This paper aims to examine the effect of live streaming, recently adopted by online clothing sellers to help sell clothes on the Facebook. Drawing on the literature in retailing, adoption behavior, and e-commerce, this paper proposes the framework to test the effect on customers’ perceived values, trust, and engagement intention. When shopping online, consumers are generally concerned with legitimacy of the vendor and authenticity of products or services (Chen and Dhillon 2002). Live streaming allows shoppers to view the seller’s face and expressions, background (e.g. clothes, furniture), as well as offered products that are not pre-recorded or edited prior to being presented in the online store. Due to the spontaneous, interactive nature of live streaming, viewers ask questions and receive answers from the page in almost real time (Wang et al. 2000), and the seller can use the feedback to respond to the need of customers better. Live streaming is expected to positively affect on customer’s perceived utilitarian value (authenticity, responsiveness). By merely viewing the seller showing, wearing, or putting different clothes on a mannequin can be fun and enjoyable like viewing the fashion show. Live streaming is expected to positively affect on customer’s perceived hedonic value (enjoyment). The act of shopping can also provide a symbolic benefit, as customers express their personal values, identity, self through the shopping experience (Chandon et al., 2000). Given that live streaming is not prevalent and used by general users, customers who participate in the live streaming may be perceived that they are innovative. Live streaming by possibly affecting customer hedonic, utilitarian, and symbolic value would be likely to positively affect trust and engagement intention. Trust can refer to the extent to which customers believe the web site is legal, ethical and credible and can protect their privacy(Wan, 2000). Trust can lead to positive feelings towards the online seller, and in turn can increase intention to revisit and purchase from the site (Chiu et al. 2009). Engaged people are generally those visiting the site frequently, spend substantial time on the site, and have many page views (Calder, Malthouse, and Schaedel 2009). The relationship of live streaming, and perceived values (customer hedonic, utilitarian, and symbolic value), trust, and engagement intention will be tested by conducting the survey with about 400 online shoppers. The data will be analyzed using the structural equation modeling. Results are expected to provide implications for the use of live streaming for online shopping. The study aims to examine the process underlying the effects of livestreaming on consumer trust and engagement. Livestreaming has potentials to bridge the gap between traditional and online shopping, allowing sellers and shoppers distant in space to interact and smoothening the online shopping experiences.

Despite the positive outcomes of brand-consumer interactions on social media documented in the literature, an important question still remains: Are active brand-consumer interactions always beneficial to luxury fashion brands? This study argues that such interactions may undermine the core perceptions of the brands by making consumers feel too close to the brands. Drawing upon construal level theory of psychological distance, the purpose of this study is to examine the negative effects of brand-consumer interactions on perceptions of luxury fashion brands (i.e., social perception, uniqueness perception, quality perception) in a social media context. Two experimental studies were conducted. The purpose of Study 1 was to test the hypothesis that luxury brands, compared to mainstream brands, will be perceived as more psychologically distant and abstract. Study 1 used a 2 (brand category: luxury vs. mainstream) x 2 (brand replicates) mixed-model design in which the brand category was a between-subject factor and the brand replicates were a within-subject factor. Fifty-nine subjects recruited from Amazon MTurk participated in the study. The results of Study 1 revealed that luxury brands are inherently psychologically distant than mainstream brands. The purpose of Study 2 was to test the impact of brand-consumer interactions (i.e., high vs. low) and the mediating role of psychological distance on the three perceptions of luxury brands (i.e., social perception, uniqueness perception, quality perception) on social media. A single factor between-subjects design was used, and a total of 74 participants were recruited from Amazon MTurk. To manipulate the level of consumer-brand interaction (high vs. low), two versions of a luxury brand’s mock Facebook pages were created. For the high interaction condition, the brand responded to consumers’ posts in a friendly way and displayed the images of user photos. For the low interaction condition, the brand did not respond to consumers’ posts and displayed no images of users. As predicted, the results showed that participants indicated lower brand perceptions when the brand’s social media page displayed a high level of interactions than a low level of interactions. Moreover, formality, a measure of psychological distance, partially mediated the relationship between brand-consumer interactions and all the three brand perceptions. The findings of this study provide empirical evidence that active consumer-brand interactions on social media do not necessarily benefit luxury fashion brands, rather they can damage consumer perceptions of the brands. This study provides important implications that luxury fashion brands should maintain a sacred distance on social media; otherwise it will undermine important perceptions of the brands such as status signaling, exclusivity, and quality.

