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The purpose of this paper is to construct and validate customer social participation (CSP) scale in the context of brand communities on social media.

In this study, various tests for reliability and validity have been performed to confirm scale structure. Data were collected using survey method from the student and non-student sample.

The results confirm a multi-dimensional scale with nine items for measuring customer participation in social media brand communities.

The results of this study present several implications for online brand communities managers and are likely to support future research in the context of social media brand communities.

This paper is the first to develop a multi-dimensional scale of customer participation in social media brand communities. This is a new addition to existing literature, as the majority of empirical studies in this field are from participation other than CSP, and contexts different from social media brand communities.

This paper aims to test the relationships between shopping enjoyment, economic motivation, apparel shopping self-confidence, perceived informativeness, perceived irritation and buying intention, using Uses and Gratification (U&G) theory, in a mediated model using virtual dressing room (VDR) media.

The proposed mediation model is tested using the PROCESS (Version 3.0) macro for SPSS with bootstrapping.

Results indicate that shopping enjoyment, economic motivation and apparel shopping self-confidence have no direct relationship with buying intention. Additionally, no indirect relationship was found between apparel shopping self-confidence and buying intention. However, outcomes show that both perceived VDR informativeness and perceived VDR irritation mediate the relationships of shopping enjoyment and economic motivation with buying intention by different mechanisms when using VDR media. Additionally, the relationship between shopping enjoyment and buying intention is mediated via perceived VDR informativeness. Finally, economic motivation has both an indirect relationship with buying intention through perceived VDR irritation and a serial mediated relationship via perceived VDR irritation and informativeness.

This study is original in that it investigates the mediating effect of informativeness and irritation, from U&G theory, on buying intention during VDR media usage. Previous research suggests a direct relationship between shopping enjoyment, economic motivation, apparel shopping self-confidence, informativeness, irritation and buying intention. Results of this research suggest that online retailers should consider the different and complex mediating roles informativeness and irritation play in the relationship between consumer attributes and buying intention when adding media to a website.

Technology has emerged as a leading tool to address concerns regarding climate change in the recent era. As a result, the green mobile application – Ant Forest – was developed, and it has considerable potential to reduce negative environmental impacts by encouraging its users to become involved in eco-friendly activities. Ant Forest is a novel unexplored green mobile gaming phenomenon. To address this gap, this study explores the influence of user experience (cognitive experience and affective experience), personal attributes (affection and altruism) and motivational factors in game play (reward for activities and self-promotion) on the continuation intention toward Ant Forest.

The authors assessed the data using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) for understanding users' continuation intention toward Ant Forest.

Through a survey of 337 Ant Forest users, the results reveal that cognitive and affective experiences substantially affect Ant Forest continuation intention. Personal attributes and motivational factors also stimulate users to continue using Ant Forest.

The authors build and confirm a conceptual framework to understand users' continuation intention toward a novel unexplored Ant Forest phenomenon.

The purpose of this paper is to examine tourist behavior regarding changes in privacy issues and the advent of mobile technology, based on theoretical foundations and empirical testing.

A conceptual framework was developed based on a “three-pronged approach” to cross-validate results from both qualitative (literature reviews and expert interviews) and quantitative (field survey) approaches. Structural equation modeling was used to test the conceptual framework and hypotheses.

According to the findings, tourists perceived advertising via mobile technology as an informative source. New findings emerged apart from the literature in which advertising value was found to drive attitude, perceived behavioral control and subjective norms. Moreover, tourists’ intention to give permission via mobile technology was driven by advertising value via attitude and subjective norms.

This study is limited to Thailand tourism context. Further, conceptual framework generalization should be taken into account as future research in other considerable context.

The results provide useful information for both government and tourism-related businesses in planning effective marketing communications strategies.

The conceptual framework in this study was developed based on theoretical foundations, along with both quantitative and qualitative methodologies (that is, using a “three-pronged approach”). This study is among the first in Thailand tourism context that demonstrated an extension of the academic perspective by integrating two important theoretical foundations.

The high rate of internet penetration has led to the proliferation of social media (SM) use, even at the workplace, including academia. This research attempts to develop a topology and thereby determine the dominant use motive for faculty’s use of SM.

In this two-part study, a two-stage research design has been adopted for topology development based on the application of Uses and Gratifications Theory. In the second part, the Technology Acceptance Model is applied to discern the dominant motive for SM use in academia.

The work is able to develop a seven-item topology, conforming to the basic three use motives, namely, hedonic, utilitarian and social. The work shows faculty attach more value to the instrumental utility of SM, while the hedonic function is also significant.

Discerning dominant motive implies that SM use at the workplace should not be banned, rather effective regulated use will instil the faculty to enhance work outcomes. The conceptualisation of topology for SM use in academia at the workplace can aid in designing an effective organisation policy, and design of an internal SM platform.

The study is unique towards topology development for academic faculty and has many important implications for management and academia, especially towards policy design for SM use at the workplace.

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.

The recent advancements in smartphone technology and social media platforms have increased the popularity of artificial intelligence (AI) color cosmetics. Meanwhile, China is a lucrative market for various foreign beauty products and technological innovations. This research aims to investigate the adoption of AI color cosmetics applications and their electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) intention among Chinese social media influencers. Several key concepts have been proposed in this research, namely body esteem, price sensitivity, social media addiction and actual purchase.

An online questionnaire design was used in this research. A combination of purposive sampling and snowball sampling of AI color cosmetics users who are also social media influencers in China yields 221 respondents. To analyze the data, this research employs Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) method via SPSS and AMOS software. A 2-step approach, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), is implemented to prove the hypotheses and generate the results.

