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Consumers often use various cues such as health stars and nutrition claims on product packaging to draw inferences regarding healthfulness. However, much less is known regarding the role of brand names in consumer decisions around healthfulness. The purpose of this study is to introduce angelic branding as a brand naming strategy that may act as a supernatural agent benevolence (i.e. loving, kind and merciful) prime that leads consumers to perceive that the brand’s products are healthful.

Study 1 examines the effect of angelic brand names on brand healthfulness perceptions. Study 2 investigates the mediating role of brand virtuousness perceptions on the relationship between angelic branding and brand healthfulness perceptions and the downstream consequences on purchase intention. Study 3 explores the moderating role of authoritarian supernatural agent belief (i.e. angry, vindictive and punishing) on the relationship between angelic branding and brand virtuousness perceptions, and subsequent brand healthfulness perceptions and purchase intention.

The results of this study demonstrate that angelic branding results in healthfulness perceptions for a healthy product (i.e. vitamins; Study 1a), an unhealthy product (i.e. cookies; Study 1b; eliminating perceptual fluency as a potential alternative explanation for the phenomenon) and across different product categories (i.e. surface spray; Study 1c). The results from Study 2 find that angelic brand names prime brand healthfulness perceptions because of the activation of brand virtuousness perceptions (not brand quality perceptions; eliminating a general halo effect as a potential alternative explanation for the phenomenon). The results of Study 3 show that strong belief in authoritarian supernatural agents attenuates the angelic brand name–brand healthfulness priming effect.

This research is limited, as it only considers angelic brand naming and not any other benevolence cues in brand logos, such as halos and angel wings. This research is also limited in that it only considers healthfulness perceptions drawn from English angelic brand name cues and from participants within the USA and the UK.

This study has important implications for brand managers in the development of new brand names. Angelic brand naming is suggested as a strategy for brand managers to prime perceptions of brand virtuousness and brand healthfulness and to influence consumer behavior. However, brand managers are cautioned against the use of this brand naming strategy if it is intended to mislead or deceive consumers, resulting in detrimental effects on their health.

This research makes a unique and novel contribution to the literature in brand names on consumer decision-making. Angelic branding is introduced as a brand naming strategy that can act as a supernatural agent religious prime to influence perceptions of brand virtuousness, brand healthfulness and consumer behavioral intentions (i.e. purchase intention).

To protect information and communication technology (ICT) infrastructure and resources against poor cyber hygiene behaviours, organisations commonly require internal users to confirm they will abide by an ICT Code of Conduct. Before commencing enrolment, university students sign ICT policies, however, individuals can ignore or act contrary to these policies. This study aims to evaluate whether students can apply ICT Codes of Conduct and explores viable approaches for ensuring that students understand how to act ethically and in accordance with such codes.

The authors designed a between-subjects experiment involving 260 students’ responses to five scenario-pairs that involve breach/non-breach of a university’s ICT policy following a priming intervention to heighten awareness of ICT policy or relevant ethical principles, with a control group receiving no priming.

This study found a significant difference in students’ responses to the breach versus non-breach cases, indicating their ability to apply the ICT Code of Conduct. Qualitative comments revealed the priming materials influenced their reasoning.

The authors’ priming interventions were inadequate for improving breach recognition compared to the control group. More nuanced and targeted priming interventions are suggested for future studies.

Appropriate application of ICT Code of Conduct can be measured by collecting student/employee responses to breach/non-breach scenario pairs based on the Code and embedded with ethical principles.

Shared awareness and protection of ICT resources.

Compliance with ICT Codes of Conduct by students is under-investigated. This study shows that code-based scenarios can measure understanding and suggest that targeted priming might offer a non-resource intensive training approach.

This paper aims to study the unexplored possibility that priming firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) activity in consumers’ minds may impact consumers’ preference for non-firm related consumption and lifestyle choice options with intertemporal trade-offs.

Across four experimental studies, the authors looked at the impact of CSR priming on the preference of participants for later larger versus sooner smaller money (Study 1), saving versus spending (Study 2) and healthy versus unhealthy food choices (Studies 3 and 4). These choice options were not related to the focal firm that practiced CSR. The authors measured the changes in participants’ consideration of future consequences (CFC) as a potential mediator for the results.

The participants in the CSR condition showed a higher CFC and a higher preference for the options with long-term benefits and immediate costs over the ones with long-term costs and immediate benefits, i.e. later larger over sooner smaller money, saving over spending and healthy over unhealthy food. The authors documented a mediation role for CFC.