Recent research has pointed out the emergence of new online actors, especially in the domain of fashion and lifestyle—“social media influencers” or SMIs (Etter, Colleoni, Illia, Meggiorin, & D’Eugenio, forthcoming). SMIs are defined as “people who possess greater than average potential to influence others due to such attributes as frequency of communication, personal persuasiveness or size of—and centrality to—a social network.” As SMIs become professionals, with a mass audience of followers, they gain competence in generating sophisticated content such as creation of stories, videos, visuals, etc. (McQuarrie, Miller, & Phillips, 2013). As such, SMIs are tempted to leverage their online influence to partner with brands. One of the reasons brands collaborate with SMIs is that they are considered trustworthy and “one of the few forms of real, authentic communication” (Scott, 2015, p. 295). Authenticity is recognized in the marketing literature as an important attribute, as consumers increasingly desire authenticity in their products and brands (Chronis & Hampton, 2008). A notion of authenticity which has been gaining acceptance revolves around whether an individual or brand expresses their true self (Moulard, Raggio, & Folse, 2016). Holt (2002, p. 83) notes, “To be authentic, brands must be disinterested; they must be perceived as invented and disseminated by parties without an instrumental economic agenda, by people who are intrinsically motivated by their inherent value”. However, collaborating with brands may question SMIs authenticity as their inner desires to focus on products they are passionate about are challenged by commercial opportunities to showcase brands that they would not ordinary like. Their credibility might be questioned as the persuasive effect of their messages is often attributed to their perceived noncommercial nature as compared to branded advertisements. Despite growing research on influencers and acknowledged pressure of pursuing financial gains (Abidin & Ots, 2015), past research has overlooked the challenges to remain authentic when collaborating with brands. As such, our research focuses on the question: what are the strategies of SMIs to maintain authenticity while they are under commercial pressure? To answer it, we conducted a research in the context of fashion, beauty and lifestyle, as it is one of the most successful and visible domains of digital production. We analyze posts from 49 influencers participating in 9 brand campaigns that employed multiple SMIs simultaneously. These observations are complemented with 27 interviews with SMIs to understand “behind the scene” goals pursued to project this authenticity. Results suggest that SMIs implement two potentially complementary strategies expressing authenticity under commercial pressure: 1) passionate authenticity, which refers to one’s expressing of his/her inner self and being passionate even when involved in a collaboration, and 2) informational authenticity, which refers to being consistent with the facts and not lying about the partnership, the influencer or the products promoted. From a theoretical standpoint, the notion of passionate authenticity has been established in the previous literature (Moulard, et al., 2016), but we identify a new form of authenticity that we name informational authenticity. It thus extends the literature and builds on previous research to reframe the concept of authenticity (Grayson & Martinec, 2004; Morhart, Malär, Guevremont, Girardin, & Grohmann, 2015; Napoli, Dickinson, Beverland, & Farrelly, 2014). From a managerial standpoint, our findings should help SMIs manage their authenticity under threat as it suggest that they can either use Passion or Information. SMIs should be cautious to report the reality of the partnership and the product in their WOMM contents. Similarly, they should keep producing noncommercial messages about brands they are really passionate about. In the same vein, managers should be attentive to let SMIs select products in order to increase enthusiasm for the brand and minimize constraints to give room for personalized communication aligned with SMI’s style and opinions.

The research shopping involves making use of multiple channels for a single shopping incident, such as searching from one channel and buying from another (Neslin et al. 2006, Neslin and Shankar 2009, Verhoef, Neslin and Vroomen 2007). This is an opportunistic behavior on the side of the consumers, and may result in an unfair advantage of the retailers in one channel consumers choose to purchase from. For instance, consumers may browse a product in a brick-and-mortar store, making use of the retail space and sales assistance, and proceed to buy online from another retailer which offers lower price. This is called a “showrooming” behavior (when focusing on the consumer), or channel-free riding (when focusing on the business) (Mehra, Kumar, & Raju 2013, Van Baal & Dach 2005). Offline retailers are wary of this phenomena that may lead to higher costs and lower sales, and attempt to discourage it (Rapp et al. 2015). For instance, Borders and Circuit City, the former US national chains with a substantial offline market presence, went out of business presumably due to the showrooming phenomenon (Gustin, 2012; Passariello, Kapner, & Mesco 2014). However, recent studies show that research shopping across multiple channels within one company can be managed and contributes to firm profitability in the long run (Verhoef, Kannan, & Inman 2015, Zheng et al. 2016). Kumar & Venkatesan (2005) reveal that consumers who uses multiple channels are the ones with greater customer lifetime value and with less churn intention (Blattenberg, Malthouse, & Neslin 2009, Stone, Hobbs, & Khaleeli 2002). Neslin & Shankar (2009) suggest a practical discussion on market strategy in which customers who visited offline stores can be encouraged to repeat-purchase or to foster brand involvement by maintaining contact in another channel (e.g., email newsletter). It is particularly desirable to lure online consumers to an offline site, since they tend to make greater amount of purchases in a brick-and-mortar store (Ansari, Mela, & Neslin 2008). In the age of effortless access to and switching among a plethora of channels by consumers, it is critical for a business to understand and make best of the situation. In this regard, understanding consumers in terms of who are more likely to display research shopping tendency is crucial. Depending on whether a person tends to do research shopping, business should suggest and offer different channels for different purposes (Verhoef, Kannan, & Inman 2015, Zheng et al. 2016). For instance, those with high tendency to research shop can be approached in one channel, and nudged to another for purchasing. Those with low tendency should be directed to the final purchasing channel. With this in mind, we aim to investigate research shopping behaviors and individual covariates of these shoppers using individual-level responses. We conducted an online survey in France during September 2014 in cooperation with an anonymous global marketing research firm. The survey focused mainly on exploring customers’ shopping behavior in the apparel industry, as customers’ research shopping behaviors are salient in this industry because of its experiential attributes (Girard, Silverblatt, & Korgaonkar, 2002; Klein, 1998), while traditional patterns of purchasing using only one channel is also prevalent. After a discussion with the research firm about the French apparel industry and main customers’ demographics, we restricted the respondent pool to those between the ages of 25 and 54 who have abundant experience and an active role in apparel shopping. Responses from a total of 400 participants were used in the analyses. The dataset includes individual-level shopping characteristics, demographic information, and the extent of their