1) Social media addiction is a positive predictor of AI color cosmetics usage, (2) AI color cosmetics usage is a positive predictor of actual purchase, (3) actual purchase is a positive predictor of e-WOM intention and lastly, (4) there is a full mediation effect of actual purchase.

This research draws on the uses and gratification (U&G) theory to investigate how specific user characteristics affect Chinese social media influencers' adoption of AI color cosmetics, as well as how this may affect their decision to purchase branded color cosmetics and their e-WOM.

The aim of this study is to analyze the antecedents of word-of-mouth (WOM) in a social networking sites (SNS) context, based on social identification theory and uses and gratification theory. This general objective can be divided into two sub-objectives. First, to measure the relationship between social identity, altruism and perceived encouragement as antecedents of WOM in SNS. Second, to study the existence of SNS-user segments which have differentiated behaviors according to the proposed model.

Partial least squares (PLS) has been used to analyze both validity and reliability of the measurement scales and the estimation of the structural model. Next, the heterogeneity of SNS-users has been analyzed using the finite mixture segmentation FIMIX-PLS. Furthermore, a multi-group analysis (MGA-PLS) has been used to analyze the differences between the behaviors of the resulting segments.

The main conclusion of this study is that social identity and perceived encouragement are worthy predictors of WOM. Additionally, there is a strong relationship between social identity and perceived encouragement. Another significant consequence is the existence of a large quantity of unobserved heterogeneity. Unsociable users, habitual users and obligated users show different behaviors regarding the relationships between the variables of the proposed model.

The results indicate that in general WOM communications transmitted by SNS-users are not motivated by altruism or by their willingness to help others. In addition, social identity and perceived encouragement are good predictors of WOM. Another originality of this research is that considering only one general model hides a large amount of unobserved heterogeneity: different segments of users showed diverse behaviors regarding the model’s variables.

Although there are a number of studies on the factors affecting the continuance usage intention for social network services (SNS), the studies on the integrated model encompassing SNS qualities (information, system, and service quality, and hedonic value, which are gratifications for SNS usage), flow, relationship quality (which are trust and satisfaction), and continuance intention are almost non-existent. Based on Bagozzi’s self-regulation framework, the IS success model, uses and gratification theory, and flow theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine the qualities and hedonic value of SNS, which have an influence on flow experience and relationship quality which are posited to affect the continuance usage intention.

This study used an e-mail survey method to collect 460 questionnaires for the final sample. The sample of the study includes college students or job workers who have experience in using SNS. Various user categories in terms of gender, school degree, occupation, usage years, and daily time of usage were included.

The study results show that system, service quality, and hedonic value have an impact on flow experience, information and service quality, and hedonic value influence the relationship quality of SNS. The flow experience and relationship quality while using SNS affect the continuance usage intention of SNS. This results show that the consideration of various SNS qualities, hedonic value, flow experience, and relationship quality is necessary to actively explore the factors for continuance usage intention for SNS.

IS managers trying to understand reuse intent can use surveys on information, system, and service quality, and hedonic value. Practitioners should constantly incorporate and develop various activities or useful applications to allow people to reach out to each other, to reinforce users’ attention, interaction, and increase social connections, trust, satisfaction, and further intensify users’ intention to use, increasing SNS value. The findings explain a mechanism through which SNS users’ continuance intention is built. Understanding this mechanism provides valuable information for practitioners to understand the qualities driving SNS users’ intention to revisit SNS.

This study sheds light on the existing literature on website usage that focuses on the design qualities as this paper has combined website quality perspective, i.e., information, system, and service quality, and hedonic value, and the flow and relationship perspective to investigate how these constructs would affect users’ intention to continuously use SNS. On the basis of four theories, Bagozzi’s self-regulation framework, IS success model, users and gratification theory, and flow theory, this study extended the previous studies on SNS by adding information, system, and service quality, hedonic value, flow and relationship quality as second-order constructs affecting continuance intention.

This study aims to capture how the association between a multichannel relational communication strategy (MRCS) and customer performance is contingent upon such customer performance (low- versus high-performance customers) and to reconcile past contradictory results in this marketing-related topic. To this end, the authors propose and validate the method of quantile regression as an unconventional, yet effective, means to proceed to that reconciliation.

This study collected data from 4,934 customers of a private pension fund firm and accounted for both firm- and customer-initiated relational communication channels (RCCs) and for customer lifetime value (CLV). This study estimated a generalized linear model and then a quantile regression model was used to account for customer performance heterogeneity.

This study finds that specific RCCs present different levels of association with performance for low- versus high-performance customers, where outcome customer performance is the dependent variable. For example, the relation between firm-initiated communication (FIC) and performance is stronger for low-CLV customers, whereas the relation between customer-initiated communication (CIC) and performance is increasingly stronger for high-CLV customers but not for low-CLV ones. This study also finds that combining different forms of FIC can result in a negative association with customer performance, especially for low-CLV customers.

The authors tested the conceptual model in one single firm in the specific context of financial services and with cross-sectional data, so there should be caution when extrapolating this study’s findings.

This study offers nuanced and precise managerial insights on recommended resource allocation along with relational communication efforts, showing how managers can benefit from adopting a differentiated-customer performance approach when designing their MRCS.

This study provides an overview of the state of the art of MRCS, proposes a contingency analysis of the relationship between MRCS and performance based on customer performance heterogeneity and suggests the quantile method to perform such analysis and help reconcile past contradictory findings. This study shows how the association between RCCs and CLV varies across the conditional quantiles of the distribution of customer performance. This study also addresses a recent call for a more holistic perspective on the relationships between independent and dependent variables.