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In the online environment, consumers increasingly feel vulnerable due to firms’ expanding capabilities of collecting and using their data in an unsanctioned manner. Drawing from gossip theory, this research focuses on two key suppressors of consumer vulnerability: transparency and control. Previous studies conceptualize transparency and control from rationalistic approaches that overlook individual experiences and present a unidimensional conceptualization. This research aims to understand how individuals interpret transparency and control concerning privacy vulnerability in the online environment. Additionally, it explores strategic approaches to communicating the value of transparency and control.

An interpretivism paradigm and phenomenology were adopted in the research design. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 41 participants, including consumers and experts, and analyzed through thematic analysis.

The findings identify key conceptual dimensions of transparency and control by adapting justice theory. They also reveal that firms can communicate assurance, functional, technical and social values of transparency and control to address consumer vulnerability.

This research makes the following contributions to the data privacy literature. The findings exhibit multidimensional and comprehensive conceptualizations of transparency and control, including user, firm and information perspectives. Additionally, the conceptual framework combines empirical insights from both experiencers and observers to offer an understanding of how transparency and control serve as justice mechanisms to effectively tackle the issue of unsanctioned transmission of personal information and subsequently address vulnerability. Lastly, the findings provide strategic approaches to communicating the value of transparency and control.

Consumer satisfaction towards a brand is one of a firm’s important performance outcomes. However, building a strong green brand to foster consumers’ satisfaction is often challenging for firms. Drawing on the dynamic capability and mechanism-enabling perspectives of ambidexterity. The purpose of this research is to explore mechanisms of perceived brand performance and green trust through which green brand ambidexterity acts as a facilitator of consumer satisfaction.

The hypothesized relationships were tested by both partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM; symmetric approach) and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA; asymmetric approach) with data collected from a green consumer questionnaire survey in Hong Kong.

The results from PLS-SEM indicate that green brand ambidexterity affects consumer satisfaction through multiple mediating paths of perceived brand performance, green trust-consumer and the sequential integration of perceived brand performance and green trust. Results from fsQCA further reinforced these findings.

The present research provides a nuanced understanding of how ambidexterity enhances consumer satisfaction in the context of a green brand by identifying multiple mechanisms.

There is a lack of research on how green brand ambidexterity affects green brand outcomes from the perspective of value creation for consumers. The present research fills this gap by providing more comprehensive explanations of mechanisms for green brand ambidexterity to facilitate consumer satisfaction. It also offers a better understanding of how the effects of green brand ambidexterity are viewed on a path-dependency that is aligned with the dynamic capability perspective of ambidexterity and how green trust forms a critical path to enable green brand ambidexterity and perceived brand performance to enhance consumer satisfaction.

Industry-wide crises involving consumer products place consumers at risk. Consumers rely on institutions that constrain corporate practice and control product quality to reduce risk. As institutions vary by country, country-of-origin (COO) acts as a salient cue for consumers to identify institutional quality and thus evaluate risk when making purchase decisions. However, in the era of globalisation, identification of institutional quality becomes complex as global value chains involve different countries such as brand origin (BO) and country-of-manufacture (COM). Therefore, this research investigates how BO and COM individually and jointly affect consumers' institutional perceptions and subsequent purchase decision-making in the presence of systemic risk.

This research includes three studies (n = 764) employing surveys and choice modelling experiments with samples from China and the USA.

The results show that BO and COM relate to different institutional perceptions. BO evokes perceptions of legitimacy and the regulatory environment, while COM evokes perceptions of the normative and the regulatory environment. The combination of BO and COM determines how institutional quality is communicated and further affects consumers' legitimacy perceptions, preferences and willingness to pay a price premium.

This research contributes to understanding the effect of BO and COM in the context of complex value chains from an institutional perspective. It also provides implications for leveraging complex COO cues with BO and COM information to improve consumers' institutional perceptions.