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Although there is a growing body of literature on how celebrity involvement impacts the effectiveness of destination marketing, the underlying mechanisms of that relationship are still underexplored. Based on the affect transfer and meaning transfer theories, this study aims to examine the impact of celebrity attachment on customer delight toward K-culture and K-culture attachment, affective and cognitive images of Korea, and the intention to visit Korea.

Online survey data were collected from 2,614 US residents, representing various demographic characteristics. For the data analysis, the partial least squares-structural equation modeling was conducted to evaluate the structural model and test the hypotheses.

The results showed that celebrity attachment is positively related to customer delight toward K-culture and K-culture attachment, which, in turn, positively influences affective and cognitive images of Korea. Additionally, K-culture attachment positively influences cognitive and affective images of Korea, which are positively related to the intention to visit Korea.

By using the affect transfer theory and meaning transfer theory, this study provides valuable insights into how consumer’s attachment to celebrities has spillover effects on the decision-making process. This study also adds a new concept, customer delight connected to cultural experience, in the context of destination marketing.

By understanding the importance and influence of people’s intimacy with media characters, practitioners can apply parasocial relationship theory, affect transfer theory and meaning transfer theory to their marketing strategies.

As one of the few empirical studies that examines the impact of celebrity attachment on consumers’ perceptions and behaviors, this study can make significant contributions to the destination marketing literature.

Retailers have recently leveraged store-loyal customers’ store attachment to maintain customer relationships and motivate patronage intentions. However, the COVID-19 outbreak has driven customer migration from offline to mobile channels. Mobile retail applications (APPs) have been used by numerous retailers to reach their customers. Nonetheless, it has yet to be determined (1) whether store attachment can facilitate (or impede) the adoption of mobile retail APPs and (2) whether store-loyal customers will continue visiting offline stores in the post-pandemic era. To address these questions, we propose a theoretical account using integrated theories on trust transfer and store attachment.

We conducted multi-stage, longitudinal field surveys in two cities of mainland China: Beijing and Guangzhou. From two rounds of data collection, 237 and 103 responses were obtained in March 2022. Hypotheses were tested by partial least squares – structural equation modelling (PLS–SEM).

Results showed that customer trust in an offline retailer can be transferred to the retailer’s mobile APP at the pre-adoption stage, facilitating APP adoption. Notably, store-loyal customers who exhibited a strong attachment to the physical store of a retailer were more inclined to transfer their trust to the mobile APP of the retailer. This occurrence leads to an increased adoption rate, enhanced post-adoption satisfaction and increased inclination to continue (rather than discontinue) usage.

This study is the first to investigate the changes in store-loyal customers' shopping behaviour in the mobile retail era and in the post-COVID-19 pandemic recovery. Our findings elucidate the role of physical store attachment in the trust-transfer mechanism. Furthermore, store attachment may not prevent customers’ channel migration behaviour. Retailers may have to re-consider how to manage channel cannibalisation issues in the post-pandemic recovery.

The current study aims to propose and empirically investigate a conceptual model of the most relevant antecedents and consequences of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) attribution, thus providing a practical and concise model as well as examining brand attachment as a mediator explaining the relationship between CSR attribution and its consequences.

A between-subjects experimental design was employed. The study included two experimental conditions; intrinsic and extrinsic CSR attribution and a control condition. An online self-administered survey was utilised for data collection. The sample was a convenience sample of 336 university students. Both one-way between-groups ANOVA and Partial Least Squares-Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM) were utilised for hypotheses testing.

The most significant antecedents of CSR attribution in order of importance are the firm's approach to CSR communication, past corporate social performance, CSR type and the firm's call for customers' participation in its CSR. CSR attribution exerted a significant direct positive impact on brand attachment and trust. Three significant indirect consequences of CSR attribution were PWOM intention, purchase intention and brand loyalty intention. Whereas trust played a significant mediating role between CSR attribution and its three indirect consequences, brand attachment exerted significant mediation only between CSR attribution and brand loyalty intention. Brand attachment might mediate the relationship between CSR attribution and purchase intention. However, brand attachment failed to play a mediating role between CSR attribution and PWOM intention.

Several studies marginally investigated CSR attribution. Despite the vital role of CSR attribution in how consumers receive firms' CSR engagement, the availability of CSR attribution-centric studies is limited. By introducing a model of the most relevant antecedents and consequences of CSR attribution, this study aids in understanding the psychological mechanism underlying consumers' CSR attribution and provides valuable implications.

This study examined an individual's drug use in relation to their coping styles, personality traits and attachment style. A total of 98 participants (46 females and 52 males) took part in the study. Analysis did not show a significant difference in insecure/ambivalent attachment in the drug‐using group. Yet, there was evidence to suggest that the drug‐using group exhibited higher levels of personality disorder traits, based only on self‐report. Individuals with more personality disorder traits had a more insecure attachment style. Participants who use drugs had a more avoidant coping style. The results are discussed with reference to previous research and the implications of the current research on attachment theory and personality disorder etiology, as well as implications for drug treatment.

Aiming to address the problem in which practitioners mindlessly prioritise the reputation of social media influencers (SMIs) over ensuring proper congruence between the influencers themselves and content marketing strategies, this study develops a conceptual framework that adopts an elaboration likelihood model and attachment theory to ascertain the effects of SMIs, live content marketing and their congruency on impulsive buying (IB).

