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Expenditures on beauty, fitness and body shaping by females have increased significantly in recent years. Most previous studies examined this from the psychological perspective of self-acceptance and self-liking. However, this phenomenon may also have social implications. This study aims to provide a profound understanding of the social environment for female professionals as well as actionable insights for the government and social institutions.

A research model was developed based on impression management and social identity theories incorporating impression management motives, impression construction consumption and social identity. A survey study of 419 Chinese female professionals was conducted to test the research model.

This study surveyed 419 Chinese female professionals and found that impression management motives significantly drove female professionals to spend on their faces and bodies for impression construction, which in turn contributed to the enhancement of their social identities in three dimensions: relational identity, public identity and collective identity.

In a male-dominated society, it has become a norm that females should be cautious about their facial appearance and body shape. Females are often forced to consume to attain physical attractiveness and to construct a favorable social image. This study shows that consumption for impression construction has become a frequently used strategy for impression management and identifies key areas of societal concern.

The rise of social media has caused a shift in organizational practices, giving rise, in some cases, to genuinely “mediatized” organizations. The purpose of this paper is to explore how communications managers employ social media to influence their professional impressions.

Analyzing a sample of 679 European communications professionals, the authors explore with factor and cluster analysis these emerging impression management tactics as well as how managers promote, involve, assist and reproach using social media.

The authors distinguish four patterns of online impression management: self-promotion, assistance seeking, peer support and authority. Because different professional duties may require different approaches to impression management, the authors furthermore cluster for managerial roles, showing that in the shaping of formal or informal online roles, communication professionals convey different impressions depending on their degree of online confidence and strategic purpose for using social media.

This contribution enriches the existing literature first by shedding light on impression management tactics used for social media within a professional context, concurrently exploring the effect of variables such as the extent and purpose of social media activity, the privacy concerns of managers and their roles within the organization. Second, it proposes a typology of social media impression management tailored to the reality of managers, with the aim of presenting a specific tool for understanding managerial self-communication through social media, classifying and predicting professional behaviors.

The research concerns the effect of frontline employees’ averted or direct gaze on consumers’ evaluation of the encounter. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that in normal interactions, a direct or averted gaze affects people’s evaluation of others. The question was whether this finding would hold true in commercial interactions.

The authors conducted three experiments using a written scenario with a photograph among a total sample of 612 participants.

This research showed that consumers’ social impression of the frontline employees mediated the effect of the employees’ gazing behaviour on consumers’ emotions and satisfaction with the encounters. The findings also showed that averting gaze had a negative effect on consumers’ first impression of the frontline employee, which affected consumers’ satisfaction with the encounter. The findings also showed that a direct gaze had a negative effect on encounter satisfaction when consumers sought to purchase embarrassing products.

The research demonstrated that the effect of gaze on encounter satisfaction was mediated by the social impression and moderated by consumers’ approach/avoidance motivation.

Social media technologies are used by many organizations to project a positive image of their strategies and operations. At the same time, however, there are an increasing number of reports of slip-ups linked to poor situational awareness and flawed self-presentations on social media platforms. The purpose of this paper is to explore the triggers of inappropriate social media posts.

Data were collected during a qualitative study of social media use in 31 organizations in the UK and interpreted using concepts from Erving Goffman’s theory of impression management.

The findings point to a series of demanding triggers, which increase the likelihood of insensitive and contextually inappropriate posts and also damage fostered impressions.

The authors identify four triggers linked to inappropriate social media posts, namely: speed and spontaneity; informality; blurred boundaries; and the missing audience. The authors also discuss how extending the notion of what Goffman refers to as “situation-like” encounters provides useful insights into impression management on social media.

Because corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports in China are surging in quantity but are low in quality, impression management in CSR reports has become a hot research topic in recent years. This paper aims to research whether and how media coverage affects CSR report impression management and whether CSR report disclosure attributes have different regulating effects.

Based on the effective supervision hypothesis and the market pressure hypothesis, this study uses Heckman’s two-stage regression model to examine the effect of media coverage on CSR report impression management from the perspective of managers’ self-interest.

The results support the market pressure hypothesis, which suggest that firms with higher levels of media coverage are more likely to engage in CSR report impression management, and this effect is especially significant in firms with a higher proportion of institutional investor shareholding and more analysts tracking. Further cross-sectional group studies show that market pressure is only present in firms whose CSR reports are subject to mandatory disclosure without third-party assurance or policy-oriented media attention.

This paper does not consider the attention of other forms of media. The findings of this paper has policy implications for a better understanding of the motivation underlying impression management in CSR reports, encouraging voluntary disclosure and assurance to relieve the market pressure from media coverage.

From the perspective impression management of social responsibility report, further understanding the governance role of media coverage. A large number of previous literatures have shown that media coverage has a good supervisory role, but these studies mainly focus on the financial level of enterprises. Media coverage seems to be a “double-edged sword”. While it plays a supervisory role and inhibits earnings management or irregularities at the financial level, it also brings enormous market pressure to the enterprises, which is reflected in the increase of impression management behavior of social responsibility reports at the non-financial level, and this pressure is probably caused by the financial level.

Voluntary disclosure and verification of social responsibility reports, as an important mechanism to improve the quality of social responsibility reports, supports the correctness, scientificity and rationality of the current policies of the SFC and the exchange on encouraging voluntary disclosure and verification. In the future, changing regulatory thinking, encouraging voluntary disclosure of social responsibility reports and introducing more independent and authoritative certification agencies should be the direction and focus of policy-making, so that social responsibility reports can play a better role in helping investors make decisions.

