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The purpose of this study is to explore the role of various superstitious beliefs in consumers' information processing and evaluation of brand logos.

When consumers encounter a brand logo without actually experiencing the company's offerings, superstition may be deployed to fill the void of the unknown to evaluate the brand logo and judge the benefits from the offerings represented by the brand. Multiple regression analysis was used to investigate the relationship between consumers' brand logo sensitivity and a number of antecedental superstition beliefs.

The results indicate that consumers' belief in fate has a negative effect on brand logo sensitivity, and consumers' belief in fortune‐tellers, belief in magic and fictional figures, belief in lucky charms, and belief in superstitious rituals have positive effects on brand logo sensitivity, respectively.

From a consumer perspective, the authors' findings reveal that the more positive attitude consumers have towards a company's visual identity system, the more favorable brand image consumers have toward the company and its offerings.

Marketers should study and understand consumer superstition when attempting to build consumer‐friendly, culturally‐robust, and trouble‐free brands in the marketplace. Managerial implications and corporate branding strategies are suggested to avoid branding pitfalls and maximize brand equity in the consumer market.

The study offers a non‐traditional approach to explaining consumer‐based brand image and brand equity.

The purpose of this paper is to advance the understanding of antecedents and consequences of superstitious beliefs.

From survey data drawn from 206 South Korean and 218 US respondents, structural equation modeling is used to test the posited hypotheses.

To extrinsic superstitious beliefs, both the South Korean and US models support the subjective happiness through self-esteem path and the anthropomorphism path; from these beliefs, both models support the horoscope importance path and the behavioral superstitious beliefs path. Only the US model supports the path from self-esteem to extrinsic superstitious beliefs, and only the South Korean model supports the path from intrinsic religiosity to extrinsic superstitious beliefs.

South Korean and US student data may limit generalizability. As effect sizes in this context are established, researchers have a benchmark for future quantitative superstition research.

By further understanding antecedents and consequences of superstitious beliefs, marketers are in a better position to appeal to targeted customers. Anthropomorphism and intrinsic religiosity, not fully studied by marketing scholars, show promise as segmentation variables related to consumers’ attitudes and behaviors.

To avoid unethical practice, marketers must limit themselves to innocuous superstition cues.

Leaning on experiential consumption theory and the “magical thinking” literature, this study augments the superstition literature by exploring carefully selected yet under-researched determinants and consequences of superstitious beliefs across eastern and western consumer groups.

The present study is a “first look” at sales superstitions with the purpose of establishing its prevalence among professional salespeople and examining the subsequent effects on sales person expected confidence, motivation, sales call behavioral intentions, and anticipated performance outcomes.

Data was collected from 234 industrial (business to business) salespeople. SmartPLS path modeling was used to test a model consisting of three antecedents and three outcomes of salesperson superstitious behavior intensity.

The findings reveal that salespeople are more likely to behave superstitiously when they believe in personal good luck and experience higher levels of role ambiguity. For these salespeople, outcomes such as expected increase in confidence and motivation, positive sales behavioral intentions, and performance outcomes were anticipated as a result of their superstitions.

Social cognitive theory is used as an organizing framework to guide this review as well as to develop a model that describes the conditions that give rise to sales superstitions and its potential impact on expected sales confidence, motivation, call behavioral intentions, and anticipated performance outcomes.

Given the paucity of reports on sales superstitions, the present study extrapolates from other allied literatures to identify antecedents and consequences associated with engaging in superstitious behavior.

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.

The sale of second-hand goods in the luxury fashion space continues to soar. However, existing literature on this segment is limited and the factors that draw consumers to this space are not well understood. This study aims to fill this gap and proposes a conceptual model demonstrating the linkage between the motivators and barriers toward re-commerce in the luxury fashion space and actual shopping behaviors.

A survey sample of USA second-hand luxury fashion shoppers was collected. Participants were asked questions about various motivators and barriers toward re-commerce, as well as the participants' attitudes and shopping behavior. The results were analyzed using SmartPLS structural equation modeling (SEM).

Economic reasons, originality and self-extension were found to be statistically significant motivators of attitudes toward re-commerce, while status consumption, nostalgia and ecological motivators were not. Superstitious beliefs were also found to be statistically significant motivators toward attitudes of re-commerce. Attitudes were also found to be a significant predictor of shopping behavior as measured by dollars spent and shopping frequency.

This study is among the first to propose a conceptual model depicting the relationship between motivators and barriers to actual shopping behavior in the second-hand luxury fashion space. Many of the motivators and barriers examined in this study are novel and have not been considered in prior research. Superstitious beliefs in particular have not been studied in the context of re-commerce.

Religious and peculiar beliefs are two of the factors affecting consumer behavior and may differentially affect individuals and societies. Therefore, this study aims to investigate them from the study of Iranian customers’ behavior.

