Search results

Artificial intelligence (AI) has a large number of applications at the industry and user levels. However, AI's uniqueness neglect is becoming an obstacle in the further application of AI. Based on the theory of innovation resistance, this paper aims to explore the effect of AI's uniqueness neglect on consumer resistance to AI.

The authors tested four hypothesis across four studies by conducting lab experiments. Study 1 used a questionnaire to verify the hypothesis that AI's uniqueness neglect leads to consumer resistance to AI; Studies 2 focused on the role of human–AI interaction trust as an underlying driver of resistance to medical AI. Study 3–4 provided process evidence by way of a measured moderator, testing whether participants with a greater sense of non-verbal human–AI communication are more reluctant to have consumer resistance to AI.

The authors found that AI's uniqueness neglect increased users' resistance to AI. This occurs because the uniqueness neglect of AI hinders the formation of interaction trust between users and AI. The study also found that increasing the gaze behavior of AI and increasing the physical distance in the interaction can alleviate the effect of AI's uniqueness neglect on consumer resistance to AI.

This paper explored the effect of AI's uniqueness neglect on consumer resistance to AI and uncovered human–AI interaction trust as a mediator for this effect and gaze behavior and physical distance as moderators for this effect.

This study aims to introduce the duration of uniqueness, an important dimension of unique products. It studies how choices between products with long versus short duration of uniqueness are influenced by the interaction between pressure and consumers’ need for uniqueness (NFU).

This research uses a multi-method study approach. A pilot field-study tested the novelty and importance of the research by asking retail professionals to predict the choice of a hypothetical consumer. A retrospective study assessed the importance of duration of uniqueness in unique product choices, by asking consumers about a real and recent unique product purchase. Four additional experimental studies directly tested hypotheses by manipulating pressure and by measuring or manipulating uniqueness motivations.

The pilot field-study showed the novelty and relevance of this research for professionals. Study 1 revealed that, retrospectively, uniqueness duration was considered important for the choice of unique products, by high-NFU consumers under pressure. Studies 2 and 3 demonstrated that pressure increases the tendency of high-NFU, but not low-NFU, consumers to choose products with long over short uniqueness duration. Study 4 provided initial evidence for the process behind the effect. Study 5 showed that considerations of uniqueness duration when choosing mediated the effects.

The results of the pilot field-study and retrospective study might be affected by recall bias or lay theories. The findings need to be replicated with other sources of pressure and uniqueness. This calls for further research.

Results are important for companies marketing unique products and they suggest that pressure-based marketing appeals can be used strategically to increase sales of products with long uniqueness duration but decrease sales of products with short uniqueness duration. Although the research provides these guidelines, managers should consider the ethical implications of pressure strategies.

This is the first attempt to empirically investigate the duration of uniqueness. Although extant research has examined choices between products with different degrees of uniqueness, this research studies choice of products with similar degrees of uniqueness, but different uniqueness duration. Thus, this research adds to the scarce literature studying the duration of symbolic benefits. Moreover, although pressure and NFU frequently co-exist in uniqueness consumption settings, this study is the first to study their joint effects.

Brand managers frequently use well-known celebrities to position their brands and capture consumers’ attention to improve the brand’s market share. The attachment of a celebrity with a brand creates a human image for a brand and helps in personifying its image. The consumer perceives the brand as an individual and relates his personality, as well as the personality of the celebrity with that of the brand. It becomes pertinent for marketers to understand how brand-celebrity personality congruence and brand-consumer personality congruence affect the brand reputation, uniqueness and purchase intentions. Thus, the purpose of this study is to understand the relationship between the two personality congruence aspects – brand & celebrity personalities and brand & consumer personalities, and their impact on the reputation of the brand and its uniqueness. Further, the paper aims to examine the impact of the brand reputation and brand uniqueness on purchase intentions.

The present study uses Aaker’s five-factor personality scale to study the personality congruence effects on brand reputation, brand uniqueness and purchase intentions. The literature review was carried out to categorize factors related to celebrity personality, brand personality and consumer personality. The data for this study was collected through questionnaires from 1,235 respondents. In the first step, congruencies between celebrity, brand and consumer personality were determined. This was followed by a two-stage structural equation modelling for assessing the model fit and testing the hypotheses.

From the study results, it is observed that brand-celebrity congruency influences brand reputation and brand uniqueness. However, brand-consumer congruency had an effect only on brand reputation and not on brand uniqueness. Both brand reputation and uniqueness have favourable impact on consumers purchase intentions.