research shopping behavior. Specifically, each customer was asked about their apparel shopping history (purchase frequency and expenditures on apparel) over the last three months for both offline and online retailers. In addition, demographic information such as gender, age, and educational background were asked. Using multiple questions, we captured shopper’s shopping traits, such as deal-proneness, quality-consciousness, and the degree of their shopping budget flexibility. To explore the individual characteristics of research shoppers, we modeled the probability of being a research shopper using a logistic regression model. From our modeling results, we suggest two notable findings. First, customers’ qualityconsciousness significantly increases their research shopping behavior, while their deal-proneness exerts little to no influence. We conclude this is due to extensive and systematic search tendency shared by quality-conscious customers, based on previous findings in the literature. That is, quality-consciousness induces customers to search carefully across multiple channels to check on multiple quality dimensions of the options at hand, and possibly discover other similar options that may maximize their satisfaction (Lysonski, Durvasula, & Zotos 1996, Sprotles & Kendall 1986, Wesley, LeHew, & Woodside 2006). However, deal-proneness is not associated with research shopping behavior presumably because the one dimension that these customers value (i.e., price) can be easily searched in one channel—the online channel. The literature supports this finding, since studies show that deal-prone customers tend to shop more online (Close & Kukar-Kinney 2010, Devaraj, Fan, & Kohli 2002, Zhou, Dai, & Zhang 2007). We also find that the association between quality-consciousness and research shopping behavior is more pronounced when the shoppers are flexible with their shopping budget. That is, when shoppers are both quality-conscious and willing and able to consider other options or additional items beside the one they have originally planned before shopping, their research shopping tendency is enhanced. We explain that this is because consumer behaviors and decisions are made upon limited resources (e.g., time, effort, and money), and that customers with flexible resources are more likely to extend and manage their choice set (Maity, Dass, & Malhotra 2014, Malhotra 1982). These consumers do not refrain from including options that are better yet more expensive, as they can afford the superior option that suits their tastes (Becker, 1965; Ghose & Han, 2011), and without the fear of creating regrets due to discovering unaffordable options (Lenton, Fasolo, & Todd 2008). We expect our work on research shopping to provide insights to both researchers and practitioners, as today’s multi-channel environment provides opportunities for businesses to manage their customers strategically over several channels they are present in. Therefore, the research is expected to be a useful reference for understanding multi-channel shoppers for the academics, and a valuable guide to retail firms that aim to not only cope with the multi-channel environment but to become a true omni-channel player.

Introduction This paper presents an exploratory investigation into the use of coopetition by fashion supply chains (FSCs) as a sustainable, risk-reduction strategy and enabler for competitive advantage. Bengtsson and Kock (2000) proposed coopetition as a state where two companies cooperate in some activities, such as a strategic alliance, while at the same time competing with each other in other activities. While coopetition is usually considered as a horizontal integration strategy (Hingly et al., 2011), it might also be used vertically in a supply chain and possibly including third-parties to alleviate issues of confidentiality (Dari, 2010). Such lose relationships and partnerships may also be undertaken between companies for joint product development, to share research and development (R&D) costs, to restore corporate image, to increase environmental responsiveness of suppliers, for differentiation, to reduce costs, to reduce supply chain waste, and to develop sustainable materials, alternative or substitutes (Caniato et al. 2012). In a dynamic business environment such as fashion the ability to integrate processes across the functional boundaries of a company is considered a key to competitive advantage (Sull and Turconi, 2008). It is also important for companies in FSCs to share a common goal and work in the same direction to achievement supply chain integration (Fernie and Grant 2015). De Brito et al. (2008) suggested that the best performing companies effectively manage internal and external relationships between functions and organizations through improved coordination and highlighted a need for partnering with supply chain partners and different stakeholders including working groups in the industry, relationships management, having highly skilled people, and resource sharing especially in transport equipment and warehousing and the use of coordination tools such as collaborative planning, forecasting and replenishment (CPFR). While such alliances build up relationships and partnerships for the betterment of all partners (Lacoste, 2014), many companies remain reluctant to share too much for fear of affecting their trade secrets or competitive advantage, and so maintain a corporate transactional mindset (Grant, 2005). Thus, there is a need to investigate whether FSC firms are aware of or using coopetition principles, and if not whether they have a propensity to do so. Research Design Our investigation was exploratory as it addresses the how and why questions consistent with criteria for qualitative research (Bryman and Bell, 2015). Our unit of analysis for conducting this study was seven UK FSC case companies (CCs). Our sample was selected based on criteria of having in the UK a manufacturing or sourcing base and a retail or wholesale presence and some major operations such as customer service, distribution and warehousing and a brief description of each CC is provided in Table 1 below (Yin, 2014). Data were collected via semi-structured interviews with 68 people across the seven CCs. These were supported further supported by a number of means, for example, visits to the manufacturing sites, head offices and other important operational places, navigating around the working environment, specifically the factory or shop floor and distribution centers, making observations and chatting to workers in the factory cafes, car parks and surrounding areas. Both within-case and cross-case analysis analyses were conducted and three themes emerged: capacity sharing, cooperation for risk reduction or a response to an adverse event, and information sharing to build relationships. We now discuss details pertaining to each theme in detail. Findings Capacity sharing: Time-based competition, demand volatility, increased disruptions and retailer pressures are some of the reasons that stimulated fashion companies and supply chains to share capacity. However, the case companies also believed high supply chain cost led fashion supply chains to benefit from each other’s resources and leave competition for the shop floor or better customer service. CC1 respondents mentioned that at a particular time they had to replace their ‘plasticisers’ and during this replacement process CC1 used competitor ‘plasticisers’ and hides. CC1, CC2 and CC4 respondents mentioned that their companies also gets help from its competitors in the international market to source skilled labor force in case of full capacity. They further mentioned the use of machines, sharing raw materials, technology, warehouse, containers, testing facilities and other facilities at competitors’ plants in different countries: “We can’t do everything on our own, especially on a global basis, so we talk to our