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Applying the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) theory in a wine museum context, this paper aims to examine how and why experience design characteristics influence visitor satisfaction, particularly investigating the role of epistemic (learning) and hedonic (having fun) values as the underlying mechanisms of this relationship.

The authors collected field survey data from 652 visitors at a world-leading wine museum. The authors tested the research model on ten modules of the museum using path analysis and a bootstrap approach; the authors further conducted mediation analyses to test how the design of the museum’s modules influenced perceived value and satisfaction.

Content comprehensibility and surprise, as well as interactivity and ease of use, are core design characteristics that drive visitor satisfaction. More significantly, hedonic and epistemic values play a significant mediating role in influencing the relationship between design characteristics and visitor satisfaction.

The authors provide clear and actionable recommendations to help managers design museums that provide educational, entertaining and satisfying visitor experiences.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to apply the S-O-R theory in a wine museum context. The significance of this study lies in demonstrating how and why experience design characteristics support the creation of an edutainment visitor experience that drives visitor satisfaction.

This paper aims to clarify the effect of discount discrepancy (DD) on consumers’ purchase intention (PI). The authors propose, test and provide evidence and explanations about the moderation of justification in the relation between consumers’ perceived DD and PI.

The authors conducted three experimental studies with a 2 × 2 factorial design, focusing on consumers’ processing of price discounts. Participants were informed that this study aimed to gather opinions on fashion, clothing and retail sales promotions. They accessed the questionnaire via Qualtrics. Each participant took part in only one study. The experimental conditions were manipulated through scenarios.

Study 1 tested and supported the moderation of justification on the effect of DD on PI. Study 2 tested and supported the moderation of the type of justification for the effect of DD on PI. Study 3 confirmed the findings in Study 2 and revealed the more effective type of justification.

The authors focused on a typically hedonic product category (fashion clothing). Further research should include a wider variety of goods and services, which could lead to different explanations or generalizations.

Sales promotions must refrain from generating DD between the initial price discount and the subsequent smaller discounts. Practitioners must evaluate the gains of an initial, more considerable percentage discount to attract consumers to the store and sell them other products versus the cost of losing sales because of DD. Management should recognize the importance of giving the correct justification for perceived DD, aligning the firm’s justification with the consumer’s motivation to buy the product.

The authors offer subsidies for effective consumer protection policies.

By studying the influence of justification on the effect of DD on PI, the authors propose a mechanism that would reduce the negative effect of DD on consumers’ PI.

As internet dividends are gradually disappearing, loyalty programs have become the panacea for monetizing traffic, attracting new customers and retaining existing customers. Improving their effectiveness has thus become key to enterprises’ market competitiveness. However, member customers’ hedonic adaptation to this relationship strategy undermines its effectiveness. Based on the hedonic adaptation theory, this study aims to analyze the process of member customers' hedonic adaptation to preferential treatment in loyalty programs and explore the boundary conditions of alleviating this effect.

This study surveyed 271 member customers in China and tested the hypothesized relationships using structural equation modeling and multigroup analysis.

Preferential treatment suffers from hedonic adaptation to member customer engagement and customer gratitude, and customer tenure is a key condition for these effects. Customer gratitude is an intermediary mechanism that explains the hedonic adaptation effect of preferential treatment to member customers engagement. In addition, the structural characteristics of loyalty programs form the boundary condition that alleviates hedonic adaptation. The authors found that high-tier and -payment strategies are more likely to mitigate hedonic adaptation of preferential treatment to customer gratitude.

This study elucidates the factors that influence the effectiveness of preferential treatment and provides constructive insights into customer relationship management and for improving enterprise performance.

Impulsive buyers are a dream segment for retailers and marketers. Stimulants in the retail environment and cognitive aspects evoke a sudden urge the acquisition of products spontaneously. This paper aims to examine key cognitive aspects of impulsive buying behaviour and purchase regret in an online context.

An online survey was conducted to collect the data of 317 online consumers with the help of a convenience sampling technique. The structural equation modelling technique was carried out to establish the validity and reliability of measures and examine the proposed relational paths.

The study results suggest that cognitive aspects recede impulsive buying, resulting in purchase regret. The empirical findings on the impulsive buying behaviour and purchase regret to yield several important implications, including developing marketing strategies and policies to evoke the intentions for impulsive buying behaviour, consumer innovation and balancing the feelings of regret.

The study also provides some significant contributions to the literature on online impulse buying and its related paradigms.

This study mainly attempted to determine the precursors of online impulse buying and purchase regret from the perspective of hedonic and experiential consumption motivation and consumer innovation. Getting reflections from cognitive dissonance theory and the post purchase evaluation, a theoretical model was developed and empirically tested for impulsive online buyers.