This study contributes to the existing literature on celebrity endorsement by extending the discussion with personality-based congruence. The research deciphered two aspects of identification, i.e. consumer-brand personality congruence and brand-celebrity congruence. The paper hypothesized the favourable association between brand personality and consumer personality congruence and brand uniqueness. However, it was observed that brand personality-consumer personality identification had an insignificant influence on brand uniqueness. This is contrary to the findings of some studies in the literature. Further investigation of this relationship in the future may add a new dimension to the identification context.

This study sets out to examine the causal relationships among consumers' need for uniqueness, brand perceptions, and purchase intention of a US apparel brand among Japanese Generation Y consumers.

A self‐administered questionnaire was used to collect data from 175 students enrolled at two Japanese metropolitan universities. A structural equation model using correlation matrix with maximum likelihood was estimated using LISREL 8.53.

Japanese consumers' need for uniqueness consisted of avoidance of similarity, unpopular choice and creative choice. The consumers' need for uniqueness was negatively related to the perceived quality, whereas the creative choice was positively related to the emotional value in perceptions of the US apparel brand. The perceived quality decreased purchase intention, while the emotional value increased purchase intention.

This study was limited to students at two Japanese metropolitan universities and to one US apparel brand.

Consumer need for uniqueness may be considered when developing merchandising and marketing strategies for the Generation Y consumer cohort in domestic and international markets. A focus on emotional values can be successful in creating and maintaining a brand relationship with the focal consumer market.

Few, if any, studies exist that investigate Japanese Generation Y consumers' need for uniqueness and its relationship to brand perceptions. This study addresses perception of a foreign brand and purchase intention related to consumers' need for uniqueness.

Since the store mix and product offerings of many regional shopping malls are very similar, often the primary discriminator between many of these centres is merely location. Making the choice to shop at a regional shopping mall other than the one nearest to one′s place of residence, therefore, does not appear to be a logical choice in many instances. Such behaviour, however, appears to be relatively common. It would appear, therefore, that regional shopping mall choice may not always be based solely on the offerings and location of the available shopping alternatives. Appears to provide support for the hypothesis that regional shopping mall choice can be an avenue for expression of an individual′s need for uniqueness. Suggests that outshopping activity as it relates to choice of regional shopping mall, may, at least in part, be prompted by the personal uniqueness which can be experienced by choosing to patronize regional shopping malls other than the one which is nearest to one′s place of residence.

There is a significant growth in the consumption of new luxury fashion brands in developing price-sensitive markets like India. Not only does this growth demonstrate how the “new” luxury brands have become a success, but is also illustrative of the perception and practice of style and status among the middle classes. The purpose of this paper is to argue that the consumer’s attitude for buying a branded product entails the need for uniqueness and self-monitoring. It also contends that gender and age moderate the consumer’s attitude.

This study employed a self-monitored survey to collect the data from the customers of new luxury fashion retail brand stores in Chennai, India for empirical validation of the model. Data collected from 394 new luxury brands shoppers were analysed using partial least squares structural equation modelling.

The need for uniqueness and self-monitoring had significant positive influences on social-adjustive attitude and value-expressive attitude. However, the relationship between self-monitoring and value-expressive attitude was weak when compared to other relationships. Significant differences were seen in the strengths of the relationships between gender and age.

New luxury is significantly different from traditional luxury. Analyses regarding age group, gender and attitude can provide unique understanding related to new luxury trends, especially in a price sensitive and emerging market like India. This would help managers in segmenting the market based on consumer demographics, and devise strategies based on their characteristics to influence their attitudes and other behavioural patterns.

The paper investigates the successful establishment of a strong corporate brand with a particular emphasis on analysing the corporate branding literature’s assumptions about coherency. Successful corporate branding is claimed to imply a shared set of coherent statements about the company’s values towards its external and internal stakeholders over time. An empirical test is applied to the coherency assumption. First, the coherency of a corporate brand over time is investigated as it develops in the media. Secondly, the coherency between two stakeholders’ perceptions of the corporate brand, organisational members and the media is investigated. This research suggests there are three distinct types of coherencies in corporate branding strategies over time: statement coherency, interpretation coherency and uniqueness coherency. On the one hand, a strong corporate brand is characterised by tight coherency, as top management’s statements about values remain the same over time and towards different stakeholders, ie statement coherency. On the other hand, a strong corporate brand is simultaneously characterised by a loose, or even absent, coherency between stakeholders’ interpretations of top management’s statements as well as a lack of coherency in stakeholders’ interpretations of the corporate brand over time, ie interpretation coherency. Finally, a third coherency phenomenon is observed, ie stakeholders’ emphasis on changing topics over time, which they relate to the corporate brand. Stakeholders agree that these themes are unique features and hence the company is considered unique, ie the uniqueness coherency. The implications of multiple interpretations are discussed as well as changing interpretations in corporate branding. It is argued that statement coherency is a necessary element in successful corporate branding, and the viability of the ambition to develop interpretation coherency over time and across stakeholders in corporate branding is discussed from the point of view of allowing room for interpretation incoherency. Finally, the question of maintaining uniqueness coherency is discussed: for how long can a company represent “newness” in the eyes of its stakeholders – including itself? Implications for management are discussed.

