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The purpose of this research is to explore how a successful global and a local brand may compete side by side in an existing market place based on consumer‐based brand equity and consumers' status‐seeking motivation for purchasing a global versus local brand.

The data for this research were collected through a self‐administered survey from students in a large Western Australian university.

The results show that a global brand is generally preferred in terms of all the dimensions of consumer‐based brand equity over a local brand. However, a significant interaction emerged between the type of brand and high versus low status‐seeking motivation consumers. A global brand is strongly favoured in terms of awareness, perceived quality and overall brand equity by high status seekers while a local brand seems to enjoy loyalty and overall brand equity among low status seekers. A global brand is also clearly preferred over a local brand along all dimensions of consumer‐based brand equity amongst high status‐seeking consumers. Further, a local brand is clearly preferred in terms of consumer‐based brand equity over the global brand by Australians whereas the global brand remains a clear favourite with non‐Australians.

Findings may not generalize beyond Australian sample and the product category.

This empirical research explores how global and local brands may compete with each other based on their strengths. This research also addresses a theoretical gap identified by Yoo and Donthu.

Misinformation on social media has become a great threat across the globe. Therefore, the authors aim to provide a comprehensive understanding of social media users' misinformation combating behavior, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, the authors merged the uses and gratifications theory, social cognitive theory and theory of prosocial behavior into one theoretical framework (e.g. information seeking, status seeking, entertainment and norms of reciprocity) to understand their effect on users' prosocial media sharing experience and misinformation self-efficacy to combat misinformation.

The authors collected data from 356 social media users through “Google Forms” during the third wave of coronavirus in Pakistan. Further, the authors applied structural equation modeling for hypotheses testing.

The authors noted that entertainment and perceived norms of reciprocity positively affect social media users' prior experience and misinformation self-efficacy to enhance their misinformation combating intention. However, information seeking positively affects social media users' prior experience and insignificantly affects their misinformation self-efficacy. Similarly, status seeking was noted to be insignificantly associated with social media users' prior experience and misinformation self-efficacy.

The authors tested this model of misinformation combating intention in a developing country during the COVID-19 pandemic and noted that entertainment and status seeking motives are context-specific. Therefore, this study may likely benefit researchers, academicians and policymakers to understand the causal relationship between motivations and the behavior of combating misinformation on social media within a developing country.

In this study the authors merged three theories (e.g. uses and gratifications theory, social cognitive theory and theory of prosocial behavior) to understand information seeking, status seeking, entertainment and norms of reciprocity as the main motives for social media users' misinformation combating intention.

Smartphone multitasking behavior has become prevalent in our daily lives, yet factors influencing smartphone multitasking behavior have not been fully investigated. This study aimed to examine the roles of a set of demographic, personality and motivational factors on smartphone multitasking behavior, and how these factors were related to general and application-specific types of smartphone multitasking behavior.

A cross-sectional study was conducted in which 2,659 smartphone users were invited to complete an online survey on smartphone multitasking behavior. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were used to examine the roles of demographic, personality and motivational factors on smartphone multitasking behavior.

The results showed that, in general, demographic factors, such as gender, age, occupation status, education and smartphone usage time significantly predicted smartphone multitasking behavior. People characterized by agreeableness, extraversion, neuroticism and openness to experience were more likely to multitask with smartphones. Information seeking, efficiency and habit motivations were identified as major motivational factors for smartphone multitasking behavior. The roles of demographic, personality and motivational factors differed much across varied types of application-specific smartphone multitasking behavior.

This study extends and advances the literature on media multitasking, smartphone multitasking in particular, by identifying a set of demographic, personality and motivational factors as antecedents of smartphone multitasking behavior. In addition, this study revealed the differentiated roles of the above-mentioned factors across varied types of smartphone application usages. The findings provide important implications for practitioners to tailor smartphone applications and services to different target smartphone users and use situations.

Originally conceptualised as an innovative strategy for environmental conservation, ecotourism is now considered as one of the fastest growing segments of tourism. Although many definitions of ecotourism have been provided over the years, the application of the concept is still inconsistent, shifting its focus from purely nature-based towards more sustainable and conservative activities. Research on ecotourism reveals that ecotourism marketing initiatives are mainly driven by the supply-side or government/environmentalist organisations’ perspective, without taking into account the demand side, i.e., individuals’ motivations for ecotourism. This chapter will provide recognition of the different definitions of the ecotourism concept in order to distinguish it from other similar forms of tourism, e.g., nature-based tourism, and will review the research to build an understanding of the various motivations pushing individuals to choose ecotourism offerings. It will also function as the basis for the development of an appropriate protocol to investigate a sample of ecotourism providers and the congruency of their marketing initiatives with established consumer motivations.

Prior research studying the mechanisms by which brand reputation influences consumer behaviors has largely relied on respondent measures of brand reputation, resulting in an inability to ascertain the causal direction of relationships. Using third party measures, this paper aims to study the effects of brand reputation, via self-expressive brand perceptions, on both firm-directed and other customer-directed customer voluntary sharing behaviors (CVSB). It then assesses the moderating effect of consumer status-seeking on the relationships studied.

