, this research highlights the distinct definitions of authenticity at various digital touchpoints rather than looking at the overall brand. Trends, gaps and future research agenda of the authenticity concept in technology adoption and customer behavior are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to understand, from the child care worker's perspective, how work experience, display rules, and affectivity are related to emotional labor. It also examines the utility of separating surface acting into its two components: the hiding and faking of emotions.

This study is based on a cross‐sectional self‐report survey of 198 child care workers in Western Canada.

Deep acting occurred more frequently among younger workers, whereas experienced workers hid their feelings more frequently than did their less‐experienced counterparts. The requirement to express positive emotions was associated with deep acting and faking emotions, whereas the requirement to suppress negative emotions was associated with hiding feelings.

Results support the treatment of surface acting's components as distinct given their differential association with the other variables. Future research should validate the emotional labor measure in service occupations that involve different frequency and intensity levels of contact.

The finding that young and inexperienced workers appear to engage in different emotion regulation strategies than mature and experienced workers may be due to their job training. A potential solution is to include service learning projects in child care training that build their confidence in communicating with parents.

Use of the revised Emotional Labour Scale in future studies may facilitate a deeper understanding of workplace emotional expression.

This commentary discusses the broader potential of student response systems (SRS) regarding their positive impact on student mental health and wellbeing. The purpose of this paper is to draw on relevant literature to illustrate the wider social and intrapersonal benefits of SRS beyond its use as an educational tool.

Tenets of social information processing theory are used in conjunction with the literature from health, sociological and psychological disciplines to explicate the mental health benefits of SRS.

SRS can make a positive contribution students’ mental health and wellbeing, thus assisting the broader pastoral support and employability frameworks of higher education institutions.

An original perspective on the use of SRS in promoting the mental health and wellbeing of university students

The aim of this paper is to go beyond the received view, which is solely rational and economic minded, and to introduce the concept of self‐regulation of behavior by salespersons and customers as essential mechanisms for initiating, maintaining, and resolving business‐to‐business exchanges.

By reviewing emerging research, this paper examines the role of positive and negative social and self‐conscious emotions in salesperson‐customer interactions and how salespersons and customers cope with the response of these emotions so as to better function and adapt to their own, their organizations, and the interpersonal needs of their relationships and to do so mindful of the requisites of co‐workers and the common good.

Four positive emotions were singled‐out as essential to salesperson‐customer relations: pride, attachment, empathy, and emotional wisdom. Six negative emotions were highlighted as key processes in salesperson‐customer relations: guilt, shame, embarrassment, envy, jealousy, and social anxiety. Some research was reviewed as well, suggesting that cultural factors in the form of different self‐construal (e.g. independent versus independent‐based self‐images) moderate the expression of felt positive and negative emotions and their effects on performance and relations with customers and co‐workers.

The ideas presented in this paper can complement economic and other extreme rational explanations of salesperson and customer behavior and point to new practices in such managerial areas as staffing, training, coaching, compensating, and promoting employees.