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Using identity theory, this paper aims to explore differences in socially responsible signaling behavior based on the salience of a personal or social identity.

Structural equation modeling was used to study the relationship among identity commitment, salience, and signaling behavior.

Findings revealed personal identity salience mediated the relationship between socially responsible commitment and socially responsible social-signaling consumption behavior.

The results of the study suggest that Millennials engage in socially responsible activities as a result of a salient personal identity. Millennials use socially responsible behavior to signal their benevolence to themselves and others.

This is the first research that has examined the relationship between Millennials’ socially responsible consumption behavior and a salient personal or social identity.

This study aims to provide a holistic understanding of how visual storytelling influences the objective and subjective cognitive responses of consumers, namely objective aesthetic impression and subjective aesthetic association, and aesthetic judgments in response to differing levels of novelty in design innovations.

A mixed-factorial experimental study manipulating the novelty of chair designs (moderate/high) and visual design stories (present/absent) was conducted among 263 female US consumers to test the proposed research model.

With respect to the main effects of novelty and visual design stories, consumers had more positive cognitive responses and aesthetic judgments to: product designs with moderate (vs high) novelty; and products with visual design stories than without. A significant interaction effect uncovered that visual design stories particularly aided products with high (vs moderate) design novelty with respect to objective aesthetic impressions. Examination of the structural relationships between the variables revealed that subjective aesthetic associations mediate the relationship between objective aesthetic impressions and aesthetic judgments.

To mitigate risk in radical design innovations, marketers should use visual storytelling to communicate product form associations and enable consumers to successfully decode the meaning of novel designs during initial encounters.

By examining a holistic model involving both perceptual and conceptual product concepts, this study fills a critical research void to develop insightful implications on bridging the gap between novel product designs and consumer understanding.

This study adopted the functional, expressive and aesthetic (FEA) consumer needs model, aimed to examine the influence of consumers' FEA perceptions of three-dimensional printing (3DP) integrated apparel products on their product satisfaction and purchase intention.

An online survey was employed with a sample of 332 participants (165 female and 167 male) aged 19 to 76, mean age of 35 years. A gender-neutral, 3DP integrated hooded sweatshirt was developed for this study featuring flexible, white 3D printed insets fabricated with an FDM 3D printer and white TPU filament sewn with traditional gray knit fleece.

The findings of this study suggest that the FEA model is appropriate in predicting consumers' satisfaction with 3DP integrated apparel products. Specifically, aesthetic (perceived beauty) and expressive (perceived coolness) dimensions are more influential than functional factors, except for the positive influence of perceived fit, in predicting consumers' satisfaction and purchase intentions for 3DP integrated apparel products.

Future studies could consider data collection from participants' physical fit testing or try on evaluation to determine the importance of the functional dimension in consumer response to 3DP integrated apparel product. Future studies could also examine full 3D printed apparel, or other 3DP integrated wearable products to expand the understanding of consumer perception of the application of 3DP technology.

Despite the increasing exploration of 3DP integrated apparel products and industry attempts to make this innovation in apparel more mainstream, research on how mainstream consumers perceive such 3DP integrated apparel products is limited. This study addresses this gap, providing critical implications for future research and design.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of brand design consistency (BDC) on consumers’ aesthetic judgment and purchase intention; and whether this effect of BDC is moderated by a brand’s luxury status.

A mixed-factorial experimental design that manipulated the BDC of handbags (prototypical/high/low) and brand luxury status (luxury/non-luxury) was conducted among 311 female participants to test the proposed hypotheses.

Results obtained from t-tests and repeated measures ANCOVA demonstrate that prototypical brand designs, followed by high, and then low BDC products, evoked the most positive consumer responses. Additionally, brand luxury status moderated the effect of BDC on consumer response, such that the effect was more salient for non-luxury than luxury brands.

Luxury brands are able to leverage the halo effect, as perceived brand design inconsistency has a lesser impact on consumers’ purchase intentions than for non-luxury brands. Non-luxury brands have less latitude to deviate from their brand aesthetic, and maintaining BDC in new products is imperative for these brands.

Designers constantly navigate the thresholds of their brand’s aesthetic in design decisions; however, few studies have investigated consumer responses to deviations from brand aesthetics. To the authors’ knowledge, no studies have examined this phenomenon in relation to a brand’s luxury status, a factor that critically impacts consumers’ design expectations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the individual and joint effects of collative design factors, complexity and novelty, on aesthetic response to apparel products; and whether the influence of these factors is moderated by consumers’ centrality of visual product aesthetics (CVPA).

A mixed factorial experimental design, using women’s tops with design complexity and novelty (high vs low) manipulated orthogonally, was conducted among 260 female participants to test the model and its corresponding hypotheses.

Consumers’ aesthetic response was more positive for high than low complexity and novelty apparel designs. Further, when viewed in combination, high complexity + low novelty and low complexity + high novelty apparel designs were favored over high complexity + high novelty and low complexity + low novelty apparel designs, respectively. High CVPA consumers were more distinguishing than low CVPA consumers with respect to novelty in apparel designs.

This study suggests that firms need to be aware that complexity and novelty are crucial for consumers when judging apparel designs.

This study fills an important knowledge gap in the aesthetics literature by drawing on the processing fluency theory and Wundt curve and considering the joint effect of novelty and complexity, both critical determinants of a product’s marketplace success.

