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Several studies have shown that superstitious beliefs, such as beliefs in “lucky” product attributes, influence consumer purchase behaviour. Still, little is known about how social influence, in particular mere social presence, impacts consumer superstition-related purchase decisions. Drawing on impression management theory, this paper aims to investigate the effect of social presence on consumer purchase decisions of products featuring lucky charms including the role of anticipated embarrassment as a mediator of the social presence effect.

In three studies, participants select products that feature or do not feature a lucky charm. They make these selections under varying conditions of social presence, as induced by the shopping setting in the scenario or through the use of confederates or fellow participants observing them make a real product selection. Participants are students from Australia and China.

The studies show that social presence makes consumers less likely to select products that feature a lucky charm. This suppressing effect is mediated by the consumers’ anticipated embarrassment.

The study investigates the effect of social presence but does not investigate different parameters of social presence such as the number of people present and their familiarity. The study investigates effects for purchase settings but does not include effects of usage and neither does it look into differences across product types or lucky charm types.

Marketers should be careful to not make lucky charms too publicly salient. Online settings are more suitable than mortar-and-brick settings for selling products featuring a lucky charm.

The present research is the first to investigate consumer purchase behaviour for a product featuring a lucky charm. It is also the first to investigate the impact of social influence on superstition-based decision-making.

Social media campaigns by fashion brands typically rely on two types of accounts: official brands' accounts and social media influencers' accounts. The current study investigates relevant mechanisms that explain the effectiveness of Instagram posts contingent upon their account types (commercial brand's Instagram account versus influencer's Instagram account) and content types (the absence versus presence of human figures in the posted contents).

Conducting an online experiment (N Females = 195), it was tested if parasocial interaction (PSI) and feelings of social presence moderate the effects of Instagram accounts' promotional posts on consumers' perceived trustworthiness of the endorsed fashion brand. The experiment employed a 2 (Type of Instagram posts: product-only posts versus product posts with a person content) × 2 (Type of Instagram account: a fashion-brand account versus a a fashion-influencer account) between-subjects factorial design.

Results demonstrate three-way interaction effects among the type of the Instagram account, the type of Instagram posts and PSI/social presence on the perceived trustworthiness of a brand. When the content is coming from a fashion-influencer account, there is no difference between product posts with a person and product-only posts conditions with regard to the positive relationship between PSI/social presence and trustworthiness. In contrast, when the source is a fashion-brand account on Instagram, the positive relationship between PSI/social presence and trustworthiness is stronger for product posts with a person. These findings suggest that Instagram posts that are promoted by fashion influencers would have similar effects of PSI and social presence, even if they do not appear themselves in the branded content.

This research contributes to our understanding of the effective antecedents of trustworthiness in social media-based fashion marketing and fashion brand management. Instagram account types and content types influence the extent to which social media communication allows for the formation of emotional ties with and positive evaluation of the fashion brand.

Virtual worlds are a typical form of social network syndication. Although the future of the virtual world phenomenon seems bright, not all efforts have succeeded. Therefore knowing how to motivate users and keep them continually engaged and visiting is an important challenge for those who create and manage virtual world websites. This paper aims to address these issues.

The present study proposes a conceptual model from technological, entertainment and social perspectives to examine the determinants affecting users' intentions in their virtual worlds usage. Recognising that human behaviour varies according to different social roles, this study investigated four social roles (habitual, active, personal and lurker), and 729 valid data samples were collected from the Chinese virtual world, i‐Partment. Partial least square and multi‐group analysis were performed to measure the research model.

The results of this study indicate that ease of use, usefulness, social presence and enjoyment are important factors of virtual worlds usage. This study also confirms that social presence and enjoyment are influenced by platform‐based and sociability‐based interactive quality, with sociability‐based interactive quality having a much higher impact on social presence than platform‐based quality. Moreover the proposed model demonstrates different intensities of explanatory power for users' usage intentions according to four social roles, and the results of this study indicate different but insightful findings for each of the four social roles.

The virtual worlds practitioners should strive to launch creative and new recreational information or functions on a regular basis to make users' experiences enjoyable. In addition practitioners should initiate special activities or festivals to promote social interaction and devise rules to encourage users to spend more time on the virtual world websites. Moreover virtual world websites must be easy to use – with a user‐friendly interface, smooth moving lines and clear and understandable information – and provide useful functions.

This paper is one of the few studies that compares and analyses the behavioural models of different social roles, and suggests that virtual world website practitioners should make use of these findings and provide flexible services to fulfil different users' special needs.

Drawing upon the social presence theory, this paper aims to propose three social presence variables in the brand page context (the brand page as a medium, the presence of other customers and interaction with the brand page manager) and to test their effects on customer engagement behavior (CEB) and customer-brand identification (CBI).

A total of 340 responses were collected via an online research platform and analyzed using structural equation modeling analysis.

The results revealed that both the social presence of the brand page and the interaction with the brand page manager are positively associated with CEB, whereas that of other customers negatively influences CEB, which in turn, positively affects CBI.

This paper presents the underlying process of driving customers’ engagement activities and building psychological closeness between customers and brands by applying social presence theory and social identity theory to Facebook brand pages.

To enhance customers’ experiences on Facebook brand pages, practitioners should visualize brand page managers through diverse types of postings. Brand page managers need to balance the presence of others, as well as bring a sense of human-likeness on the pages using storytelling strategies.

This research sheds light on the human side of a non-human world. The results suggest that the sense of a human presence in virtual brand communities is essential to engage customers with online activities toward brands while also building a closer customer–brand relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the causal relationship between interactive and personal campaigning on social media and political involvement, and the mechanisms that explain the effects. Specifically, this study examines whether personal and interactive communication on Twitter increases political involvement among citizens through social presence and perceived expertise.

