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The purpose of this paper is to explore the intentions to share electronic word-of-mouth (E-WOM) messages on social media websites depending on tie strength, perceptions of temporal distance and the concreteness of promotional messages.

A 2×2×2 mixed design is used. Temporal distance (near vs distant) and message concreteness (text vs picture) are between-subjects factors; sharing intentions (close friends vs general public) is a within-subjects factor.

Findings indicate that consumers are more likely to share promotional messages with their strong rather than weak ties. If they perceive that purchases will occur soon, concrete promotional messages will more strongly motivate them to share the message with their friends. However, if they perceive that purchases will occur in the distant future, abstract messages are more motivating. The difference occurs because construal-level theory is more effective among strong E-WOM ties.

By studying senders’ perspectives, the authors make a new theoretical and practical contribution to the emerging literature on E-WOM communication. Specifically, the authors show how senders are persuaded to share information with their strong- or weak-tie audiences according to the concreteness of a message and temporal distance. The authors add construal-level theory and advertising message processing to the domain of E-WOM and social ties research.

Prosocial advertisers widely use assertive messages to encourage prosocial attitudes and behaviors, but ironically, assertive messages may cause reactance. By applying cultural theories and the reciprocity principle, this study aims to observe whether consumers’ responses to assertive messages hold across culturally different audiences (Americans vs South Koreans) and different consumption situations (price discount vs no discount).

American and Korean participants take part in three experimental studies examining the interactions of nationality, price discounts and assertive messaging for influencing consumer responses, first to a prosocial ad encouraging recycling (Study 1), the second for a campaign requesting donations for disadvantaged children (Study 2) and the third to prosocial messages encouraging water conservation (Study 3).

The three experiments strongly support the moderating role of price discounts and cultural backgrounds in the persuasiveness of assertive prosocial messages. American consumers generally dislike assertive messages, but feel reciprocal obligations if marketers include price discounts, whereas South Korean consumers accept both assertive and nonassertive messages without resistance, and discounts have no effects on persuasion.

The findings make two key contributions to the literature and to prosocial advertising practices. First, although many corporations have adopted philanthropic strategies, few researchers have examined how specific consumption contexts determine the effectiveness of prosocial persuasion. The findings show how price discounts and message framing potentially alter the effectiveness of prosocial messages across Eastern and Western cultures. Second, assertive language evokes reactance, but the findings suggest that reactive responses to prosocial advertising are culture-specific.

International nonprofit organizations and brands using philanthropic strategies might use the guidelines of this study for tailoring strategic, practical prosocial messages that will appeal to consumers from diverse cultural backgrounds. In particular, pro-environmental and charity campaigns targeting North American or Western European populations may consider bundling discounts into promotions to evoke reciprocity.

Findings provide novel implications for social marketers regarding on how to couple message assertiveness and price discounts to maximize the success of prosocial messages in different cultures.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the understudied antecedents of moral reasoning and cognitive processes that ultimately shape the ethical consumption. The theory of planned behavior (TPB) and the socio-intuitionist model are integrated. Holistic, inferential, and affective dimensions of intuition are identified as critical antecedents of environmental concerns that then influence the ethical consumption.

Structural equation modeling is used to analyze intuitive judgments and ethical concerns in 256 US undergraduates. The New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) is used to measure ethical concerns and the ecologically conscious consumer behavior (ECCB) instrument is used to measure ethical consumption.

The results indicate that inferential intuition, but not affective intuition, significantly predicts the ethical concerns (NEP), which in turn significantly influence all five dimensions of ethical consumption behavior (ECCB).

Managers and marketing strategists should focus on non-rational influences such as moral intuition to effectively promote ethical and responsible consumption.

The TPB and the intuitionist theory are integrated to reveal empirically how intuitive judgments may affect consumer attitudes and to provide new insights regarding the ethical consumption.

Drawing on embodied cognition and construal level theory perspectives in marketing literature, the purpose of this study is to propose that closed eyes make events appear distant and increase high-level construal and abstract processing, whereas opened eyes make events appear near and increase low-level construal and concrete processing. The authors further argue that high (low) construal level induced by closed (open) eyes increases favoritism toward utilitarian (hedonic) appeals.

