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Despite the remarkable growth of the luxury industry, a phenomenon referred to as luxury fever, as well as the growing interest in word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing in the industry at hand, little is known about how consumers’ perceived leadership of luxury brands dynamically influences their WOM behavior. This paper aims to examine the moderating role of a type of luxuries (accessible vs inaccessible) in the relationship between the four dimensions of perceived brand leadership – quality, value, innovativeness and popularity – and consumers’ WOM recommendation intention.

The current research is based on survey data gathered from 333 actual customers who attend five golf clubs located in North Florida. An innovative data analysis procedure that combines structural equation modeling with propensity score analysis to estimate the moderating effects, controlling for selection bias, is presented.

Quality was the significant predictor of WOM among consumers of inaccessible luxuries (private club). In contrast, financial value and popularity were key factors in predicting WOM of individuals who chose accessible luxuries (public club).

This paper attempts to shed new light on the field of strategic luxury marketing by addressing differential consumption decision-making processes corresponding to hierarchically constructed luxury services. In addition, an innovative way is suggested to achieve covariates’ balance in the examinations of latent variables and multisampling models for observational research.

The purpose of this study was to test whether endorsements that show a low strength of association (bottom-up bias) benefit from increased attention and processing efforts. The current study also tested whether consumer involvement level (top-down bias) dynamically interacts with the bottom-up attention phenomena.

Through a series of pretests, 36 potential celebrity-product matches were identified using real athletes and product brands. Two experiments were conducted: 330 individual responses (110 participants × three conditions) were obtained in a within-subjects lab experiment, and 868 participants were recruited for a between-subjects online experiment. Linear mixed modeling and moderated mediation analysis were performed.

The relationships between the strength of image associations and attention time to endorsements and recall and choice consideration of endorsed brands were U-shaped and curvilinear. Attention largely mediated the relationship between the strength of association and recall/choice. Involvement effects were diluted by the strength of association effects, rejecting top-down attentional control.

Brand managers for both products and celebrities are recommended to search for corresponding not only image-matched partners but also endorsement partners with dissonant pre-existing images.

The majority of the existing endorsement literature has conventionally suggested that congruence between the endorser and the endorsed property, rather than incongruence, induces consumers’ positive endorsement evaluation. This study constructs important theoretical advancements to the existing literature by empirically proving that through an attentional process, an endorsement contract, conventionally perceived as mismatched, can also generate positive outcomes.

The current study aims to develop a comprehensive hierarchical model of traits and needs to provide a theoretical understanding of personality determinants of luxury-services consumption.

The sample comprised 415 single-event buyers of premium seats in sports stadiums. The causal relationships of hierarchically ordered four traits – elemental, compound, situational and surface – were examined.

Extraversion was found to be an important trait for needs for material resources and status, while conscientiousness and openness were important predictors of need for arousal. Furthermore, needs for material resources, status and uniqueness were found to be important for self-value consciousness. Self-value consciousness was found to be an important predictor of purchase intention.

The study integrates fragmented luxury services research on individual differences. The findings about the personality determinants would provide relatively consistent predictions behind luxury-services consumption potentially applicable to diverse luxury markets.

Building on the social leverage model (SLM), this study aims to examine the influence of event-related attributes on residents' perceived social impact of a major sport event, as mediated by event involvement. It also investigates the moderating effect of event rights holders' credibility on the relationship between event involvement and perceived social impact.

Using a two-wave, time-lagged survey, data were collected from 220 residents of a Super Bowl host city. Hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling (SEM).

High celebratory atmosphere, social camaraderie and social responsibility as perceived before the event were associated with residents' perceptions of the social impact of the Super Bowl. Moreover, the association between social camaraderie and perceived social impact was mediated by event involvement. When appraising the rights holder as credible, involved residents reported an increased level of perceived social impact.

This study contributes to research on the SLM by demonstrating its application among indirect participants of major sport events. Additionally, it suggests the imperative role of rights holders' credibility in promoting the perceived social impact among involved residents.

Marketers worldwide consider athlete endorsement a highly effective promotional tool. However, little is known about consumers' responses towards athlete endorsement in global markets - particularly the bi-directional image transfer mechanism. This study examines the image match between athlete endorsers and products using a three-dimensional visual map and comparing image perceptions towards athlete endorsements among respondent groups from Japan, Korea and the United States during the 2010 FIFA World Cup. The results show that image perceptions of selected athlete endorsers, endorsed products and their match are significantly different in these markets.

The purpose of this study is to examine the knowledge gap hypothesis in the context of smartphone use for news to understand whether mobile news consumption could bridge or widen the knowledge gap between people of higher and lower socioeconomic status (SES).

The authors examine how smartphone news consumption is associated with the knowledge gap hypothesis by analyzing a survey dataset from Hong Kong. This study focuses specifically on a moderated mediation model in which the indirect effect of mobile news consumption on political knowledge via discussion network heterogeneity is contingent on level of education.

Smartphone use for news/information was positively associated with level of discussion network heterogeneity. The indirect effect of smartphone news use on political knowledge via discussion network heterogeneity was stronger for those with lower levels of education.

This study advances the understanding of the role of smartphone use in contributing to the functioning of deliberative democracy as this use enhances discussion network heterogeneity and general levels of political knowledge. Moreover, our study contributes to the literature on the knowledge gap by not only examining the relationship between smartphone use, discussion heterogeneity, and political knowledge but also taking into consideration individual levels of education.