colleagues and if they have those facilities we will ask their help; we will pay less and they will get what they have invested for” (CC1 supply chain manager). CC2, CC3, CC4 and CC6 respondents further mentioned that departments which were formerly perceived as competing each other are now sharing workforce according to demand. Respondents also suggested that problems of quotas, price fluctuations, raw material shortages, customs and distribution could be overcome by sharing materials and capacity with competitors: “If China goes over their export quotas we could be left with fibers stuck in China indefinitely until the quotas have re-balanced so in the interim its managed by sharing materials with competitors here in the UK or in our suppliers’ markets” (CC2 sourcing manager). CC2 and CC4 respondents also mentioned how in the past their companies managed to retain a cluster by offering people a business space in their premises. CC4 also offers apprenticeships to other manufacturers and suppliers, reflecting the company’s belief that the industry needs to pool resources. CC3 and CC5 respondents mentioned that sometimes their companies derives benefits of economies of scale in terms of raw materials and some sub-processes by sharing capacity with competitors: “We buy in bulk to get economies of scale, sometimes just to make sure we don’t run out of supply but there are quite a lot of businesses in our product category so we always have someone to share to get rid of dead money” (CC3 sourcing manager). CC5 and CC7 also mentioned that their companies also use supply chain partners’ facilities such as quality checks, storing products at their sites and arranging capacity for CC5 and CC7. Cooperation for risk reduction: Respondents from CC6 described many instances where coopetition emerged when supply risk or disruptions occurred. One disruption shut down trading but CC6 was able to resume trading in just two days, partly due to the help from its competitors, customers and outside service providers. Respondents mentioned that a high street retailer offered space in its warehouse, another sent its workforce to help evacuate materials and another sent containers, while a service provider converted all standard orders into next day delivery. Within CC6 itself, drivers were willing to work extra hours, even at the weekends and some other departments also sent their workforce to help the logistics and distribution functions, which were affected most by this incident. Respondents also mentioned the frequent use of containers, materials, suppliers, factories and vehicles of competitors and some facilities at main sources: “If they’ve got a container let’s say 60% and we have got the other 40%, we don’t want another whole container; we will join the retailer, historically, you wouldn’t even talk to them because they are competitors, you know, compete on shop front” (supply chain manager). Information sharing to build relationships: Increasing sustainability risks and motives for costs savings, resource development, to avoid legal penalties, to be pro-active and to develop supply chain knowledge drove the case companies to information sharing, building relationships even with competitors and with organizations outside the industry. Case companies shared many practices and processes where they demonstrated an increased move to share information and relationship building with competitors. Respondents from CC1, CC2, CC3, CC4 and CC6 mentioned their companies have established close relationships and constantly share information with companies that were perceived as biased towards the industry or competitors in the past, such as NGOs, companies on CSR, external companies for testing and auditing, working groups in the industry and material and service providers. Respondents mentioned that this has helped them to manage issues such as legislation, working standards, ethics, national and international regulations, country laws and law on chemical use, testing and auditing, to develop supply chain knowledge, to identify sustainability risks and to design their mitigation strategies. Respondents further mentioned that, over the years, their companies have increased information sharing and relationship building with competitors who helped the company with market analysis and to re-shape its business strategies: “I think information sharing with some of those forces, where it was once perceived as a threat is now considered essential, you will manage most of your risks beforehand” (CC2 project manager). CC3 and CC5 respondents maintained that fashion in general and fast fashion in particular requires having as many sources of information as possible, as this will help businesses to increase the number of options. This will further help their companies to explore alternatives and substitutes, ultimately minimizing risks such as dependency and improving customer service: “You need to talk to your partners, talk to your competitors, talk to those who have the slightest relevance to what you do; you need to be open minded; this will increase your options and then you can say yes, I can sustain, I can continue” (CC3 ethical compliance manager). CC2 and CC4 respondents mentioned building relationships with some European premium quality manufacturers who were perceived as competitors in the past. Respondents mentioned that the company is also trying to build strong relationships with small and medium companies of its type in the UK so that a common strategy can be developed for the government to help revive the UK textile and garment industry: “As an industry we’re joining together, whether we are joining together with our competitors or what could be perceived to be a competitor or not, it doesn’t really matter, the fact is we are joining together to pool our resources in terms of trying to attract new people into the industry and get some help from the government”(CC4 supply chain manager). However, CC5 respondents expressed concern about sharing trends or design related information to some competitors of its size but admitted that CC5 also gets help from its competitors: “He (supply chain manager) will pick up the phone and let them know which trend is in demand, which colour customers like; in the beginning I found it unusual but then I saw some of them coming to us and asking for some units to try” (CC5 design manager). CC6 respondents mentioned that a recent disruption has demonstrated how important it is to have relationships, even with competitors. Respondents reported that their service providers converted standard deliveries into next day just because they perceived CC6 as a family and it was good relationships with them that enabled CC6 to provide good customer service and maintain its image as a responsible online fashion retailer: “We had relationships with them so they were willing to go to the extra mile; we see them as a family organization although some might say competitors” (CC6 supply chain manager). Conclusions The literature asserted the need for coopetition in order to survive and compete in a demand driven and volatile market place however issues of maintaining confidentiality and competitive advantage may inhibit companies in FSCs from adopting coopetition principles. However, our study found that due to increased uncertainties, disruptions and risk the seven CCs we investigated have embraced coopetition in some way as a strategy mechanism to manage their supply chains. Thus, we conclude that coopetition appears to be a driver to stimulate organizational capacity sharing, risk reduction and information sharing to build relationships with multiple stakeholders even if they are competitors. However, we note that this study was exploratory and only investigated seven FSC companies in the UK and hence the findings may not be generalized across all companies. Further research should expand this line of enquiry to do so.

