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Few extant studies have focused on digital rituals and investigated the relationship between them and customer citizenship behavior in the context of online brand communities (OBCs). This study aims to examine the sequential mediation mechanism of emotional energy and spiritual brand identification under interaction ritual theory and identifies membership prototypicality as the moderator.

An online investigation of 515 OBC users was conducted to gather data, and structural equation modeling was applied to test the hypotheses.

The empirical results revealed that OBC rituals were positively related to customer citizenship behavior. Emotional energy and spiritual brand identification could play mediating roles in the relationship between OBC rituals and customer citizenship behavior. Furthermore, there existed a sequential mediation mechanism with emotional energy as the first mediator and spiritual brand identification as the second. The effect of OBC rituals on emotional energy was more significant for peripheral members than prototypical members.

Managers of OBCs should conduct various ritualistic strategies to stimulate users to perform customer citizenship behaviors. Discrete ritualized activities should be intended for members of different prototypicalities.

This study provides a profound insight on how OBC rituals foster customer citizenship behavior and is among the first to explore such a relationship. It also investigates the sequential mediation mechanism, thus broadening the research on the influencing processes of OBC rituals on customer citizenship behavior.

This paper aims to explore the role of spiritual leaders as celebrity business founders and brand endorsers by investigating the mediating role of perceived value in the impact of normative community pressure and perceived brand credibility on purchase intention.

The authors collected data from two studies in India, one with urban (N = 307) and another with rural (N = 206) consumers of fast moving consumer goods brands being endorsed by popular celebrity business founders. The authors tested all our hypotheses using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) approach with SmartPLS software.

Perceived value mediates the positive impact of normative community pressure and perceived brand credibility on purchase intention for the brands endorsed by celebrity business founders, and these mediating effects are stronger for urban (vs rural) consumers.

The results from Indian consumers may not be generalizable to other emerging markets with diverse cultural and socio-economic conditions.

This research would help international marketers understand the unique branding and marketing strategies used by local players to learn how to successfully target both urban and rural consumers in the emerging markets.

This paper extends the celebrity endorsement literature by exploring the role of spiritual leaders as celebrity business founders and brand endorsers, a growing trend in the emerging markets with high cultural and religious diversity (e.g. India and Indonesia).

Branding in faith-based consumer markets, in which marketing practices, religion, and consumption intersect, is largely unexplored. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how brands integrate religious concerns into their strategies through Halal branding. The central logic of authors’ view is that branding applied in a particular consumer market (i.e., Muslim) could enrich dominant (Western) branding theory.

Although challenging, qualitative research offers a valuable lens in international marketing research in allowing researchers to study organizations and contexts in their natural settings, enabling a more holistic approach, instead of imposing one’s culturally informed pre-conceptions (Boyacigiller and Adler, 1991). In this regard, a multiple case study approach considering Halal cosmetic brands is used. A replication logic is applied in interpreting the data.

Holistic branding is a broader concept than what mainstream theory acknowledges; brand attributes go beyond the functional and emotional, offering insights into a spiritual dimension. The proposed model identifies attributes that reflect the brand’s worldview and contribute to holistic branding: spiritual ethos and belief system, sustainable and eco-ethical philosophy, wholesomeness and inclusiveness.

This exploratory research represents the initial step for faith-based/Halal branding; the discussion is confined to the cases under study. The results are not conclusive and require further empirical research to validate their broader applicability.

The study highlights the need for a comprehensive approach to branding of faith-based products. The Halal market (cosmetics and toiletries) may be attractive to companies that seek to widely develop products targeting faith-based Muslim consumer markets.

The study contributes to an area of growing concern from an academic point of view (i.e. Halal branding) by proposing to add a spiritual dimension to holistic branding. Several questions remain and should stimulate further research. Hence, researchers would be able to understand more clearly the meaning of the religious environment and the impact that environmental forces are likely to exert on business decisions.

This paper aims to offer a systematic view of religious consumption and its iterative influences on consumers, as well as their differences in attitudes, values and behaviors.

Using a mixed-method approach – both qualitative and quantitative – the study develops religious self-transformation and self-categorization scales to empirically evaluate the hypotheses.