Drawing on embodied cognition and construal level theory, the authors conduct three studies to investigate how consumers form varying distance perceptions and attitudes toward advertising appeals depending on whether they open or close their eyes while contemplating the messages. In Study 1, the authors tested the effects of an advertisement featuring utilitarian versus hedonic appeals in a food waste reduction campaign. In Study 2, the authors tested the effects of an advertisement stressing utilitarian versus hedonic aspects of a brand of travel products. In Study 3, the authors tested the effects of an advertisement for hotel reward products depending on consumption motivations.

The studies support the hypothesis by showing that when individuals close their eyes, they form abstract processing styles (high-level construal), perceive events as more distant and increase preferences for utilitarian advertising appeals; when they open their eyes, they form concrete processing styles (low-level construal), perceive events as nearer and indicate preferences for hedonic advertising appeals.

The novel insight of this study shows how bodily sensations may affect various types of hedonic and utilitarian advertising appeals. This study contributes to the embodied cognition and construal level literature, but the contribution of this study is particularly important for marketers and advertisers in that the authors show interactions between open or closed eyes, hedonic or utilitarian product aspects and processing styles.

The authors aim to examine how emojis interact with assertiveness in social media posts to encourage social media engagement and cooperation in environmental campaigns.

Two experiments were used to test three hypotheses.

Study 1 shows that when assertive Twitter messages include the smiley-face emoji, study participants indicate stronger social media engagement and behavioral intentions to recycle used jeans. In Study 2, participants indicate stronger social media engagement and behavioral intentions to sign a petition for reducing plastic pollution when (non) assertive Facebook messages (do not) include emojis.

The current research advances our understanding about how emojis interact with assertive and nonassertive message tonality in environmental social media campaigns. This research also provides new insights showing that positive emotion is the psychological mechanism underlying matching effects of emoji and message assertiveness.

The purpose of this paper is to contrast two lay theories of how consumers draw affective inferences about their online bidding experiences. The active-bidder theory (smart-bidder theory) predicts that after winning a bid, highly (minimally) participative bidders would be more satisfied than minimally (highly) participative bidders.

Four experiments test two competing hypotheses, the active-bidder hypothesis and the smart-bidder hypothesis (Study 1), identify a condition that mitigates the observed effects (Study 2), identify when the mitigation is effective or ineffective (Study 3) and replicate the findings in a scenario-based study where participants are allowed to make actual bidding decisions (Studies 4A and 4B).

The findings support the smart-bidder hypothesis across three different product categories; however, this heuristic-driven effect is absent when bidders have concrete shopping goals. The effect was sufficiently robust to be observed even when the bids are made at will.

The present research does not incorporate the widely adopted procedure of second-price auction (also known as proxy bidding in the eBay setting), a system that allows the highest bidder to win the auction but pay the amount of the second-highest bid.

Online consumers should be mindful that entering the minimum number of bids not only helps consumers avoid overbidding but also elevates their joy in winning after the auction ends.

Prior research on bidding behavior on online auction sites has yet to examine how different bidding dynamics affect consumers’ post-auction satisfaction. This research sheds light on the psychological process underlying the robust phenomenon: online auction consumers rely heavily on proxy signals. Bidders appear to use the efficiency heuristic in constructing their affective judgments of their buying experiences.

Food waste has strong ecological, economical and social implications. Focusing on waste perceptions and behavior according to food types, this paper aims to propose that vice or virtue food categories determine cognitive and behavioral reactions to food waste. The authors examine the psychological mechanism underlying the differential waste perceptions and behavior.

The authors conduct five studies, including a field study, to provide converging evidence that supports this theorization.

This study demonstrates that consumers feel that trashing vice food is more wasteful than trashing virtue food. They are less willing to waste vice food and more comfortable with wasting virtue food. Consequently, they waste more virtue than vice foods. The authors demonstrate that counterfactual thinking explains the food type effect on waste.

This paper provides a conceptual framework for understanding and explaining food waste perceptions and behavior across vice and virtue food categories. This paper identifies counterfactual thinking as underpinning the psychology of waste perceptions and behaviors. The findings extend the growing research on subconscious and unintentional food waste, the food consumption literature and the psychology of waste literature.

The differential waste perceptions and behavior provide several implications for waste interventions and consumer education. By expanding theories of consumer food waste, this paper provides material for educational campaigns aimed at reducing waste and improving healthful eating.

Consumers can benefit from understanding their tendency to avoid wasting vice foods but will waste virtue foods with little compunction. Waste aversion may be a reason people consume vice foods beyond satiation. Consumers may overconsume vice foods because they are so acutely averse to wasting them, with detrimental consequences for health and welfare.