All the participants in the studies were from the USA. Looking at the cultural differences can enrich the understanding of the impact of CSR on preference for the options with intertemporal trade-offs. Furthermore, this paper builds its theoretical justification based on the assumption of individuals’ acceptance of CSR activities. Nevertheless, consumers may have skepticism about these activities. Future studies may investigate the effect of CSR skepticism of individuals on the proposed effects. Additionally, investigating the moderating roles of individuals’ characteristics like their prosocial concern or their knowledge about choice options might be an avenue for future research.

The findings highlight the benefits of CSR priming on consumers’ welfare and normative behavior. Firms may use the findings to understand and manage the impact of other firms’ CSR communications on the evaluation of their own products.

This research is the first to highlight the impact of CSR priming on consumers’ non-firm-related consumption and lifestyle choices with intertemporal trade-offs. The results showed the positive effect of priming firms’ CSR activities on consumers’ CFC and the mediating role of CFC.

This study seeks to examine how consumers perceive the visually primed disclosure in a pharmaceutical company's advertisement and form their attitudes toward the disclosure, perceived corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices and attitudes toward the pharmaceutical company.

An online study with a convenient sampling consisting of college students is used to manipulate the visual communication of a pharmaceutical company's advertising disclosure for the purpose of examining the effects of visually primed advertising disclosure on attitude toward the disclosure, perceived CSR practices, and attitude toward the pharmaceutical company.

The results reveal that a visually primed disclosure affects consumers' attitudes toward the disclosure positively. Visual priming also enhances consumers' perceived CSR practices and attitudes toward the company. This is evident as the impact of attitude toward the disclosure on attitude toward the company is mediated by perceived CSR practices.

Pharmaceutical companies should improve their advertising disclosure practices by enhancing visual communications of their advertising disclosures. Since a mediating relationship between attitude toward the disclosure and attitude toward the pharmaceutical company is materialized by perceived CSR practices, visually primed advertising disclosures perceived as socially responsible practices can facilitate advertising effectiveness and enhance consumers' attitudes toward the pharmaceutical company.

This paper adds value to the existing literature on pharmaceutical marketing and CSR practices, and promotes the effective management of advertising disclosures by reinforcing their communications through visual priming.

Cross-cultural research based on the means-end chain (MEC) theory tends to overestimate the stability of the dominant chains of a cultural group; at the same time, it pays insufficient attention to the influence of the context on an individual’s cultural anchorage. This study aims to adopt the dynamic constructivist approach to culture to show that, for the same product, differences in MEC for consumers from different cultures can be voluntarily reduced under certain conditions and to a certain extent.

The authors adopted an inter-subject experimental design: two cultures (French vs Korean) × three self-construal primings (independent vs interdependent vs control). Participants in the experimental group were randomly assigned to one of the three priming conditions. The no-priming control group made it possible to verify the effect of priming by measuring the difference in responses with respect to the two experimental groups.

The results highlight the effect of self-construal priming that contradicts the culture of origin. Cross-cultural independence and interdependence priming foster convergence between dominant chains of French and Korean participants by considerably reducing the cultural differences that are observed when there is no priming. It appears that a consumer’s cultural anchoring can be shaped by priming a specific dimension of self-construal, which, in turn, illustrates that cultural influence is a discontinuous process.

It is the first attempt to study variation in the dominant chains of a cultural group, rather than adopting the preconceived notion of their permanence or stability in different contexts. The methodological contribution is characterized by the combination of a method to record chains and a priming method applied in different cultural environments.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of priming on people’s risk perceptions and safety decisions in a virtual construction simulator.

Civil engineering students were recruited to interact with a virtual reality (VR) safety simulator. They were divided into four groups covering with and without sound and with and without priming factors. Data were collected on the risks that they perceived and the safety levels of their actions.

It was found that obvious stimuli in a virtual environment with sound help people to recognise more hazards near the location of the stimuli. Sound is helpful in training simulations to create high levels of presence. However, priming factors are not suitable to be added to VR simulators for training purposes. Priming of safe choice results in people taking fewer risks in the VR simulator, but this does not carry over into other situations. Compared to priming effects, being “injured” in a training simulator with sound improves trainees’ ability to make safe decisions.

VR simulation is helpful in construction training because of its unique ability to give trainees exposure to dangerous situations without physical risk. However, the overloading the working memory of users is detrimental to the outcomes. Therefore, the optimum level of complexity in VR simulators should be further studied.

The current study aims to examine couples' conjoint negotiation with a third party, testing the effects of asymmetrical contextual ambiguity, gender stereotypes' priming and egalitarianism. It predicted differences in the processes of decision making between egalitarian and traditional couples, reflected in choices of female or male negotiator.

