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Although situational crisis communication theory (SCCT) is centered on rationality and cognitive information processing, it ignores that people are also driven by irrationality and non-cognitive information processing. The purpose of this study aims to fill this gap by examining how gender stereotypes, based on perceived spokesperson sex influence the public’s perceptions of crisis response messages.

A 2 (industry type: automotive vs daycare industry) × 2 (spokesperson’s sex: male vs female) × 2 (crisis response appeal: rational vs emotional) between-subject online experiment was conducted to examine the effect of gender stereotype in crisis communication.

Results showed that either matching spokesperson sex with sex differed industry or matching sex differed industry with appropriate crisis response appeal can generate a more positive evaluation of the spokesperson and the organization. The results also revealed under which circumstances, the attractiveness of different sex of the spokesperson can either promote or mitigate people’s perceptions of the organization. Furthermore, when people are aware of a spokesperson’s sex, in a female-associated industry, a mismatching effect of a positive violation of a male-related stereotype overrides a matching effect of a female-related stereotype in crisis communication.

This study is among the first to identify how the gender of a spokesperson and industry type affect publics’ crisis response.

Fake news stories have become a central element of crises that corporate public relations practitioners have confronted. Whether such stories are rumors, outright lies or deliberate attempts to discredit corporations, they have the same impact and require specific strategies for public relations practitioners to effectively respond. The purpose of this study is to uncover strategies to manage crises that arise from fake news and if and how these strategies differ for other corporate crises.

In this multi-method study of 21 in-depth interviews and a 8-person focus group with senior-level corporate public relations practitioners, authors explored decision-making strategies for responding to fake news crises. Transcripts of interviews and the focus group were thematically analyzed.

Results reveal insights regarding how public relations practitioners determine if and when to respond to fake news crises in corporations; what response strategies public relations practitioners have the autonomy to employ for fake news crises in corporations, and how public relations practitioners control media narratives during fake news crises in corporations.

The findings guide public relations practitioners to craft an autonomous decision-making process and effective online listening strategies—establishing a watchful waiting approach—and determine if the fake news issue is a passing moment or movement swirling into a crisis.

Few studies have examined the perspectives of crisis communication experts about minimizing and managing fake news crises. The study identifies opportunities for future research focused on crises originating from fake news and disinformation.

This study aims to investigate the impact of social media fitness influencers (SMFIs) on buyers’ purchase decisions by analyzing the factors that determine their influence. Furthermore, it aims to determine the relative influence of different genders of SMFIs on buyers’ decisions regarding supplement purchases.

The research consisted of two phases: a contextual study examining the characteristics of social media influencers and their impact on supplement purchase decisions and a comparative study comparing the influence of different genders of social media influencers. A survey was conducted online involving 426 Thai social media users who follow influencers to obtain the results for both phases.

The results revealed that information credibility and expertise were significant characteristics of SMFIs that had a significant impact on buyers’ purchase decisions. However, other characteristics such as the number of followers, content and attractiveness of SMFIs did not show any correlation with the buyers’ purchase decisions. Additionally, the study identified a positive influence of gender matching between SMFIs and respondents on purchase decisions.

This study emphasizes how the characteristics of social media influencers in Thailand influence buyers’ decisions to purchase dietary supplements.

The paper contributes to the discussion on valuation in organization studies and strategic management literature. The nascent literature on valuation practices has examined established markets where producers and consumers are known and rivalry in the market is a given. Furthermore, previous research has operated with a narrow meaning of value as either a financial profit or a subjective consumer preference. Such a narrow view on value is problematic and insufficient for studying the interlacing of innovation and value creation in emerging technoscientific business domains.

The authors present an empirical study about value creation in an emerging technoscience business domain formed around personalized medicine and digital health data.

The results of this analysis show that in a technoscientific domain, valuation of innovations is multiple and malleable, entails pursuing attractiveness in collaboration and partnerships and is performative, and due to emphatic future orientation, values are indefinite and promissory.

As research implications, this study shows that valuation practices in an emerging technoscience business domain focus on defining the potential economic value in the future and attracting partners as probable future beneficiaries. Commercial value upon innovation in an embryonic business milieu is created and situated in valuation practices that constitute the prospective market, the prevalent economic discourse, and rationale. This is in contrast to an established market, where valuation practices are determined at the intersection of customer preferences and competitive arenas where suppliers, producers, service providers and new entrants to the market present value propositions.

