With the increasing popularity and attention towards virtual stores, the present study examines how consumers' perception of spatial and human crowdedness affects consumers' behavioral and attitudinal intention to shop at the virtual store through positive emotional arousals. Using two between-subject experiments (crowdedness: low spatial x high; low human x high), 171 participants were randomly assigned to each condition. The results demonstrated highly crowded virtual space with more merchandise creates a consumer’s positive emotional arousal, which leads to a positive attitude and satisfaction. Further, consumers perceive positive social crowdedness (i.e., when other shoppers are present) develops excitement among consumers who may entice positive attitude and satisfaction. Findings suggest that retailers should develop stimulating virtual stores.

The present study is designed to assess the ethical-moral effectiveness of three levels of AI implementations in the hospitality industry, which include mechanical AI for transactional services (automated service), thinking AI for functional services (algorithms search), and feeling AI for hedonic services (biometric sensors) when compared to consumers’ interactions with human. AI service robots are ethically challenging in use and morally controversial in its acceptance of labor replacement in hospitality contexts. In the hospitality industry, service robots have been rapidly adopted replacing frontline human services (Park et al., 2021). Service robots refer to “system-based autonomous and adaptable interfaces that interact, communicate and deliver service to an organization’s customers” (Wirtz et al., 2018, p.909). On the one hand, the applications of artificial intelligence (AI)-based service robots are promising in this field owing to remarkable accuracy in error reduction, portion control, and cost control in service operation and delivery (Berezina et al., 2019). However, on the other hand, there has been a debate on ethical and moral principles and values regarding service robots replacing human labor (Cowls et al., 2021). Nevertheless, restaurants’ adoption of service robots seems inevitable in the current marketplace as labor shortages and rising wages have challenged them to invest in automation (Tanzi, 2021). While prior research focused on the benefits of AI-based service offerings (e.g., Cristou et al., 2023; Huang & Rust, 2021; Park et al., 2021), this study explored the extent to which AI-based service robots are accepted by consumers without rising concern about service robots replacing human labors. To this end, we adopted Huang and Rust’s framework that identifies three levels of AI applications: mechanical, thinking, and feeling AIs. Mechanical AIs refer to the automation of repetitive and routine tasks (e.g., self-service technologies); thinking AIs facilitate rational decision-making based on data processing (e.g., conversational intelligent systems such as Siri); feeling AIs are able to interact with human emotions (e.g., humanlike robots that respond to human emotions such as Sophia). Further, we adopted the construal level theory (Trope & Liberman, 2003) to examine how different levels of AIs’ service capabilities influence the way that people think about AI-based service robots. In brief, this study demonstrated how different levels of AI benefits influence consumers’ moral concerns about AI-based service robotization’s replacement of human labor and social acceptance.

This study aims to assess the effectiveness of backstage storytelling in luxury brands’ social media communication and examine a psychological mechanism that elucidates how luxury brands’ backstage storytelling influences consumers’ attitudinal and relational outcomes. The theory of narrative transportation (Escalas, 2004) was employed as a theoretical lens. Focusing on the effects of visual storytelling in a social media platform, this study proposed that photos of a luxury brand’s backstage images offer a greater level of narrativity than staged images of products and models. Additionally, this study proposed VIP emotions and perceived intimacy as mediators between transportation to photo narrative and attitudes toward the brand, brand evaluation and self-brand connection. In addition, the effectiveness of social media for luxury brands’ visual storytelling was tested by testing the role of telepresence in viewers’ information processing. This study selects Instagram, a visual-oriented social media platform, as the study context; Chanel, a luxury fashion brand, was selected to develop the study stimuli. Two Instagram accounts for Chanel were created as study stimuli through a pre-test: one account with frontstage brand photos and one account with backstage brand photos. Students from two universities in the Southeast and Midwest were recruited and randomly assigned to one of the two experimental conditions, frontstage (n=118) or backstage (n=134) Chanel Instagram account. Manipulation checks confirmed that respondents perceived the experimental conditions as intended. Our results revealed that viewers in the backstage condition experienced higher levels of transportation than those in the frontstage condition; VIP emotions and perceived intimacy mediate the relationship between transportation and attitudes towards a brand’s Instagram, brand evaluations, and self-brand connection. Additionally, ANCOVA results confirmed the interaction effects of telepresence on transportation is significant only in the backstage condition. Findings from this study shed light on the effectiveness of luxury fashion brands’ visual storytelling in social media communication.