To reduce consumer food waste, one must gain deeper insights into factors shaping consumer food waste perceptions and behavior. Food waste studies have been increasing but have overlooked the power of consumer perceptions in driving food waste consequences. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no prior study has examined how food type affects waste perceptions and behavior. This research fills this gap.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate consumers’ evaluation of non-focal overlay images appearing closer than the focal point (e.g. a transparent brand logo appearing in front of an online news article).

Three experiments identify factors on both task-side and image-side that influence consumers’ liking of non-focal overlay images.

The findings show that study participants evaluate the non-focal overlay image more favorably when they are engaged in a primary task that is challenging rather than unchallenging, and when the primary task and the non-focal overlay images require different processing modes (e.g. a conceptual primary task paired with a perceptual image) rather than similar processing modes (e.g. a conceptual primary task paired with a conceptual image).

A caveat is that Experiment 1 lacked a baseline condition. Another limitation is that we conducted all three experiments in a controlled laboratory environment, without real-world marketing stimuli. Therefore, further research should be conducted in a field setting to validate how extensively our theoretical insights apply to real-world marketing contexts. Future research may replicate the findings on various platforms such as YouTube and The Wall Street Journal to provide immediate, readily applicable suggestions to online marketers.

The current research provides marketers with a framework for identifying optimal vehicles for the marketing message. Transparent overlay ads can bolster or damage later evaluations of the advertised objects. Online marketers, in their desire to persuade consumers to perceive products positively, must consider what types of activities consumers are pursuing at a target website, what kinds of activities the website promotes and how meaningful are the images.

The current work extends to the work on fluency effects and persuasion knowledge model, both of which have typically shown that subtle exposure to marketing communications positively affects subsequent judgments about products and brands. The findings extend this line of evidence by demonstrating that marketing communications may exert even greater influence when the primary task requires greater cognitive processing.

This paper examines how social marketing communication messages influence physical activity attitudes when a health organization is revealed as the message source.

This paper examines how social marketing communication messages influence physical activity attitudes when a health organization is revealed as the message source.

Results from three studies using experimentally manipulated messages (Studies 1 and 3) and real TV commercials (Study 2) suggest that work-framed social marketing communication messages may be more effective than fun-framed messages when the sponsoring health organization is disclosed, versus not disclosed in the ad.

This research extends the literature on source-effects on message effectiveness by suggesting that the type of message sponsor (i.e. a health organization) may influence attitudes toward the physical activity promoted in the message content.

The results suggest that health organizations may be able to maximize communication effectiveness by employing work – rather than fun-framed messages, when it is evident that the message source is a health organization. When individuals are unaware that a health organization is the message source or when a non-health organization is the message source, fun-framed messages may be as effective for encouraging physical activity.

This research may assist health organizations to make the best use of their limited resources by providing guidance for the development of social marketing communication messages that encourage people to be physically active.

Although source effects on marketing message effectiveness have been well established in the marketing literature, this study is the first to suggest that a health-organization message source interacts with work- versus fun-framed message content to impact the persuasiveness of messages designed to encourage physical activity.

Research shows that teams often fail to surface and use unique information to evaluate decision alternatives. Under a condition known as the hidden profile, each member uniquely possesses a critical clue needed to uncover the superior solution. Failure to share and adequately evaluate this information will result in poor decision quality. The aim of this paper is to examine the impact of the devil's advocacy technique on the decision quality of hidden profile teams.

In order to mitigate this team decision‐making bias, the present study utilizes experimental research to examine the impact of the devil's advocacy technique on the decision quality of hidden profile teams.

Results show that devil's advocacy groups achieved higher decision quality than groups under free discussion. However, devil's advocacy teams also had higher levels of affective conflict. As a result, while they selected the best solution, devil's advocacy introduced conditions that may hinder the solution's implementation

Similar experiments with advocacy techniques suggest that the positive effect on decision quality found here may be reduced in the presence of stronger hidden profiles.

While the devil's advocacy technique has the potential to uncover hidden profiles and improve group decision making, the paper recommends that managers use this technique only in teams with strong critical thinking norms that foster constructive conflict.

To the authors' knowledge, no study has examined the impact of devil's advocacy in groups where information is not shared equally prior to deliberations.