The study findings extend discussion on valuation from established business domains to emerging technoscience business domains which are in a “pre-competition” phase where suppliers, customers, producers and their collaborative and competitive relations are not yet established.

As managerial implications, this study provides insights into health innovation stakeholders, including stakeholders in the public, private and academic sectors, about the ecosystem dynamics in a technoscientific innovation. Such insight is useful in strategic decision-making about ecosystem strategy and ecosystem business model for value proposition, value creation and value capture in an emerging innovation domain characterized by collaborative and competitive relations among stakeholders. To business managers, the findings of this study about valuation practices are useful in strategic decision-making about ecosystem strategy and ecosystem business model for value proposition, value creation and value capture in an emerging innovation domain characterized by collaborative and competitive relations among stakeholders. To policy makers, this study provides an in-depth analysis of an overall business ecosystem in an emerging technoscience business that can be propelled to increase the financial investments in the field. As a policy implication, this study provides insights into the various dimensions of valuation in technoscience business to policy makers, who make governance decisions to guide and control the development of medical innovation using digital health data.

This study's results expand previous theorizing on valuation by showing that in technoscientific innovation all types of value created – scientific, clinical, social or economic – are predominantly promissory. This study complements the nascent theorizing on value creation and valuation practices of technoscientific innovation.

In recent years, negative spokesperson incidents have raised significant concerns in academia and industry. While several studies have addressed celebrity endorser scandals, comprehensive analyses of current knowledge are lacking. Therefore, this study systematically reviewed the related literature to better understand trends and suggest future research directions for advancing this field.

This study employs the theory–context–characteristics–methodology (TCCM) framework to examine 76 articles on celebrity endorser scandals.

Utilizing the TCCM framework, this study presents a comprehensive research framework, revealing that (1) the celebrity endorser scandal effect primarily includes associative learning, attribution of responsibility, and moral reasoning; (2) entertainment celebrities and athletes have received significant research attention; (3) both individual- and relationship-level characteristics serve as crucial moderators, with focal brand and related brand being the primary outcome variables. Additionally, this study outlines enterprise response strategies, encompassing the reformation of existing spokesperson relationships and the establishment of future spokesperson connections; and (4) quantitative approaches dominate the field.

This study integrates and expands existing research on celebrity endorser scandals while proposing future research opportunities to advance the field.

Building on the theory of brand psychological ownership, this paper aims to explore the mediating role of brand psychological ownership in the relationship between brand personality (innocence/coolness) and consumers’ preferences, as well as identify the boundary conditions of this relationship.

To test the hypotheses, a series of four experiments were conducted in Wuhan, a city in southern China, using questionnaires administered at two universities and two supermarkets. Hypotheses were tested using PLS-SEM in SmartPLS 4.

The results indicate that brand personality, specifically the dimensions of innocence and coolness, has a significant impact on consumers’ brand preferences. Brands with a cool personality are preferred over those with an innocent personality. Moreover, the relationship between brand personality and consumers’ brand preferences is moderated by power motivation and identity centrality.

This study contributes to the literature by differentiating between brand personality of innocence and coolness as two separate constructs and proposing brand psychological ownership as a mechanism through which brand personality affects brand preferences. The study’s samples were drawn from universities and supermarkets in southern China, providing evidence for the significant moderating effects of power motivation and identity centrality on consumers’ brand preferences.

This paper critically examines the effectiveness of male anchor in cross-gender endorsements and questions whether it can truly deliver positive outcomes for advertisers in the context of live streaming. It explores the underlying mechanisms of this effect by examining the mediation effect of perceived gender-identity incongruence and the moderation effect of anchor presence.

Three experiments are conducted to examine the effect of cross-gender endorsement on purchase intention.

The findings from three experiments provide empirical evidence that the endorsement of female-gendered products by male anchors leads to a significant decrease in the evaluation of these products among female consumers. This negative effect is mediated by a sense of gender-identity incongruence experienced by female consumers. Furthermore, the study demonstrates that female customers exhibit higher purchase intent for female-gendered products endorsed by male virtual anchors compared to real anchors; however, the same pattern was not observed in the case of female anchors.