This study aims to use emotions-as-social information theory to investigate how physical (customer perceived store atmosphere) and social servicescapes (customer information searching) influence the effects of employees’ positive affective displays on customer outcomes via customer positive moods and positive expectation disconfirmation.

This research included two studies, each using a distinct research design, to empirically test the proposed model. Study 1 involved 200 observational data points on objective purchase amounts from designer watch shops. In Study 2, data were collected from 230 customers in designer jewelry stores.

The results of path analyses revealed that: employee positive affective displays are positively associated with customer purchase outcomes; employee positive affective displays had positive indirect effects on customer purchase outcomes by enhancing customer positive moods and positive expectation disconfirmation; these positive indirect effects were strengthened when customers engaged in information search behaviors; and these positive indirect effects were attenuated when customers perceive store atmosphere as favorable, indicating a substitution effect of customer perceived store atmosphere.

Previous research has not thoroughly examined the role of the servicescape in moderating the effects of employees’ positive affective displays on customer purchase outcomes. This present study not only clarified the affective and cognitive mechanisms that link employees’ positive affective displays on purchase outcomes but also identified servicescape as a critical boundary condition of these effects.

Advertisements facilitate certain emotions, subsequently influencing purchase intentions. Humor, as an influential way of information expression, is frequently used in ads to elicit emotions. Drawing upon literature on advertisement humor and new product purchase intention and the theory of planned behavior, the study proposes that humor stimulation in advertisements can affect consumers' new product purchase intentions, in which two process mechanisms, namely, emotional arousal and cognitive flexibility, play a mediating effect.

To test the assertions, the authors conduct three experimental studies. The authors' first study assesses the main effect between advertisement humor and purchase intentions. In the second study, the authors show the mediating effects of emotional pleasure, emotional arousal, and cognitive flexibility on the relationship between advertisement humor and purchase intentions. In the first two experiments, the authors study incremental new products. In the third study, the authors study the same mediating relationships for radically new products.

This study's results show consumers that watch humorous ads are more likely to choose new products than those who watch non-humorous ads (Study 1); compared with non-humorous ads, humorous ads can enhance emotional arousal, thus promoting cognitive flexibility and making consumers more inclined to choose new products (Study 2 and Study 3). That said, the authors find that these mediation effects are only partial.

This study's results have important implications for firms vying to enhance consumers' new product purchase intentions by deploying humorous ads.

This paper aims to examine the congruency effects of physically embodied robots in service encounters, which addressed a significant research gap concerning the synthesis of robot design elements (e.g., appearance and voice) and their service purposes.

Grounded in congruity theory and human-robot interaction literature, this study conducted a pretest and two experimental studies revealing the need to view robot design holistically and recognizing the pivotal role of congruity in shaping consumers’ service robot adoption. The moderating role of service purposes (utilitarian vs hedonic) was also investigated in terms of robot design and consumer reactions.

Consumers generally tend to favor robots with congruent designs, particularly for utilitarian service purposes. The serial mediation through perceived congruence and perceived intelligence explains such a favorite tendency.

This study advances service robot design research by highlighting the critical role of congruity in enhancing consumer engagement. It supports the use of comprehensive, congruent designs for services with utilitarian purposes and recommends adaptable designs for hedonic settings.

This study addressed the research gap by examining service robot design from a holistic perspective. The research findings highlight the importance of congruency effects in service robot design and deployment and provide valuable insights and guidelines to industry practitioners for optimal investment in service robots.

Integrating the theory of consumption value into the stimulus-organism-response framework, this study aims to analyse the influence of external and internal factors on the customers’ perceptions of utilitarian, hedonic, social and epistemic values as drivers of the overall perceived value and customers’ continuance use of mobile banking (m-banking).

An online survey was conducted with 252 actual m-banking users, and the partial least squares structural equations modelling was applied to analyse the data.

The results reveal that ubiquity and gamification positively influence the perceived usefulness and entertainment, that is the utilitarian and hedonic perceived values. Furthermore, users’ self-congruence and innovativeness affect subjective norms and novelty-seeking, representing social and epistemic values. Except for the hedonic value, each value element impacts the overall perceived value, which in turn incites clients’ intention to continue using m-banking services.

By exploring the simultaneous effect of service-related and personal factors (stimuli) on different elements of perceived value (organism), this study contributes to the existing knowledge of consumption reactions (response) in the context of m-banking. The research of the Macedonian m-banking offers a closer insight into Western Balkan mobile commerce.

Integrando la Teoría del Valor de Consumo (TCV) en el marco Estímulo-Organismo-Respuesta (S-O-R), este estudio pretende analizar la influencia de factores externos e internos en las percepciones de valor utilitario, hedónico, social y epistémico de los clientes, como impulsores del valor percibido global y del uso continuado del m-banking por parte de los clientes.