Egalitarianism levels were measured by the Altrocchi and Crosby Marriage Questionnaire. The asymmetrical contextual ambiguity was manipulated through two newly constructed negotiation cases – one feminine‐stereotyped and the other masculine‐stereotyped, based on Miles and LaSalle. Priming of gender stereotypes was manipulated using two passages inducing explicit or implicit priming, based on Kray, Galinsky and Thompson. Primary statistical analysis was χ² test for equal proportions.

The hypotheses were by and large supported: as expected in all four experimental conditions, traditional couples chose men as their negotiator. By contrast, egalitarian couples tended to nominate their negotiator depending on the situation (feminine, masculine, and under implicit priming). In addition, under explicit priming their selection was in the predicted direction but not significant.

This study provides insights with respect to effective ways to conduct conjoint negotiations. In addition, it indicates the need to enhance women's negotiation self‐efficacy, so that they can become more active in negotiation processes.

The current study explored real‐life couples' conjoint negotiation with a third party, rather than examining couples' internal negotiation processes or individuals' dyadic negotiation, which prevailed in extant research. Future research should adopt the focus on genuine couples' conjoint negotiation, employed in this study.

Phishing attacks are the most common cyber threats targeted at users. Digital nudging in the form of framing and priming may reduce user susceptibility to phishing. This research focuses on two types of digital nudging, framing and priming, and examines the impact of framing and priming on users' behavior (i.e. action) in a cybersecurity setting. It draws on prospect theory, instance-based learning theory and dual-process theory to generate the research hypotheses.

A 3 × 2 experimental study was carried out to test the hypotheses. The experiment consisted of three levels for framing (i.e. no framing, negative framing and positive framing) and two levels for priming (i.e. with and without priming).

The findings suggest that priming users to information security risks reduces their risk-taking behavior, whereas positive and negative framing of information security messages regarding potential consequences of the available choices do not change users' behavior. The results also indicate that risk-averse cybersecurity behavior is associated with greater confidence with the action, greater perceived severity of cybersecurity risks, lower perceived susceptibility to cybersecurity risks resulting from the action and lower trust in the download link.

This research shows that digital nudging in the form of priming is an effective way to reduce users' exposure to cybersecurity risks.

Consumers seldom consider end-use consumption (reuse or upcycling) when products reach the end of their lifecycle. This study shows that end-use consumption can be encouraged if individuals are primed to think creatively, engage in end-use ideation (imagine end-use) and become inspired by more original ideas.

Three studies were carried out. Study 1 tested if creativity priming resulted in more effective end-use ideation (greater number of ideas and more original ideas) compared to environmental appeals and no intervention. Study 2 tested the effectiveness of creativity priming in a longitudinal setting. Study 3 demonstrated how creativity priming and end-use ideation could be practically executed using product packaging.

Creativity priming represents an effective intervention to stimulate end-use consumption with particularly positive results amongst less creative consumers. However, it was not the number of generated ideas, but their originality during end-use ideation that triggered inspiration.

This study demonstrates which interventions are more effective in changing consumer behaviour in favour of more sustainable practices.

Increasing environmental degradation requires consumers to change their behaviour by re-consuming products. This study shows that consumers can adopt end-use if they are primed to think creatively, imagine end-use consumption and generate more original ideas.

Creative thinking has been leveraged at product development stages, but not at the end of products’ lifecycle. This study integrated creativity priming, consumer imagination and inspiration theories to explain the underlying mechanism behind end-use consumption to scale up its adoption by consumers.

This study examines the effect of a regulatory-focused prime (i.e. a brochure with a picture and message) on the recommending behavior of investment advisers in the context of an investment decision.

Three experiments were conducted with 468 participants, mostly from the financial services industry. Study 1 examined the direct effect of a regulatory-focused prime on an investment adviser's recommending behavior, whereas Study 2 examined the moderating role of regulatory fit on such behavior. Study 3 validated the findings.

The results provide evidence that a message using visual and textual cues based on a promotion and prevention regulatory focus may trigger a preference in an investment adviser's product recommendation. A promotion (prevention)-focused framed message will trigger the recommendation of an investment plan with a higher but riskier (safe and stable) potential return. However, when the same prime is presented with details of a performance incentive scheme, the effect of the prime is reduced when there is a regulatory nonfit between the prime and the message relating to the performance incentive scheme.

The findings highlight the importance of understanding how regulatory-focused stimuli may subconsciously influence the recommendation of investment advisers as heuristics used in decision-making, thereby influencing their clients' investment decisions.

Past studies have focused on how regulatory-focused visual and message cues influence consumer decision-making. This study provides empirical evidence regarding the influence of regulatory-focused prime on an investment adviser's behavior when providing investment advice.