This paper empirically examines the possible negative effects of the male anchor endorsement in the live streaming context. It reveals the underlying mechanism of this negative effect, and how the virtual “presence” take a role in this underlying mechanism.

Source credibility is a key influencing factor across both commercial and social marketing. It is perhaps even more important for the latter given that the issues under consideration generally have substantial implications for both individual and societal health and well-being. The Act-Belong-Commit campaign is a world-first population-wide application of social marketing in the area of positive mental health promotion. This study aims to focus on the perceived credibility of the Act-Belong-Commit campaign as a source of information about mental health as a predictor of three types of behavioural responses to the campaign: adopting mental health enhancing behaviours; seeking information about mental health and mental health problems; and seeking help for a mental health problem.

A state-wide survey was undertaken of the adult population in an Australian state where the Act-Belong-Commit campaign originated. The survey included measures of the above three behavioural responses to the campaign and measures of respondents’ perceptions of Act-Belong-Commit’s source credibility. Logistic regression analyses were performed to determine whether the three behavioural responses can be predicted based on perceived source credibility. The predictive performance of the model was examined by receiver operating characteristic curve analysis.

Greater perceived source credibility was significantly associated with having done something for their mental health and for having sought information, and an increased likelihood, but not significantly so, of having sought help for a mental health problem.

Despite the acknowledged importance of source credibility, there has been little published research that the authors are aware of that has looked at the impact of such on the effectiveness of social marketing campaigns. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first published study of the association between source credibility and behavioural response to a social marketing campaign.

This study aims to provide a holistic review of social media influencers (SMIs) research based on a unique approach of bibliometric analysis and content analysis between 2011 and 2020. The review examines the main influential aspects, themes and research streams to identify research directions for the future.

The sample selection and data collection were done from the Scopus database. The sample dataset was refined based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria to determine the final dataset of 183 articles. The dataset was exported in the BibTeX format and then imported into the BiblioShiny app for bibliometric analysis. The content analysis was done following the theory-context-methodology framework.

The several findings of this study include (1) Co-word analysis of most used keywords; (2) Longitudinal thematic evolution; (3) The focus of the research papers as per the theory-context-methodology review protocol are persuasion knowledge model, fashion and beauty industries, Instagram and content analysis, respectively; and (4) The network analysis of the research studies is known as the co-citation analysis and depicts the intellectual structure in the domain. This analysis resulted in four clusters of the research streams from the literature and two emergent themes (Chen et al., 2010)

In general, the previous reviews in the area are either domain, method or theory-based. Thus, this study aims to complement and extend the existing literature by presenting the overall picture of the SMI research with the help of a unique combined approach and further highlighting the trends and future research directions based on the findings of this study.

This paper illustrates the socio-political nature of accountings, referring to the partial privatisation of the monopoly telecommunications organisation in a lower-middle-income country.

Actor-network theory and an ANTi-history approach are used to trace circumstances and occurrences. Empirical materials include official documents, print media and retrospective interviews with organisation employees ten years on from the privatisation.

Proponents of privatisation used retrospectively constructed historical accounts to problematise the natural monopoly of telecommunications and the government organisation administering it. A restructuring programme followed. Proponents addressed controversies pertaining to the programme thus garnering widespread support for complex and controversial changes. Proponents produced and reproduced accounting artefacts as evidence in these processes of history reconstruction, consequent changes and restoring stability to telecommunications in its reconfigured commercial domain. The proponents used selective, controversial accounting evidence to problematise the government organisation's existence, then to mobilise various actors to reduce and close the controversies previously aroused and reinstate stability in a partially privatised telecommunications company. Although no longer having a monopoly this company still dominates. Dissenters did the same but with little success.

The findings demonstrate the importance of tracing the socio-political process of arriving at the dominant outcome about the past. This assists in making sense of present circumstances and re-imagining the future.

The study demonstrates that, during controversial circumstances, taken-for-granted history, as well as what is thought to have not existed in the past, support the dominant network in gaining advantage over their opponents and black-boxing their perspectives of how things should be.