Overview Researchers have tried to identify the compability of sustainability and luxury fashion(Kapferer and Denizeau, 2014; Henings, Wiedmann, Klarmann and Behrens, 2013; Achabou and Dekhili, 2013; Joy, Sherry, Venkatesh, Wang and Chan, 2012). These studies have suggested that sustainability does not hold much relevance for luxury brands from the perspective of consumers who expect luxury brand offerings to be made from high quality products even if they come at a cost to the environment or the society in general. Davies, Lee and Ahonkhai (2012) investigated the importance of ethical consumption in luxury brand consumers, they observed that even though a consumer may have high ethical inclination while purchasing a commodity product but when buying luxury, they expect the highest quality and brand experience even if it comes a cost to the sustainability concerns. Achabou and Dekhili (2013) studied the consumer acceptance towards the usage of recycled materials in luxury fashion clothing and observed that despite the increasing environment conservation concern in society, consumers expect the brand to be of the highest quality standards and not recycled. Kapferer and Denizeau (2014) also observed that luxury buyers believe that there is no synchony between luxury and sustainability especially in the context of social and economic harmony aspect of sustainable development. Despite the consumer insentivity towards sustainability when it comes to luxury, brands like Stella McCartney and its parent company, the Kering group are increasingly emphasizing on being sustainable. Every year Kering’s brands, which also include Gucci, Alexander McQueen, Saint Laurent and, are measuring greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution, water pollution, water consumption, waste, and changes in ecosystem services associated with land use. It puts numbers against each of those areas in order to see the impact of its supply chain on the planet in monetary terms (Arthur, 2016). Now the question arises that when consumers are not much bothered by sustainability standards in luxury industry in general,as suggested by academic researches, then why are the luxury fashion brands emphasizing on being sustainable and marketing this idea in their advertisemnts and brand campaigns. The increasing inclination of luxury fashion brands for being considered as sustainable suggests that there is a strong consumer base for sustainable luxury as well which has not been studied so far. Although Janssen, Vanhamme and Leblanc (2016) have emphasized the need to understand customer evaluations of responsible luxury brand image and its impact on the customer attitudes towards luxury brands, they did not study the consumer characteristics which can influence the responsible luxury brand evaluations. This study attempts to identify the consumers for sustainabile luxury and profile them on the basis of their personality traits and demographics. This will be particularly helpful for luxury brands in understanding their customers better and accordingly align their marketing efforts with the expectations and personalities of their target consumers.

This study addresses how agency costs influence the sustainability of different types of corporate governance. The luxury fashion brand could spend large sums of money on maintenance of magnificent brand image, thereby increasing the agency cost. On the contrary, the brand may hold down wasteful spending to report a gaudily financial achievement. Agency costs are defined either to vertical costs arising from the relationship between stockholders and managers, or to horizontal costs associated with the potential conflicts between majority and minority stockholders. Agency costs are measured by the value of the principal component. The study conducted regression analysis of each agency cost index, luxury fashion brand dummy and a set of control variables. The findings show that the agency costs of the firms with luxury fashion brand exceed those of control group.

Not all celebrity endorsements have been successful on social media. However, our understanding of the effectiveness of luxury brand celebrity endorsement advertising are limited. On the basis of Self-Congruity Theory (Sirgy, 1985), Meaning-Transfer Model (McCracken, 1989), and Match-Up Hypothesis (Kamins, 1990; Kamins & Cupta, 1994), this study investigates whether three components of image congruity (i.e., brand-celebrity, brand-self, celebrity-self) would influence brand attitudes, ad attitudes, and self-brand connection, and subsequently, influence consumer engagement and purchase intentions. This study also tests the moderating role of consumer type (followers vs. unfollowers of the social media brand page) in these relationships. After conducting a series of pretests to select a focal brand and celebrities, responses from 219 US female adults were used to data analysis. The results of structural equation modeling showed that brand-celebrity congruity was positively related to ad attitudes and brand attitudes. Brand-self congruity was positively related to ad attitudes, brand attitudes, and self-brand connection. Self-celebrity congruity was positively related to ad attitudes and self-brand connection but was negatively related to brand attitudes. Ad attitudes were positively related to brand attitudes and engagement intentions but were not related to purchase intentions. Brand attitudes were positively related to engagement intentions and purchase intentions. Self-brand connection was positively related to engagement intentions, and engagement intentions were positively related to purchase intentions. Finally, the results of a multi-group analysis showed that for unfollowers (n=125), ad attitudes were positively related to engagement intentions but brand attitudes were not. On the contrary, for followers (n=94), brand attitudes were positively related to engagement intentions but ad attitudes were not. This study highlights that self-brand connection is the key to cultivating consumer engagement on social media, along with the consumer’s positive attitudes toward the celebrity endorsement ad and the brand per se. If luxury brands wish to interact with their followers and increase their engagement, they need to focus their efforts on improving brand attitudes and self-brand connection through their brand pages. Our findings suggest that celebrity endorsed advertising contributes to creating self-brand relationships (Dwivedi et al., 2016) but it should be considered as a long-term investment.