An experimental design – a 2 (low vs high interactivity)×3 (depersonalized vs individualized vs privatized communication) between-subjects design – is used.

The findings show that interactive communication leads to a stronger sense of social presence and source expertise, which positively affect involvement. The effects of personal campaigning differ. Individualized communication positively affects involvement via source expertise. Interestingly, privatized communication positively affects involvement via social presence, but negatively via source expertise.

Although a growing body of work examines the political consequences of social media, there is still very little understanding why social media affect citizens. The current study fills this void by investigating how the use of social media affects political involvement among citizens.

Brand microblogs have been adopted as a new approach to promote products or services and maintain relationships with consumers for companies, but literature on why consumers are willing to participate on these microblogs is still relatively limited. The purpose of this study is to examine factors affecting consumers’ participation on brand microblogs and then indicate the underlying mechanism of this process based on elaboration likelihood model (ELM), commitment–trust theory and social presence.

An online survey was conducted in China to investigate consumers who followed brand microblogs. A total of 380 valid responses were collected, and the data were analyzed by the partial least squares structural equation modeling to assess the proposed research model.

The findings show that argument quality and source credibility of a brand microblog are two important factors that enhance consumers’ community commitment and trust toward the microblog, which, in turn, promote their participation intention. In addition, social presence has a moderating effect on the relationship between trust toward brand microblog and participation.

This study extends the understanding regarding consumers’ information adoption processes in brand microblogs from both central and peripheral routes based on ELM. Besides, the role of trust in affecting consumers’ participation and community commitment in the context of brand microblog has been examined from a more detailed perspective. Finally, this paper better reveal the role of social presence in brand communities by focusing on its moderating effect on the relationship between commitment–trust and consumers’ participation. These findings can provide entrepreneurs with insights into strengthening consumers’ participation and operating their brand microblogs in the long-term.

Connectedness is essential for student success in online learning. By projecting themselves as real people through video, instructors support connectedness. In this chapter, researchers apply the theory of social presence (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2000) to case studies from two public higher education institutions: a four-year university and a large research university. Analysis identifies video as a humanizing element of online courses. Findings suggest video could be used in a variety of ways (e.g., video lectures, synchronous office hours, weekly overview videos), and no single use of video was perceived to be more or less effective in developing social presence and humanizing the learning experience. However, participants especially perceived connectedness when video was used in a variety of ways. Students from the second case study validated a perception of connectedness to the instructor that faculty in our first case study hoped to achieve. However, one instructor’s perception of disconnect illustrates that video is just one of several pedagogical practices necessary to create a satisfying learning experience for both students and instructors. While video is not the only way to establish social presence, findings suggest video is an effective practice toward creating a humanized and connected online learning community.

This study aims to investigate the moderating effect of in-group social presence on the relationship between face concern and hotel customers’ behavioral responses to service failures.

Participants were randomly assigned to two conditions: in-group presence vs control group. They read a scenario describing a hotel check-in service failure and answered questions regarding their behavioral intention after the failure and level of face concern.

The results indicate that face concern is positively associated with the intention to voice a complaint, to spread negative word-of-mouth and to post negative online reviews. While the impact of face concern on complaint intention became insignificant in the presence of an in-group, its effect on posting negative online reviews was enhanced when surrounded by an in-group.

It addresses the long-lasting debate about the association between face concern and various types of behavioral responses to service failure. Practically, extra attention should be paid to the process quality when serving face concerned customers, particularly when they are accompanied by important others.

This study enriches the literature on cultural effects by identifying the situational effect of face concern on customers’ service failure responses. A model that describes the situational effect of face concern on different types of behavioral intention has been built.

Swift guanxi and trust can influence consumers’ decision making in social commerce. What factors will influence the formation of swift guanxi and trust between buyers and sellers in social commerce has not been clearly investigated. The purpose of this paper is to identify antecedents and impacts of swift guanxi and trust in social commerce.

An online questionnaire was used to collect the data, and Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling was employed for data analysis. Social support and presence are introduced as the antecedents for swift guanxi and trust, leading to the repurchase intention (RI) and social sharing intention of customers.

The results indicate that social support and presence can influence swift guanxi and trust. Social support and presence are positively associated with swift guanxi and trust which further lead to RI and social sharing intention.

The findings can be used to guide sellers in social commerce platforms to improve their services and make good use of platform features to improve customers’ perception of presence. To attract new customers and retain old customers, sellers should also build swift guanxi and trust through the recommendation and experience sharing of previous buyers on social media.

This study combines social support theory and presence theory to investigate the factors that influence customers’ purchase decision and social sharing intention in the context of social commerce in China. The integration of social support theory and presence theory explains both the social and technical factors that influence swift guanxi and trust in social commerce.

Prior studies on virtual product purchase have focused on external technological factor but have paid less attention to internal user factors. Thus, drawing upon the social presence and user engagement theories, the purpose of this paper is to develop a research model considering both technological factors and user factors and empirically examine the validity of the proposed research model.

A survey from 214 World of Warcraft players was conducted to test the proposed research model, and structural equation modelling approach (specifically, PLS) was used to test the proposed hypotheses.

The data analysis results suggest that both social presence and user engagement positively influence the intention to purchase virtual products. Furthermore, two technological factors, interactivity and sociability, are found to affect social presence, and two social factors, social ties and social identity, are found to affect user engagement.

This study proposes a dual factor framework (i.e. technological and user factors) to investigate the factors influencing the intention to purchase by integrating the social presence perspective and user engagement perspective. The findings would be beneficial for service provider of massively multiplayer online role-playing games to recognize that triggering user demand is of equal importance with offering better technologies and suggest new ways to promote users’ virtual product purchase intentions.