These beliefs are sensitive issues, hence, to investigate them, the grounded theory method through 15 in-depth interviews was applied.

The results indicated that evil-eye effect, as a peculiar belief, affected the behavior of luxury cars’ consumers in the Iranian society while religion had no such effect on the consumers’ behavior, in spite of religious notions about luxury. Furthermore, the findings revealed that consumers may legitimize their inconsistent behaviors through a variety of tactics such as different interpretations of religious notions or dissembling their superstitious beliefs.

The present study will contribute to the literature on religion and customer behavior through taking advantage of the application of a qualitative research design. Besides, the originality of the study might be in the application of various tactics by the customers to legitimize their behaviors inconsistent with religion.

Numerical superstition is well-known in Asian countries and can influence decision-making in many markets, from financial investment to purchasing a house. This study aims to determine the house price effects of superstition and understand if these have changed over time.

Using sales transactions of freestanding houses in Auckland, New Zealand, the authors use hedonic price analysis to investigate whether superstitious beliefs associated with lucky and unlucky house numbers affect property values.

The analysis reveals ethnic Chinese buyers in Auckland displayed superstitious home buying behaviour in the period 2003-2006 by attributing value to homes with street addresses starting or ending with the lucky number eight. However, this willing to pay higher prices for lucky numbers was not reflected in the analysis of 2011-2015 sales transactions. The disappearance of superstition price effects may indicate that ethnic Chinese in the Auckland housing market have, over time, assimilated New Zealand’s Western culture and have become less superstitious.

Unlike previous studies, the authors parse buyers into two populations of homebuyers, ethnic Chinese and non-Chinese purchasers, and model the two groups’ housing transactions independently to more accurately establish if numerical superstition influences house prices.

Different cultures believe that some numbers are “lucky” and other numbers are “unlucky”. The purpose of this paper is to determine to what extent hotels follow numerological superstitions in their floor and room numbering, if more accidents or complaints occur on unlucky hotel floors compared to other floors and if more accidents or complaints occur in unlucky hotel rooms compared to other rooms.

For the first research objective, an audit of hotels in a particular destination, Hong Kong, is taken capturing the number of floors and rooms on each floor and determining if “unlucky” numbers are used. For the second and third objectives, the accident and complaint database of one upscale hotel in Hong Kong across a five-year period is investigated.

The authors find that hotels do follow superstitious numbering, with “unlucky” numbers not being included in floor or room numbering. Chinese superstition is more likely to be followed than Western superstition. The non-inclusion of “unlucky” numbers is more likely for hotel floors than for hotel rooms. In the case study hotel, they found no significant differences in the number of accidents and complaints between unlucky and other rooms and floors across the five years of analysis.

Superstitions surrounding numbers can affect decisions made by individuals and businesses and can have significant economic consequences. There is little academic research into how the hotel sector is impacted by numerology superstitions.

An emerging line of research examining the role of numerological superstition in the capital market shows that it has significant impact on investor behavior (Bhattacharya, Kuo, Lin, & Zhao, 2018; Hirshleifer, Jian, & Zhang 2018). However, to the authors’ best knowledge, there is a dearth of evidence on whether numerological superstition affects corporate behavior. This study fills this void by examining the association between investors’ numerological superstition and earnings management using Chinese data.

Chinese culture views 6 and 8 as lucky numbers. Using Chinese publicly traded firms, the authors examine the relation between investors’ numerological superstition and corporate financial reporting behavior.

The results suggest that firms reporting lucky earnings-per-share (EPS) numbers ending with 6 or 8 are more likely to engage in earnings management. These firms also raise more capital through seasoned equity offerings in the following year; however, they do not have more capital investments. Instead, their controlling shareholders siphon a significant amount of capital through related party transactions. Overall, the findings suggest that managers collude with controlling shareholders to manage earnings by exploiting the superstitious beliefs of minority shareholders.

To the authors’ best knowledge, there is a dearth of evidence on whether numerological superstition affects corporate behavior. This study fills this void by examining the association between investors’ numerological superstition and earnings management using Chinese data.

The development and application of critical thinking skills are an important component of success at University. Such skills permit students to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of evidence, argument and theory. However research suggests that many students believe in paranormal phenomena (e.g. telekinesis). Such beliefs defy the basic principles of science and do not stand up to critical scrutiny. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This study aimed to investigate paranormal beliefs within a student population: differences among gender, academic discipline and academic performance were explored.

Findings indicated that females expressed higher levels of paranormal belief than males, “hard” science students (e.g. Biology) and “soft” science students (e.g. Sociology) expressed lower levels of belief than arts students, and a significant negative correlation indicated that high achievers were less likely to endorse paranormal beliefs.

In light of these results the authors suggest that paranormal phenomena may be a useful tool for teaching critical thinking skills at university.