Se realizó una encuesta en línea a 252 usuarios reales de banca móvil y se aplicó el modelo de ecuaciones estructurales por mínimos cuadrados parciales (PLS-SEM) para analizar los datos.

Los resultados revelan que la ubicuidad y la gamificación influyen positivamente en la utilidad y el entretenimiento percibidos, es decir, en los valores utilitarios y hedónicos percibidos. Además, la autocongruencia y la capacidad de innovación de los usuarios afectan a las normas subjetivas y a la búsqueda de novedades, que representan el valor social y epistémico. A excepción del valor hedónico, cada elemento de valor influye en el valor percibido global, que a su vez incita a los clientes a seguir utilizando los servicios de banca móvil.

Al explorar el efecto simultáneo de factores personales y relacionados con el servicio (estímulos) sobre diferentes elementos del valor percibido (organismo), contribuimos al conocimiento existente sobre las reacciones de consumo (respuesta) en el contexto del m-banking. La investigación del m-banking macedonio ofrece una visión más cercana del comercio móvil de los Balcanes Occidentales.

本研究将消费价值理论（TCV）纳入刺激-组织-反应（S-O-R）框架, 旨在分析外部和内部因素对客户感知功利价值、享乐价值、社会价值和认识价值的影响, 这些因素是客户整体感知价值和持续使用移动银行的驱动因素。

对 252 名实际移动银行用户进行了在线调查, 并采用偏最小二乘法结构方程模型（PLS-SEM）分析数据。

结果表明, 普遍性和游戏化对用户的有用性和娱乐性感知, 即功利性和享乐性感知价值有积极影响。此外, 用户的自我一致性和创新性也会影响主观规范和新奇寻求, 这代表了社会价值和认识价值。除享乐价值外, 每个价值要素都会影响整体感知价值, 进而激发客户继续使用移动银行服务的意愿。

通过探索服务相关因素和个人因素（刺激）对感知价值不同要素（有机体）的同时影响, 我们为现有的有关移动银行背景下消费反应（响应）的知识做出了贡献。通过对马其顿移动银行的研究, 我们可以更深入地了解西巴尔干移动商务。

Despite the burgeoning popularity of virtual gifting in live streaming, research lacks an in-depth understanding of the drivers behind this behavior. Using para-social relationship (PSR), this study aims to capture viewers’ lively social feelings toward the streamer as the key factor leading to the purchase behavior of virtual gifts. It also aims to establish a theoretical link between PSR and viewers’ holistic experience in live streaming as captured by cognitive absorption and aims to investigates the role of technological features (i.e. viewer–streamer and viewer–viewer interactivity, streamer-level and viewer-level deep profiling and design aesthetics) in shaping viewers’ experience.

Based on 433 survey responses, this study employs a combination of structural equation modeling and neural networks to offer valuable insights into the relationships between the technological environment, viewer experience and viewer behavior.

Our results highlight the salience of PSR in promoting the purchase of virtual gifts through cognitive absorption and the importance of the technological environment in eliciting the viewer experience. This study sheds light on the development of PSR in a technological environment and its relationship with cognitive absorption.

By applying PSR to conceptualize viewers’ perceived connection with the streamer, this study extends the research on purchase behavior in the non-shopping context by providing an enlightened understanding of virtual gift purchase behavior in live streaming. Moreover, by theoretically linking PSR with cognitive absorption, virtual gift purchase and technological features of live streaming, it enriches the theory of PSR and bridges the gap between the design practice of supporting the IT infrastructure of live streaming and research.

The emergence of virtual reality (VR) has the potential to revolutionize various industries, including tourism, as it delivers a simulated environment that closely emulates real-life experiences. Therefore, this study aims to explore how the factors, i.e. enjoyment, emotional involvement, flow state, perceived privacy risk, physical risk and cost, influence the customers’ intention to use VR for tourism.

This study integrates the technology acceptance model, hedonic consumption theory with other factors, including cognitive response, authenticity, perceived privacy risk, perceived physical risk, perceived cost and perceived presence. Partial least squares structural equation modelling approach was used to test the proposed research model.

The finding based on the sample of 252 respondents revealed that authenticity is the most influential factor impacting behavior intention followed by perceived cost, attitude, cognitive response and enjoyment. Also, the study supported the moderating impact of personal innovativeness between attitude and behavioral intention to use VR for tourism.

The findings of the study offers practical implications for service providers, site managers, destination marketers, tourist organizations and policymaker to develop more effective strategies for offering VR services for tourism.

This study enriches the current understanding of VR adoption in context of tourism with empirical evidences.