The primary purpose of this study was to investigate Gen-Y men's implicit beliefs, perceptions of their appearance and apparel styling, degree of fashion involvement, novelty seeking behavior and attitudes/intention toward the new style subscription box retail model.

An online survey was used to collect data from adult men who were born between 1977 and 1994 residing in the USA. For data analyses, SPSS and AMOS were utilized for preliminary analysis and hypotheses testing with the structural equation modeling approach.

The findings of this research demonstrated that Gen-Y men's appearance management behaviors are guided by their innate mindsets or implicit theories, which further influenced their perceptions toward fashion and style subscriptions. Although Gen-Y men's degree of fashion involvement did not have a significant influence on their attitudes, this study found that their novelty seeking behavior positively influenced their attitudes and thus their intention to use style subscription box retail.

To the researchers' knowledge, this study is the first to explore the role of innate mindsets among male consumers in the Gen-Y group in the context of style subscription box retail. Therefore, the findings of the research will add theoretically grounded insights by linking the research area of the style subscription box retail and implicit theory appearance, as well as provide marketing strategies for style subscription box retailers.

Perceived brand entitativity, or the extent to which a collection of brands signifies a group to consumers, differentiates luxury vs non-luxury brands such that luxury brands are perceived to be more entitative than non-luxury brands. Framed by the concept of brand entitativity and the implicit theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine whether this difference in the perceived brand entitativity of luxury and non-luxury brands impacts how consumers respond to sweatshop allegations in context to these brands.

Two separate experimental studies employing between-subjects designs were conducted among a total of 162 and 276 student consumers from a Southern university of the USA. The authors operationalized sweatshop allegations at two levels, brand-specific allegations (the stimulus brand itself is accused) and industry-specific allegations (other brands of the same industry are accused) to examine the role that brand entitativity plays in these two types of allegations.

Experiment 1 demonstrated that industry-specific allegations hurt consumer attitudes for luxury brands to a greater extent than non-luxury brands, whereas brand-specific allegations hurt non-luxury brands more so than luxury ones. In experiment 2, the authors find that the above results hold true only for consumers who are more prone to social perceptions of entitativity (entity theorists), but not those who represent an incremental mindset (incremental theorists).

The results can help brand managers understand the negative downstream consequences of brand- and industry-specific allegations for their brand type (luxury vs non-luxury).

This study fills an important gap in understanding consumer reaction to brands’ sweatshop allegations by addressing the role of consumers’ perceived brand entitativity and how it differs for consumers holding different implicit beliefs.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the visual presence of a virtual agent on a retail Web site reveals positive outcomes for older users with respect to enhancing perceived interactivity, social support, trust and patronage intentions and alleviating user anxiety.

A between-subjects laboratory experiment was conducted with 50 older users, which included an interaction experience of 30 minutes followed by a paper-based questionnaire. The visual presence of the agent was manipulated in a mock retail Web site through the presence or absence of a virtual agent image, while maintaining the same agent functionality.

The contrasts of senior users’ shopping experiences between two agent-mediated Web sites (with or without agent image) support the direct “persona” effects of a virtual agent’s visual presence on enhancing perceived interactivity, social support, trust and patronage intentions in the retail Web site, while alleviating user anxiety. Further, anxiety alleviation is fully explained by increased perceptions of interactivity. Perceived social support fully mediates trust in the benevolence of the online retailer. Trust ability emerges as a salient factor mediating the relationship between agent persona and patronage intentions.

This work is the first to identify the value of human visual embodiment for older users’ online shopping experiences, which has implications for other low-experience/expertise users of a medium.

The purpose of this paper is two‐fold: to investigate virtual agent representational characteristics (modality, interaction style, animation, realism, embodiment, and gender) employed by agent software providers in developing commercial and non‐commercial web sites; and to examine older consumers' preferences in these agent characteristics.

Study 1 involves a content analysis of 64 sample web sites of agent providers, and study 2 consists of four focus group interviews conducted with 25 older consumers in the age group of 65‐82 years.

Findings from both studies reveal some important disconnects between agent characteristics (modality, realism, animation, and gender) offered by virtual agent software providers and those preferred by older consumers. As a result, important recommendations are provided for the development of virtual agents for e‐commerce applications to enhance accessibility for older users.

No previous studies have investigated which agent characteristics enhance web accessibility and are most preferred by older users in the context of e‐commerce applications.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether ethnic consumers' consumption of cultural apparel, and attributional responses related to their consumption, is predicted by their strength of ethnic identification. The study also examined whether the consumption of cultural apparel mediates the influence of strength of ethnic identification on consumers' attributional responses.

Internet survey research was the chosen methodology for this study. A convenience sample of 106 research participants from four ethnic subcultures in the USA were recruited.

Regression analyses revealed that strength of ethnic identification was a significant predictor of cultural apparel consumption and attribution of emotions and meanings to the consumption. Further, consumption of cultural apparel perfectly mediated the influence of strength of ethnic identification on consumers' attributions of emotions, and partially mediated this influence on consumers' attributions of meanings.

The study provides valuable implications for channeling apparel product development, merchandising, and retailing to better meet the emotional needs and preferences of ethnic consumers. The main limitation of this study is the use of a non‐representative sample.

Prior research on ethnic consumers' motivations in consuming cultural products is limited. This study fills this gap in the literature at a time when large retailers are seeking to attract ethnic consumers through culturally targeted apparel products and brands.