To prevent common method bias and substantiate causality claims, a third-party brand reputation measure is combined with a consumer survey. Process is used to test the hypotheses using 359 consumer responses collected via Amazon MTurk.

The results indicate that higher inner-self and social-self expressive perceptions derived from strong brand reputations increase consumer knowledge sharing and social influence behaviors. The effect of social-self expressive brand perceptions on CVSB is positively moderated by consumer status-seeking.

Firms should leverage existing brand reputation investments to strengthen customer perceptions of their brands as self-expressive and facilitate greater social and knowledge-sharing engagement by status-seeking consumers.

This study identifies a new mechanism linking brand reputation and CVSB: consumer perceptions of the self-expressiveness of brands. Moreover, it distinguishes the effects of two dimensions of brand self-expressiveness and substantiates the customer engagement behavior value of investing in brand reputation as measured by third parties.

This paper aims to address how the status consumption tendency of consumers in emerging markets is negatively influenced by five individual traits: self-control, self-actualization, religiosity, future orientation and self-efficacy.

A conjoint experiment measured the importance of certain smartphone product attributes. A latent class regression analysis was then employed to estimate segment-level part-worths using conjoint data collected from 500 Bangladeshi consumers.

The results revealed three segments with members that differ in how they evaluate smartphone product attributes. Those susceptible to a product's brand name (i.e. status seekers) appear to have low self-control, are less religious and are more myopic.

An issue may exist with generalizability, as the analysis was conducted based on data collected in one country and for one product category. However, this study's framework provides direction for future researchers to better understand status consumption in emerging countries.

The findings are useful for marketers selling status products to improve market segmentation and target their offerings more efficiently.

The originality of this paper is twofold. First, it investigates the influencing factors of status consumption that have not been addressed in the extant literature. Second, it is the first to use experimental data to measure segment-level status consumption accurately.

The paper aims to propose an analytical framework for social influence and mathematical formulation for its main components: conformity and peer-pressure. The framework is conceived to explain why certain behaviours and beliefs propagate in a society and some others disappear. It can also be used to study the emergence and the evolution of the status of the norms in terms of their adoption by the population.

The paper is theoretical, making use of economic quantitative methods. The author proposes a new formulation for the evolutionary dynamics, increasingly borrowed by social scientists. Then, mathematically treating the equation, the author draws general conclusions in form of lemmas, which are proved.

The author's main contribution is to show that even behavioural rules and beliefs that emerge in a minority subset of the population, do not procure any benefit for the agents adopting them can under certain conditions, evolve into the consensus of a society, become a norm.

More general conclusion (theorems and lemmas) could be stated and proved. But given that the main contribution of the paper is to the fields of social and behavioural economics, along a number of disciplines less mathematical than economics, the author kept the analysis that required fairy advance mathematics for later.

The paper contributes to the evolutionary game theory, evolution of preferences, and evolution of beliefs and social norms. More precisely, the equation proposed in the paper can be used in the contexts the patterns of heterogeneity in a population are affected or caused by social influence. Or in the contexts, the social institutions are susceptible to affect an agent's sense of identity (e.g. voting, fashion industry, marketing).

In this paper, for the first time, a mathematical formulation is proposed for the social influence and its main psychological components (conformity and status seeking). Using the above, the author proposed a new parametric fitness function for the evolutionary dynamics. The author believes the paper matters to a multidisciplinary public. It answers a question that challenged and puzzled the economists (as well other social scientists): the reasons behind the emergence and the prevalence of social norms do not positively contribute to the utility or payoff of the agents adopting them (and at times they are costly).

General economic theories of consumer demand work well in describing market behaviour with respect to most purchases and the explanation of consumer choice between competing commodities is clearly acceptable for the great majority of scarce goods. However, these theories do not easily accommodate the many non‐economic factors associated with preference formation and with the shaping of consumer attitudes and values. They also pay little or no attention to the dynamic process of choice, purchasing and consumption; in effect, they treat purchasing, consumption and satisfaction as synonyms.

The proliferation of non-fungible token (NFT)-based crypto-art platforms has transformed how creators manage, own and earn money through the creation, assets and identity of their digital works. Despite this, no studies have examined the drivers of continuous content contribution behavior (CCCB) toward NFTs. Hence, this study draws on the theory of relational bonds to examine how various relational bonds affect feelings of psychological ownership, which, in turn, affects CCCB on metaverse platforms.

Using structural equation modeling and importance-performance matrix analysis, an online survey of 434 content creators from prominent NFT platforms empirically validated the research hypotheses.

Financial, structural, and social bonds positively affect psychological ownership, which in turn encourages CCCBs. The results of the importance-performance matrix analysis reveal that male content creators prioritized virtual reputation and social enhancement, whereas female content creators prioritized personalization and monetary gains.

We examine Web 3.0 and the NFT creators’ network that characterizes the governance practices of the metaverse. Consequently, the findings facilitate a better understanding of creator economy and meta-verse commerce.