Through collecting cross-sectional data from 608 valid replies, this study adopts an integrated method that combines partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), artificial neural network (ANN) and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to analyse.

The results reveal that the credibility and relevance of live content, the empathy and professionalism of SMIs, and their congruence are critical antecedents of consumers' attachments to live content and SMIs, thus triggering their attachment to endorsement and IB.

In knowledge, this study benefits the scope of the elaboration likelihood model and attachment theory and enriches live streaming commerce literature. In method, an integrated analytical method is used to cope with complex structural relationships in non-linear patterns and predictions, as well as examine the complex causal configurations. In practice, this study facilitates practitioners to further ascertain what attributes in live content and SMIs can foster customer's emotional attachments in choosing endorsers and developing endorsement strategies, thus driving their IB.

This study aims to extend research in marketing on two important relational constructs, customer satisfaction and brand attachment, by comparing their long-term effects on customer behaviors with different levels of performance difficulty in a relatively understudied domain of durable products.

Using a two-stage quantitative study with US customers from five durable product categories, the authors first explored the hierarchy of customers’ loyalty behaviors based on increasing effort in a pretest study (N = 675). Then, the authors tested the effectiveness of satisfaction and brand attachment for customers’ loyalty behaviors over a nine-month period in a longitudinal study (N = 2,284) with customers from the same product categories.

Compared to satisfaction, brand attachment emerges as a stronger long-term predictor of customer behaviors. The performance difficulty of customer behaviors positively moderates the impact of brand attachment and negatively moderates the impact of customer satisfaction. Brand attachment is particularly effective in predicting difficult-to-perform customer behaviors, which require customers to expend resources such as time and money. Customer satisfaction is mainly effective for predicting easy-to-perform behaviors, but its long-term impact is significantly lower for easy-to-perform behaviors than brand attachment.

The use of consumer durables in the study and samples from only one country restricts the generalizability of the findings.

The complementary roles of customer satisfaction and brand attachment are highlighted. Only satisfying customers is not enough to engage customers in behaviors that require resources such as money, time and energy for the brand.

A comparative study on the long-term effectiveness of two established relational metrics in explaining different customer behaviors varying in their performance difficulty in an understudied domain of durable products.

We know a great deal today about the impact of transformational leaders, their actions, typical behaviors and their ways of influencing others (Bass, 1985, 1999a, b; Bass & Avolio, 1990). However, we know relatively little about the psychological substructure, the internal world of these leaders, namely who they are and how they developed this way. These aspects were raised earlier in Bass’s early work (Bass, 1985) but have received little attention so far (Bass, 1998; Judge & Bono, 2000). We argue that the internal world of a transformational leader is characterized by a motivation to lead, leadership self-efficacy, motivation and capacity to relate to others in a pro-social way, optimism and openness to new experiences and viewpoints of others. We further argue that the origins of the ability and motivation to be a transformational leader lie in childhood experiences, and that the development of this ability and motivation can be understood and conceptualized by means of major developmental theories such as attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969, 1973, 1977, 1988). On the basis of these theories, we suggest a researchable conceptual framework for characterization of the internal world and the development of transformational leaders.

This research probes the nostalgic influence of place attachment and the associated sociodemographic traits which modify environmental attitudes. The study site is a nostalgic campus from one of the most established universities in Taiwan, which has over a 100-year-long history. According to the 382 questionnaires collected, the study observes that several sociodemographic traits could affect environmental attitudes. Further, the perceived place attachment toward a historical campus under investigation positively impacts the respondent's environmental attitudes. In particular, the two subdimensions of cognition and the perceived importance of the place significantly affect the environmental attitude. This study renders valuable insights on what attributes are able to alter the environmental attitude of nostalgic seekers. Consequently, partitioners can efficiently redesign/reshape a historical place for passive leisure pursuits promoting environmental consciousness using the resultant data.

This study is a comparison of male and female delinquent behaviors utilizing a large sample in a test of social control theory.

A sample of 8,363 adolescent 10th graders was drawn from the U.S. National Educational Longitudinal Study (NELS). The sample consisted of 3,774 males and 4,589 females. This work utilized logistic regression and ordinary least squares to determine whether adolescent behaviors such as smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, using marijuana, and other delinquent behaviors are linked to weak social bonds.

The findings of this study provide limited substantiation of social control theory for both sexes. Females who were found to have strong social bonds were less likely to engage in delinquent behaviors than males. For both sexes, the strongest element of the social bond was the element of belief.

These results may be specific to the United States.

Understanding contributing factors to adolescent substance use and delinquency will assist in developing social policy that will support families.

This study provides insight into the differentiated nature of the social bond for males and females. Knowing that belief is an integral component in determining the strength of the social bond will aid in the development of social policies.

Literature shows that environmental change would profoundly influence residents' emotional ties with their community. This study attempts to further the examination by probing into the relationship between perceived ecological change and place attachment at a small-island destination where tourism has become a heavyweight business and transformed the living quality of locals. The survey questionnaires are distributed to the residents of the study site Kinmen archipelago in Taiwan. The resultant data illustrate that age, occupation, the town of residence, house ownership, and the length of residence moderate the resident's place attachment. Besides, from a result of regression analysis, the perception of rapid community development reveals a positive relationship with the level of place attachment. This study suggests timely strategies enticing younger residents' place attachment along with other managerial actions, helping invigorate the community living.