The convergence of consumption, self-identification and religious attitudes and behaviors proffer an essentially subjective concept useful in understanding the existential reflection and supernatural orientation that individuals may seek through consumption. Cluster analysis (based on product, services, media and practices) reveals four quadrants. The non-religious (religious) group has low (high) consumption in all four consumption categories Self-categorization (self-transformation) group has high (low) level of product consumption, but low (high) in all three other categories. This research presented four invisible identities that are visibly different in terms of life satisfaction, religious brand preference, dollars spending on religious products and monetary donation.

This research only considers one medium-size city as opposed to all types of cities. All religious affiliated and nonaffiliated respondents are included in the total sample.

The study offers new insights into the triadic relationship between religious self-identification, religious consumption, and the marketplace that can be used in branding, segmentation, targeting, positioning, and persuasive advertising, public relation and social media, and services marketing.

Religion addresses the nature of existence. In this religion–consumer–brand nexus, consumption is a way for consumers to experience and immense themselves in the sacred to solidify, communicate, transform, improve and transport who they are capitalizing on religious self-identification can affectively promote positive social change.

This work proposes four invisible identities that are different in consumption of religious products and services in terms of patterns and purposes. These groups of consumers shape the marketplace through the derived utility of their religious consumption based on their self-identification, which in turn influences their religious brand preference.

The purpose of this study is to empirically examine the antecedents and consequences of corporate brand image in the context of Islamic banks in Malaysia. The antecedents of corporate brand image are divided into three categories which are functional brand attribute, emotional brand attribute and spiritual brand attribute. The consequence of corporate brand image on the other hand is loyalty.

A self-administered survey was used to collect data from experienced Islamic banking customers. A total of 281 questionnaires were analysed using Partial Least Square-Structural Equation Modeling.

This study found a significant relationship between some aspects of the brand attributes and corporate brand image. Corporate brand image, in turn, influences customer loyalty.

These findings contribute to the understanding that in the context of Islamic banks, the corporate brand image is not only influenced by the functional and emotional aspects, but also the spiritual aspect especially factors related to beliefs. Practically, this study provides insight to the management on the aspects valued by customers in regards to their bank, which could be used to guide Islamic bank positioning strategy.

The concept of corporate brand image has been explored from the perspective of functional and emotional aspects only. This study offers a new attribute influencing corporate brand image in the Islamic banking context, which is the spiritual brand attribute.

This paper aims to assess the effects of the Chinese cultural element in the brand logo (CCEBL)-product function congruence and CCEBL-brand image congruence on consumer-brand identification and subsequent purchase intention. The authors also explore the moderating role of cultural element authenticity in the process of consumer-brand identification formation.

An online survey was conducted in China between January and February 2021. A total of 340 valid responses were collected and analyzed. A bootstrap method was employed to verify the hypotheses.

CCEBL-product function congruence and CCEBL-brand image congruence significantly improve consumers' purchase intentions, and the effects vary among product categories. Consumer-brand identification mediates these relationships. Finally, the relationships between CCEBL-product function congruence, CCEBL-brand image congruence, and consumer-brand identification are moderated by cultural element authenticity.

This is one of the first studies to investigate how local cultural elements in brand logos affect purchase intentions in the context of ethnocentrism. Additionally, this study advances the understanding of brand logo design by explaining and comparing the differences in the effectiveness of local cultural elements in brand logos among utilitarian and hedonic products. Additionally, this study links authenticity to cultural marketing and thus contributes to the literature.

Indigenous entrepreneurship and hybrid venture creation represents a significant opportunity for Indigenous peoples to build vibrant Indigenous-led economies that support sustainable economic development and well-being. It is a means by which they can assert their rights to design, develop and maintain Indigenous-centric political, economic and social systems and institutions. In order to develop an integrated and comprehensive understanding of the intersection between Indigenous entrepreneurship and hybrid ventures, this chapter adopts a case study approach to examining Indigenous entrepreneurship and the underlying global trends that have influenced the design, structure and mission of Indigenous hybrid ventures. The cases present how Indigenous entrepreneurial ventures are, first and foremost, hybrid ventures that are responsive to community needs, values, cultures and traditions. They demonstrate that Indigenous entrepreneurship and hybrid ventures are more successful when the rights of Indigenous peoples are addressed and when these initiatives are led by or engage Indigenous communities. The chapter concludes with a conceptual model that can be applied to generate insights into the complex interrelationships and interdependencies that influence the formation of Indigenous hybrid ventures and value creation strategies according to three dimensions: (i) the overarching dimension of indigeneity and Indigenous rights; (ii) indigenous community orientations and (iii) indigenous hybrid venture creation considerations.

