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This study explores the brand management and marketing of Creative Cities of Gastronomy. A framework based on brand experience was constructed to investigate its relationship with tourists' brand attachment and brand identification. Two factors that enable tourists to have a stronger brand experience from the self-concept perspective – self-congruity and self-expansion – were also examined.

The authors adopted a quantitative research design and collected data from participants who had visited Creative Cities of Gastronomy. A total of 515 valid questionnaires were collected online and offline. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used for data analysis and hypothesis testing.

The results showed that brand experience positively affects brand identification and attachment. The brand experience of tourists who considered themselves to be “foodies” was enhanced in the Creative Cities of Gastronomy through self-congruity. The results also confirmed that the relationship between self-congruity and brand experience is mediated by self-expansion.

Studies on the Creative Cities of Gastronomy are limited. The few that have explored these cities are dominated by qualitative approaches. This study applied empirical data to examine the brand experience in Creative Cities of Gastronomy. The authors successfully verified that brand experience is effective for building positive relationships with brand attachment and identification. The study also confirmed that self-congruity and self-expansion are important antecedents of brand experience in Creative Cities of Gastronomy. This study enriches the literature by providing empirical evidence and insights into the marketing and branding of these cities.

By integrating uses and gratification theory (UGT) and online buying behavior theory (OBBT), this study aims to examine the impact of escapism motives (self-suppression and self-expansion) and attitude toward online shopping (ATS) on eCart abandonment. In addition, the mediating role of ATS between escapism motives and eCart abandonment is examined.

Structural equations modeling was performed on the data of 400 consumers using AMOS 26.

The results indicated that escapism motivations impacted users’ eCart abandonment, and the attitude toward online shopping mediated this relationship.

The findings of this study imply that online sellers should understand the consumer motives for website use. In response, better strategies should be developed to reduce eCart abandonment.

This study extends knowledge of eCart abandonment by theoretical integration of UGT and OBBT and identification of the intrinsic predictors of virtual cart abandonment behavior. In addition, it is one of the early attempts to examine the dimensional impact of escapism on eCart abandonment.

The increasing popularity of immersive activities (e.g. immersive performing art (IPA) at tourism destinations calls for the need to understand customers’ immersive experiences and its impact on their attitudes and behavioral intentions. This study aims to conceptualize customers’ interactive experience in IPA and systematically examine how interaction in IPA experience shapes customers’ word-of-mouth (WOM) intention and thus generates business values for destination managers.

A two-step mixed-methods approach was used. The qualitative study was adopted to identify the salient dimensions of interaction in IPA experience and develop a context-specific measurement scale. Structural equation modeling approach was applied to test the theoretical model using partial least squares 3.3.0.

The results indicated that the three dimensions of interaction in IPA experience (i.e. parasocial interaction, narrative interaction and environmental interaction) are positively related to customers’ experiences of narrative transportation and self-expansion related to the IPA, which further influence their WOM intention.

This study considers IPA as an emerging form of immersive tourism activities and conceptualizes its interactive nature, and contributes to the understanding of how customers’ interactive experience helps them construct meanings through narrative transportation, and offers valuable guidance for IPA designers and destination management organizations.

While the Ohio State leadership approach had been forgotten for several decades, scholars in the field of leadership have begun revisiting the validity and the role of leader consideration and initiating structure. Building on self-expansion theory, this study suggest the effects of leader consideration and initiating structure on employee task performance. Also, integrating self-expansion theory and regulatory fit theory, the purpose of this paper is to propose and examine the moderating role of employee regulatory focus on the relationship between the Ohio State leadership behaviors and employee task performance, which was mediated by emloyees’ creative behavior as well as citizenship behavior.

To test the hypothesized model of this study, cross-sectional data were collected using questionnaires. Pairs of survey packages, which included group-member surveys and a group-leader survey, were handed out to employees in organizations. The authors collected data from 47 groups and 143 group members in 25 private companies in the Republic of Korea, including from financial, technology, manufacturing, and research and development organizations.

The results showed that leader consideration exerts significant effects on employee task performance. Also, the authors found the moderating role of employee regulatory promotion focus on the relationship between leader consideration/initiating structure and employee task performance, which were mediated by creative behavior and citizenship behavior.

This study contributes to the advancement of the Ohio State leadership approach by integrating self-expansion theory and regulatory fit theory to investigate the distinct mechanisms and boundary conditions of its leadership process. The current study also contributes to the literature on extra-role behavior that the Ohio State leadership behavioral dimensions can be considered as one of the antecedents of employees’ creative and citizenship behavior.

This research aims to explain consumer attraction to brands when stimulation needs are paramount using the perspective of the Self‐Expansion Model. In doing so, it seeks to identiy brand romance – a more proximal construct to brand loyalty and aims to offer a complementary perspective to understand emotional attachment to brands.

A series of four studies developed and validated a three‐factor, 12‐item measurement scale for brand romance using exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Reliability, convergent, criterion, discriminant and nomological validities were established.

Brand romance is a reliable, valid, and a more proximal construct that explains loyalty significantly better than attitudes.

Student subjects constitute the sample and the findings are cautiously generalizable to adult populations. Future research should focus on teasing out product category effects, extending generalizability to other product categories and integrating the Attachment Theory perspective with the study's findings to offer a more comprehensive explanation for loyalty.

Consumers are likely to remain loyal to brands to which they are attracted. The brand romance construct captures this attraction. Marketers need to infuse their brands with novel perspectives, resources and identities on a continuous basis to satisfy stimulation needs and keep the attraction strong. This involves creating new brand associations that help the brand to stay relevant.