Different from general goods, games are intangible. Games of limited-amount version are much more expensive. However, the value of games cannot be actually validated, while buyers purchase the intangible goods. This study, therefore, aims to empirically clarify the impact of product scarcity and uniqueness in buyers' purchase of games of limited-amount version.

Based on literature review, the survey method was conducted. Data of 204 respondents who recently bought games of limited-amount version were gathered and analyzed with partial least square.

The results showed that perceived quality and perceived uniqueness, significantly increased by product scarcity, was shown of significant positive impact on perceived value which significantly enhanced purchase intention.

The results indicated the importance of high quality and the reflection of uniqueness in buyers' purchase of games of limited-amount version. The results also validated the effect of scarcity on intangible goods. Practically, the results facilitated strategic operation and marketing of game producers and suppliers in designing and marketing game software. The results also facilitated further theoretical development of goods scarcity.

Nowadays, product scarcity has been an important operation and marketing strategy to enterprises. Games are an industry of growing importance. However, the impact of scarcity in buyers' purchase of games of limited-amount version was still limited. The results validated the importance of scarcity and perceived uniqueness in intangible game goods purchase behavior. The validation of this study can provide references for strategic operation and marketing of the game industry.

This study aims to investigate the impacts of service category (utilitarian vs hedonic) on chosen degree of uniqueness (CDOU) and consumers' willingness to pay more (WTPM), as well as the moderating roles of consumers' narcissism trait (high vs low) and processing mode (rational vs experiential) on the relationship between service category and CDOU.

This study conducts one online experiment-questionnaire study and one between-subject lab experiment to test the hypotheses.

This study finds that consumers are more likely to choose unique choices in hedonic service customization. Consumers' CDOU has a positive effect on their attitudes toward WTPM. In addition, consumers' processing mode moderates the relationship between service category and CDOU.

The findings provide new insights into better understanding the factors affecting the choice of service customization and have significant practical implications. First, consumers' different desire for uniqueness of different service should not be neglected when examining the values of service customization. Second, high-level CDOU is quite prevalent for hedonic (vs utilitarian) service customization, especially for consumers with experiential processing mode.

While previous studies state “need for uniqueness” as a key characteristic of product customization in general, we extend it to intangible service customization and connect it with consumers' WTPM. In addition, the moderating role of individual trait and decision-making processing mode is also checked. Thus, the findings refine the existing understanding of the relationship between uniqueness and service customization.

This study aims to investigate the role of middle-class consumers’ need for uniqueness (CNFU), consumer susceptibility to interpersonal influence (CSII), inspiration and behavioral intentions toward masstige products. Specifically, this study examines the differential effects of CNFU dimensions, the underlying mechanism of consumer inspiration and the moderating role of CSII in the purchase intentions toward masstige products.

Two studies were carried out to test the proposed relationships. Study 1 examines the differential effect of CNFU dimensions and the mediating role of consumer inspiration for data collected from Tier 1 cities in India. Study 2 replicated Study 1 findings for the jewelry masstige products and tested the moderating role of CSII for data collected from Tier 2 cities. Structural equation modeling was used to test the proposed hypotheses.

The study findings confirm the differential effects of CNFU dimensions on inspiration and its mediating role in masstige products’ purchase intentions. Furthermore, the study found that CSII moderates the effect of CNFU dimensions on inspiration toward masstige (jewelry) purchase intentions. Status does not determine masstige purchase intention.

The present study was carried out in the emerging market of India. Future studies should replicate the study findings in other emerging markets.

The study findings have important implications for marketers of masstige brands in developing effective marketing strategies in the emerging markets.

The study is among the few studies to investigate the differential role of CNFU dimensions and inspiration for masstige brands in an emerging market context.