Despite an extensive literature in scarcity, limited studies have examined how scarcity appeal may deter consumers in obtaining luxury brands. This study aims to understand consumer perception towards luxury brands as underpinned by the theory of agonistic behaviour from biology literature. Introduction The luxury brand industry has long strived to achieve the perception of scarcity. Luxury brands are defined as the highest level of prestigious brands including physical and mostly intangible elements in which price and quality ratios are the highest in the market (Nueno & Quelch 1998; Vigneron & Johnson 1999). Only the wealthy are able to afford the products (Radon, 2012). Its exclusivity, rarity/scarcity, identity, perceived quality, and awareness have become the selling point of luxury brands (Pantzalis 1995; Phau & Prendergast 2000). As Smith (1776, 112) stated, “the merit of an object, which is in any degree either useful or beautiful, is greatly enhanced by its scarcity. . .”. According to literature, scarcity effect can only be created when the product is desirable yet achievable to be possessed by consumers (Verhallen 1982). It can be initiated due to low supply or high demand (Verhallen 1982, Verhallen and Robben 1994). Scarcity to high demand indicates that there is a high number of individuals who have purchased the products. This may appeal to the consumers who wish to assimilate themselves with others or called as followers (Worchel 1992; Amaldoss and Jain 2008). On the other hand, limited edition product is an example of scarcity due to low supply. In this situation, the firm intentionally limits the quantity of potential owners of the product (Gierl, Plantsch, and Schweidler 2008). Research has shown that low supply scarcity cue increases product desirability as it signals exclusivity to the owner and provides consumers with a unique image (Lynn 1989). As a result, low-supply scarcity is more appealing for leaders who wish to distinguish themselves from the group (Amaldoss and Jain 2008). Further, scarcity is often associated with perceived expensiveness (e.g. Lynn 1989; Wu and Hsing 2006). In other words, the scarcer the product, the more expensive and valuable the product is seen (Chen and Sun 2013; Gierl, Plantsch, and Schweidler 2008). This explains why numerous luxury brands companies create limited edition product at a higher price to increase the product appeal. However, in the recent years, interest in luxury goods is growing among mainstream consumers (So, 2015). The exclusivity of luxury brands starts to fade, and the circle of luxury brands owner has expanded significantly throughout the years (The Economist 2015; Yeoman & McMahon- Beattie 2014). Based on that rationale, one of the aims of this paper is to manage and improve the perception of scarcity in luxury brand industry by looking at the most basic concept of how consumers respond to scarcity. This study adopts a biology theory, specifically on animal behaviour to understand better how consumers react on scarcity. After decades of observing animal behaviour, ethologists found that there is a common pattern in the way animals respond to and compete for scarce resources (McGlone, 1986; Scott & Fredericson, 1951). Instead of fighting one another, animals tend to perform certain behaviours to scare the opponent without physically damaging the others. This behaviour is referred to as agonistic behaviour. Coined by Scott & Fredericson (1951), the term is defined as “the group of behavioural adjustments associated with fighting, which includes attack, escape, threat, and defence” (McGlone, 1986, 1130). It comprises several stages, namely threats, thought process, aggression, and submission. In the first stage, threat, the animals perform a species-specific behaviour, in term of vocalisations, facial expression, postures, and movements that signal the intention to be aggressive (McGlone, 1986). For example, when competing for food, monkeys create a threatening voice following with open-jawed and head bobbing. The threat is continued with the thought process where the animals examine the value of the resources and the internal and external factors influencing their decision. It is then led to two possible scenarios. In the first scenario, the opponent decides to withdraw the fight after being threatened, which is called as submissive behaviour. The second scenario happens when neither animal retreats. Therefore, they perform aggressive behaviours, and it stops when one party submits (submissive behaviour). Agonistic behaviour can be observed in human behaviour when competing for luxury brands. For example, when the Kanye West x Adidas Yeezy limited edition trainer shoes was released, it was sold out within 15 minutes (Tewari, 2015). Shortly after, the shoes were sold at $ 10,000 on Ebay, which originally priced for $200 a pair in a retail store (Tempesta, 2015). Similar to the agonistic behaviour in animals, although some choose to fight for the product, which means they perform the aggressive behaviour, there are those who prefer to be submissive. They opt to give up and purchase alternatives instead of pursuing the desired products. This phenomenon shows how consumers can be aggressive or submissive in competing for scarce products. Despite the similarities behaviour pattern between animals and consumers, limited research has identified the agonistic behaviour of consumers. There are research gaps within the scarcity literature. Firstly, limited studies have identified the effectiveness of different scarcity cues (supply-driven and demand-driven) in the context of luxury brands (e.g., Lynn, 1991; Worchel, Lee, & Adewole, 1975). Additionally, limited studies investigate the opposite effect of scarcity appeal (except Gierl and Huettl 2010). As identified, some consumers prefer to give up and purchase alternative such as mimic brands yet it has not been well understood in theory. As a result, this paper aims to (1) develop a framework to explain consumer behaviour towards scarce luxury products as underpinned by the theory of agonistic behaviour, (2) investigate the influence of the different type of scarcity cues (supply-driven and demand-driven) towards the purchase intention of the desired brands or alternatives. Theoretical framework and hypothesis developments Underpinning Theoretical Framework The theory of agonistic behaviour is the underpinning theoretical framework for the study which is supported by Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) model. Developed by Mehrabian & Russell (1974), S-O-R model has been widely used in a retail environment (Buckley, 1991; Chang, Eckman, & Yan, 2011) and to study different types of involvement (Arora, 1982). Stimulus is defined as any external stimuli that influence the internal states of an individual (Bagozzi, 1986; Eroglu, Machleit, & Barr, 2005). Organism is defined as the internal response which then leads to behaviour action, which is the Response from S-O-R model (Bagozzi, 1986). It is the final decision of consumers which lead to a certain action (Chang et al., 2011). The S-O-R model is outlined below: Stimulus The perceived scarcity and competition are the Stimulus which are influenced by the different scarcity cues presented. As mentioned, scarcity effect can be caused due to high demand or low supply. Hence, there may be no difference in term of the perceived scarcity. However, supply- driven scarcity is found to be more