To the authors' knowledge, this is the first study to apply the Self‐expansion Model to brand relationships. The research contributes a unique perspective in explaining emotional attachment to brands brought on by stimulation needs. It fills a gap in the emotional attachment literature and provides marketers with a tool to monitor consumers' attraction to brands.

This paper uses systems theory to clarify the crucial point that there is a basic, inborn, bodily motivation, and that a social theory of the self cannot simply be a theory of process. By bridging across current neuroscience, cognitive science, and systems theory, I propose a self that is fundamentally emotional energy seeking. There are other bodily needs (food, drink, etc), but these satiate quickly, and although they can override everything else at moments when they are low, they are not the central switching mechanism, the top of the hierarchy in the subsumption architecture of the self. Basing the formation and ongoing processes of the self in the motive to maximize emotional energy can explain the seeming conflict between tendencies towards self-consistency and the potential for creativity and change. It also allows us to detail the mechanisms that underlie the process of individuals drawing on culture as a resource and in turn diffusing new symbols and meanings into the larger culture.

This paper aims to examine the impact of brand self-congruence on brand advocacy. In addition, the roles of brand love and attachment are examined through a serial mediation model.

A total of 324 valid and useable responses collected from an Australian consumer panel were analysed through IBM SPSS. Underpinned by social identity theory and self-expansion theory, a set of hypotheses was examined in a research model.

The findings show that consumers' brand self-congruence positively impacts brand love, attachment and advocacy intention. Moreover, brand attachment and love mediate the relationship between brand self-congruence and advocacy.

The findings of this research suggest that brand managers should cultivate emotions to build a strong consumer–brand relationship.

This research advances the current understanding of brand advocacy literature concerning brand self-congruence, love and attachment. The findings suggest that consumers' brand self-congruence, combined with brand love and attachment, will generate greater advocacy.

This study aims to highlight important marketing strategies within the context of a highly competitive emerging market with few points of difference because of service homogeneity. Drawing upon the social identity and self-expansion theories, this research explores the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and discounts and packages offers (DPO) as determinants of purchase intentions. The understudied mediating role of brand love is investigated in the CSR–purchase intentions and DPO–purchase intentions relationships, with relationship age as a moderating variable for the two relationships.

Data from 359 valid responses from customers of cellular service firms in Pakistan were analyzed using partial least squares-based structural equation modeling.

The findings show that brand love partially (albeit a weaker relationship) mediates the CSR–purchase intentions relationship. Brand love also partially (albeit a stronger relationship) mediates the DPO–purchase intentions relationship. The moderating role of relationship age is not established.

Cellular firms in emerging markets experience high volatility. Therefore, understanding of the volatile behavior alongside devising strategies is of the utmost importance. This research shows that customers continue their business with the firms they love. Interestingly, the non-significance of relationship age as a moderator for both CSR–purchase intentions and DPO–purchase intentions indicates that garnering customers' purchase intentions with respect to relationship age will be very difficult for cellular firms under fierce competition. CSR and DPO should be strategically used to increase brand love to boost purchase intentions.

This study makes two important contributions to the literature of emerging markets. The first contribution of this research is the proposal and validation of brand love as a mediating variable in CSR–purchase intentions and DPO–purchase intentions relationships. Evaluation of the moderating role of relationship age in CSR–purchase intentions and DPO–purchase intentions relationships is the second contribution.

Romantic dissolution is a common experience throughout the life course, particularly during emerging adulthood (ages 18–29). The purpose of this review was to summarize and critique theoretical approaches and empirical findings of the aftermath of dating relationship dissolution.

Article searches were conducted within PsycINFO. We utilized terms related to romantic relationship dissolution (i.e., breakup, romantic breakup, relationship termination, relationship dissolution, romantic dissolution, romantic termination, post-dissolution) in a search for key words. We narrowed the results further by limiting the search to include participants between the ages of 18 and 29.

Experiencing romantic dissolution can result in both positive and negative emotional reactions and behaviors, including personal growth and self-expansion as well as experiencing physical and emotional abuse from ex-partners. Furthermore, former romantic partners commonly form other types of friendships and casual sexual relationships after the termination of committed romantic relationships. Many theoretical frameworks are used to guide these investigations, and some articles lack a theoretical framework.

Developmental Systems Theory might be a theoretical framework that best shapes our investigations of romantic dissolution in dating relationships that occur in emerging adulthood.

Relationship education programs would be enhanced by discussing the developmental needs that are important for young people and the ways in which their romantic experiences can or cannot meet those needs. In addition to learning about how to have healthy romantic relationships, young people can also benefit from learning how to identify when romantic relationships should end, and how to end them successfully.

For many of the current leadership theories, models, and approaches, the answer to the question posed in the title, “Is leadership more than ‘I like my boss’?,” is “no,” as there appears to be a hierarchy of leadership concepts with Liking of the leader as the primary dimension or general factor foundation. There are then secondary dimensions or specific sub-factors of liking of Relationship Leadership and Task Leadership; and subsequently, tertiary dimensions or actual sub-sub-factors that comprise the numerous leadership views as well as their operationalizations (e.g., via surveys). There are, however, some leadership views that go beyond simply liking of the leader and liking of relationship leadership and task leadership. For these, which involve explicit levels of analysis formulations, often beyond the leader, or are multi-level in nature, the answer to the title question is “yes.” We clarify and discuss these various “no” and “yes” leadership views and implications of our work for future research and personnel and human resources management practice.