From the perspective of impression management of CSR reports, this paper provides evidence regarding the effect of media coverage and its transmission mechanisms. This paper uses China's unique institutional environments to study the impact of different types of media coverage on impression management in CSR reports in emerging market economy. Different from the institutional environment of developed countries such as the USA, mandatory disclosure and voluntary disclosure coexist in CSR reporting in China. The authors provide critical evidence to show that third-party assurance and voluntary disclosure improves the quality of CSR reports.

Human brands in the music industry use self-presentation tactics on social media to manage audience impressions. This practice has led to many posts asking followers to adopt behaviors favoring the human brand. However, its effectiveness in leveraging relevant performance metrics for musicians outside social media, such as popularity in specialized media, music sales and number of contracted concerts, needs further exploration. This study aims to reveal the effect of impression management tactics conveyed on social media on the market performance of musicians’ human brands.

Secondary data research classifies 5,940 social media posts from 11 music artists into self-presentation tactics (self-promotion, exemplification, supplication and ingratiation). It shows their predictions on three market performance metrics in an annual balanced panel study.

Impression management tactics via posts on social media are mostly self-promotion, improving the musicians’ market performance by increasing the number of contracted concerts. Conversely, ingratiation generated the most positive effect on the musician’s popularity but reduced music sales. Besides lowering the musicians’ popularity, exemplification also reduced the number of contracted concerts, while the supplication had no significant effect.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the research is the first to use social media postings of musicians’ official human brand profiles based on self-presentation typologies as a complete impression management tool. Furthermore, it is the first to test the effects of these posts on market performance metrics (i.e. outside of social media) in a longitudinal study.

As organizations increasingly engage with consumers over mobile devices, there is a growing need to understand how consumers react to impression management over platforms with limited textual content. The purpose of this paper is to empirically assess how different impression management tactics can be used in mobile media to enhance consumer perception-attitude-intentions toward a corporate brand.

We surveyed 670 consumers and estimate structural equation models and repeated-measures ANOVAs to determine how short passages employing alternate impression management tactics influence consumers’ perceptions, attitudes and purchase intentions.

Results reveal that each impressions management tactic (i.e. ingratiation, intimidation, organizational promotion, supplication and exemplification) influences consumer perceptions, attitudes and intentions. The authors compare differences in how the impressions management tactics influence each stage of the perception-attitude-intentions model and find evidence that initial differences in perceptions favoring ingratiation and exemplification appeals become magnified for purchase intentions.

Recent calls for research focus on an understanding of how consumers process information on reduced-content platforms of small-screened mobile devices. These results provide empirical evidence of the use of impression management and the difference between five impression management tactics on enhancing consumer perception-attitude-intentions model.

The results of this study will provide marketers with insights to optimize communications and corporate brands with consumers over mobile media.

This paper adds to the nascent yet vital literature on mobile marketing by focusing on how impression management tactics influence perceptions, attitudes and intentions through the short message characteristic of mobile platforms. The authors develop a framework for how corporate brand management can strategically use impressions management tactics in this novel domain.

This research aims to explore generation (Gen) Z's personal branding on social media when job seeking.

Gen Z students, in their final year of university, were interviewed about personal branding, as well as recruiters and career advisors to gain insights into the recruitment process and expectations of online personal brands. Before interviewing, Gen Z students' LinkedIn profiles were examined, and then fed into the interview process.

Using impression management theory, the findings show that Gen Z perceive online personal brands as a crucial tool to gain more advantage in job markets. A gap was found between desired and perceived selves in Gen Z's online personal brands. Strategies such as effective self-reflection, authentic communication, self-promotion processes, awareness of risks and constantly controlling digital footprints were suggested to build stronger and more coherent personal brands. Gen Z are in favour of a more dynamic, interactive, work-in-process of authentic personal brands.

This research demonstrates the importance of authentically building online personal branding strategies and tactics to bridge the divide between Gen Z's desired and perceived images in personal branding on social media when job seeking.

Being ignored or excluded is a painful experience. Belongingness theory suggests that individuals inherently desire for belongingness and social interactions. This study aims to explore whether ostracized employees take actions to seek potential re-inclusion in the workplace.

Data were collected from a two-wave survey. Ordinary least squares regressions were conducted to test the hypotheses.

Workplace ostracism is positively associated with victims’ impression management behaviors (i.e. self-promotion and exemplification) through need for approval. In addition, these indirect relationships are more salient for victims with stronger self-face concerns.

This study examines how ostracized employees strive for potential re-inclusion and who are more likely to seek approval. Specifically, this study identifies two impression management behaviors as victims’ potential re-inclusion tactics in response to ostracism in the workplace.

This study aims to investigate the factors that affect an audience's purchase decisions on a new type of social media, namely live video streaming platforms.

This study is based on data from an online survey providing 488 valid responses. These responses are used to test the research model by employing partial least squares (PLS) modeling.

Three antecedents (consumer competitive arousal, gift design aesthetics and broadcaster's image) influence the audience's purchase decisions (impulse buying and continuous buying intention). Chinese impression management (mianzi) acts as a moderator. Self-mianzi, mutual mianzi and other mianzi (i.e. three subtypes of mianzi) moderate the effects of consumer competitive arousal, gift design aesthetics and broadcaster's image on impulse buying.

The findings encourage practitioners developing marketing strategies for live video streaming platforms in the Chinese cultural context to consider peer influence, gift appearance, broadcaster's image and mianzi.

Drawing on the community gift-giving model and face-negotiation theory, this study provides an integrated research model to investigate a new type of social media (live video streaming). It offers insight into virtual gifting behaviors by confirming the effects of three antecedents on the audience's purchase decisions, with mianzi acting as a moderator.