The rapidly increasing practice of “sharing” and “liking” religious and spiritually inspiring content on social media platforms suggests it is engaging for consumers, but it is unclear why. This study aims to investigate consumer interpretations of spiritual content on social media in relation to participatory roles.

Qualitative in-depth interviews and thematic analysis are used. Members of social networks actively engaged in social media posting were identified through researcher networks and snowballing.

The social media space facilitates enhanced consumer agency in the consumption of spiritual messages which are readily accessible in this secular context. Three levels of interpretive meaning for consumers, conditional on the perceived sender motivations and temporality of receipt and related to participatory roles are identified. Despite being widely disseminated and immersed in the profane, some participants receive spiritual inspiration, which helps them achieve self-transcendence. Others receive inspiration through affirmation of their values and identity; however for a few, inspirational messages are met with scepticism and are not meaningful. Social media facilitates consumers’ ability to provide others with positive inspiration, however, this is not always their intent.

This work contributes unique insight regarding consumption of spirituality in a social media environment highlighting the importance of sender mediation and temporal context with implications for spiritual meaning and online engagement with spiritual content. A unique typology relating interpretive meaning to participatory roles is presented.

The purpose of this paper is to enhance the academic understanding of the perception of brand dimensions in the Islamic Higher Education Institutions (IHEIs) and explore the implications for managerial practice. The main objective of this research is to identify the branding aspects that apply to higher education branding in general and Islamic higher education in particular. The empirical setting is the Middle East, which has a mixture of public and private Islamic institutions working on spreading the moderate Islamic thoughts internationally.

The methodology used to guide the research is based on exploratory qualitative research approach composed of 45 in‐depth interviews with academicians and executives from five Gulf countries. The adopted qualitative approach is based on inductive logic to help reveal the main criteria influencing the perception of IHEIs' brands.

The results provide partial support for the proposed conceptual framework of the dimension of branding in the Islamic higher education market, with the functional dimension being far more significant than the social, mental and spiritual dimensions. Findings indicate that internationalisation will be the key element that influences the perception of the brand in the new competitive environment. The research also reveals the respondents' ideal definition of a good brand, the perception of brand's determinants and the general characteristics of the ideal higher education institution.

Recommendations are provided to decision makers in IHEIs, in order to develop their educational services and enhance their institutions' brand image.

This research helps in structuring what defines a good IHEI brand, from the perspective of academicians and experts in the labour market.

This study aims to construct a scale for measuring the spa hotel experiencescape in wellness tourism, clarify the mechanism through which wellness tourism experiencescape influences revisit intention and investigate the mediation roles of authenticity, memorability and organizational identification.

This study conducted content analysis of interviews, online reviews and relevant articles and used the concept of experiencescape to interpret spa hotels’ experiential environment. The stimulus–organism–response (SOR) model was used as the basis for introducing authenticity, memorability, organizational identification and revisit intention to investigate how wellness tourism experiencescape affects tourists’ behavior. In total, 488 valid questionnaires were collected at Taiwanese spa hotel clusters.

Four factors of spa hotel experiencescape were identified: health promotion treats, mental learning, unique travel experience and healthy diet. Existential authenticity–memorability and existential authenticity–organizational identification exerted full positive mediation effects in the relationship between wellness tourism experiencescape and revisit intention.

This study provides guidance on experience design for spa hotels. It promotes the consideration of existential authenticity in wellness tourism design.

The COVID-19 pandemic has raised awareness of wellness, drastically increasing the potential of the wellness tourism market. This study investigated the construction of wellness tourism experiencescape and its influence, and the findings can facilitate post-pandemic restoration of the wellness tourism industry. On the basis of SOR model, a chain mediation model was proposed to reveal the influence of wellness tourism experiencescape on revisit intention. Existential authenticity was discovered to play a crucial role in the relationship between wellness tourism experiencescape and revisit intention, which suggests that existential authenticity should be considered during service design and in marketing strategies for wellness tourism.