efficient for conspicuous consumption products while demand- driven scarcity is more efficient for non-conspicuous consumption products (Gierl and Huettl 2010). Therefore, luxury brands, being conspicuous consumption product by nature, are more likely to be perceived highly competed when it is presented as being scarce due to low supply. As such, the following hypotheses are developed: H1. Perceived scarcity do not differ in both scarcity conditions but differ to no scarcity condition H2. Perceived competition differs across scarcity conditions Stimulus-Organism The stimulus, perceived scarcity and competition, influence the Organism, namely perceived value. This relationships are supported by commodity theory, which describes that scarce products have relatively higher value and desirability compared to non-scarce products (Byun & Sternquist, 2012; Lynn, 1991). Further, consumers are more likely to feel a sense of competition when the stores sell unique or scarce items (Aggarwal, Jun, & Huh, 2011). As such, the following hypotheses are developed: H3. Perceived scarcity has a positive influence towards perceived value in all scarcity conditions H4. Perceived competition has a significant influence towards perceived value in all scarcity conditions Organism – Response The internal response, namely the perceived value, influence the response which is the intention to purchase. Numerous studies have found that high perceived value leads to a willingness to buy (Dodds and Monroe 1985; Monroe and Chapman 1987) and purchase (Zeithaml 1988). In this study, the intention to purchase is a representation to measure the aggressive and submissive behaviour. Purchasing the desired brand is considered as an act of aggression while choosing neither handbag or purchasing the alternative brand is seen as an act the submissive behaviour As such, the following hypothesis is developed: H5. Perceived value has a positive influence towards purchase intention of the desired brand compared to alternative brand Methodology Survey Instrument A self-administered pen and paper questionnaire was used for the survey instrument. The measurement used in the study are established scales with Cronbach Alpha higher than 0.8, fulfilling the criteria by Hair et al. (2010). The scales was presented in seven points Likert Scales, in which 1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree. Purchase intention, however, is a continuum scale in which option 1 represents a strong intention to buy the mimic brand, 4 accounts for neither mimic nor desired brand, and 7 accounts for a strong intention to buy the desired brand. Experimental Design There are three experimental conditions (scarcity condition: demand-driven; supply-driven; control) between subjects factorial design. To measure the purchase intention of the desired brand, a well-known luxury branding company was selected as the stimuli for the study. The brand, Bottega Veneta, was chosen as the brand is considered as a super-premium brand (Willett 2015) and the pre-test conducted with the University students showed that the brand is well-liked and adored. A non-fictitious brand, De Lux, is also selected to measure intention of purchase of the mimic brand. Each respondent was given two different pamphlets, one of the desired brand with a chosen scarcity condition and another of the mimic brand. Therefore, a total of 8 versions of a retail pamphlet were created (3 scarcity conditions with desired brand + 1 mimic brand x 2 genders). Product description and price information are also included (Lynn 1992). The pamphlets are created as identical as possible across different versions. The signal for supply-driven scarcity was portrayed by phrases and words such as “limited edition; supplies are limited; and unique”; while demand-driven scarcity “popular; bestseller; and highly in demand, almost sold out” (Gierl and Huettl 2010). Data Collections The data were collected from a sampling frame containing undergraduate students at a University in Western Australia. A total of 932 data were collected, but 305 data were discarded. Each respondent must have purchased luxury brands priced more than AUD 1500 within the last 3 years to ensure that the students are luxury consumers. The numbers were set after pre-test was conducted to identify the amount of money spent for luxury brands among the students. Out of 627; 250 students for supply-driven scarcity, 211 students for demand-driven scarcity, and 166 students for control were collected. The respondents had an average age of 20 and were divided into males (36%) and females (64%). Results and discussion One way ANOVA was conducted to compare means across different experimental conditions in terms of the perceived competition and scarcity (H1, H2). The result shows that there is a significant difference between perceived scarcity across experimental conditions. Luxury brands with “nearly sold out” scarcity cue (M = 5.49, SD = 1.19) are seen to be scarcer compared to luxury brands with “limited edition” scarcity cue (M = 4.92, SD = 1.16). Furthermore, luxury brand with no scarcity cue (M = 3.34, SD =1.4) is perceived to be not as scarce as the other two experimental conditions. On the other hand, although there is significant difference between the control condition (M = 2.7, SD = 1.40) and the two experimental conditions, there is no significance difference between “limited edition” scarcity cue (M = 3.99, SD = 1.58) and “nearly sold out” scarcity cue (M = 4.12, SD = 1.61). Therefore, H1 and H2 are not supported. Structural Equation Modelling was used to test model fit across different experimental conditions (H3, H4, H5). The final model revealed very good fit indices with the empirical covariances, as it fits the recommended criteria (Hair et al 2010): Normed Chi Square = 1.007, RMSEA = 0.004, AGFI = 0.940, GFI = 0.959, CFI = 0.990. The model shows that there is no significance relationship between perceived scarcity and perceived value in all 3 experimental conditions (limited edition β= 0.03, p = 0.735; nearly sold out β = -0.10, p = 0.244; control β = 0.09, p = 0.315). However, as hypothesised, there is a positive relationship between perceived competition and perceived value in all 3 experimental conditions (limited edition β = 0.43, p < 0.001; nearly sold out β = 0.57, p < 0.001; control β = 0.57, p < 0.001). In turn, in all 3 experimental conditions, there is a positive relationship between perceived value and purchase intention (limited edition β = 0.18, p = 0.030; nearly sold out β = 0.23, p = 0.014; control β = 0.45, p < 0.001). Therefore, H3 is not supported but H4 and H5 are supported. The findings demonstrate that different scarcity cues create a different level of perceived scarcity, in which “nearly sold out” are seen to be the scarcest, followed by “limited edition”, and no scarcity cues. However, instead of perceived scarcity, perceived competition is the important factor that affects the perception of luxury brands value. This can be explained as perceived competition creates a cue to consumers that the product is desirable by many yet only a handful can get the product. This is consistent with the statement by Verhallen (1982). The results also show that perceived value leads to positive purchase intention of the desired brands in all scarcity conditions. Surprisingly, the finding suggests that the relationship is strongest when there are no scarcity cues, followed with “nearly sold out” and “limited edition”. This can be explained due to a few reasons: (1) limited edition products are perceived to be more expensive (Chen and Sun 2013), (2) the respondents may not be leaders in purchasing luxury brands hence prefer to buy the normal or popular luxury brands to follow the crowd (Amaldoss and Jain 2008), (3) there are other variables, such as, self-efficacy and personality traits which are not taken into account. Conclusion This study contributes in several ways to the body of literature. Firstly, it extends the theory of agonistic behaviour from biology to marketing. By using agonistic behaviour as the underpinned theory, the study takes into consideration the option of consumers being submissive and prefer not to purchase the desired brands. Secondly, this study includes perceived competition as one of the main variable to analyse consumer behaviour towards luxury brands. Methodologically, the application of non-fictitious brands helps to capture real consumers’ response. Managerially, this study provides insights to luxury brands marketers on how to manage scarcity cues. Firstly, luxury brands marketers should develop strategies to strengthen the exclusivity and scarce image as currently normal luxury brands are not perceived as being scarce. The strategies may include to (1) limit the distributions channel of the luxury brands; (2) provide limited stock in every retail store to emphasise product scarcity; (3) introduce alternatives (premium brand extension or different product tiers) to consumers, allowing consumers, who are not able to purchase the desired brands, to choose the alternatives. Secondly, luxury brands managers must ensure that the products are desired by many to increase the perceived competition among consumers. Despite contributions, there is some limitation in the study. Firstly, this study used student sample hence future studies should consider using consumer panel to participate in the study. Secondly, there are some variables not taken into account, such as personality factor (self-esteem, status consumption, the need for uniqueness, etc.), self-efficacy, leader vs. followers. In addition, this study focuses on two scarcity conditions (supply-driven and demand driven scarcity cues), luxury brand industry, and public luxury product (handbag). Future studies should look at time-restricted scarcity cues, retailing, and private luxury products (e.g. undergarment). This study also did not measure the actual purchases and different behaviour of aggression when consumers are competing for products. Future studies should observe consumer behaviour during purchase in real time.

Focusing on the effectiveness of a glocalization advertising strategy in China, findings suggest that the ethnicity of endorser moderates the effect of bilingual brand naming (use of both foreign and Chinese brand names) on perceptions of a brand’s luxury quality. Introduction Given a long debate between standardization and localization, many corporations, as a solution, prefer to use both (Featherstone 1990, Sklair, 1995; Friedman, 1999). The right balance of standardization and localization is viewed as the key to success of brands being implemented at a global level, especially in countries the cultural values of which completely differ from those of the brand’s country of origin. The degree of standardization or localization in advertising is determined by various advertising elements. Advertising transfers cultural meaning through signs such as language, aesthetics, endorsers, and so forth, with brands hoping that target audiences positively associate the cultural meanings with the advertised brand (Leclerc, Schmitt & Dubé, 1994; Schmitt, Pan & Tavassoli, 1994; Cheng & Schweitzer, 1996). A brand name and the ethnicity of an endorser, out of the advertising signs, have been recognized as significant cues for conveying a brand image to consumers. This suggests that, in such a place as China, a foreign brand name or a foreign endorser in advertising produces more positive advertising-related responses for a product with foreign characteristics, compared with a Chinese brand name or a Chinese endorser (Zhang & Zhang, 2010). However, when taking a combination of the two strategies or considering the extent of localization in China, little is known about the effectiveness of a glocalization strategy in global advertising in China, which is one of the most attractive international markets to global brands, in particular, luxury brands. In reality, consistent with the argument that the combination of standardization and localization is effective, a number of luxury brands (e.g., Chanel ‘香奈儿’, Dior ‘迪奥’, Bottega Veneta ‘葆蝶家’, Estée Lauder ‘雅诗兰黛’, etc.) create their Chinese brand names when entering the Chinese market while retaining their foreign brand names. This is because most foreign brand names are either too complicated or lengthy, making it difficult for Chinese consumers to remember them or pronounce them (Zheng, 2013). Therefore, the current study attempts to examine the effectiveness of bilingual brand names as a means of a glocalization strategy. Specifically, this study investigates how languages of brand name (presentation of brand name: foreign brand name only vs. Chinese brand name only vs. both of the foreign and Chinese brand names) and the ethnicity of an endorser (Western vs. Chinese) affect consumer perception of the brand’s luxuriousness and consequently influence purchase intention. Method A 3 (language of brand name: foreign brand name only vs. Chinese brand name only vs. both foreign and Chinese brand names) x 2 (ethnicity of celebrity endorser: Western vs. Chinese) between-subject experimental study was conducted to test proposed hypotheses. Six versions of a manipulated print advertisement represented the experimental conditions. For the experiment, data were collected from a sample of 150 undergraduate students in Mainland China through a snowballing sampling technique. To increase internal validity, undergraduate students were used as the sample in the current study as it is suggested that university students are relatively a homogeneous group to reduce individual differences. In addition, considering that most of consumers for luxury goods in China are under 45 years old (Atsmon & Dixit, 2009), and the younger generation (25-35 years old) has been growing into the core consumers for luxury goods in China (Bain & Company, 2014), undergraduates are the potential consumers of luxury brands as they will, in the near future, accumulate consumption power. All subjects logged onto the study’s website, where they were randomly assigned to one of the six experimental conditions. LONGINES, a Switzerland luxury watch brand, was selected as the representative of a luxury brand for subjects, as this particular brand embraces a high degree of localization, having both English and Chinese brand names and both foreign and Chinese celebrity endorsers. It also enjoys high awareness among Chinese consumers. To manipulate the language of the brand name, three variations were used: presentation of brand name in a foreign language [LONGINES], presentation of brand name in Chinese [ 浪琴], and presentation of both brand names in a print advertisement. In the history of its advertising, LONGINES has employed 15 celebrity endorsers, 4 being Chinese. To manipulate the ethnicity of the celebrity endorser, out of the 15 endorsers, Simon Baker and Kate Winslet were selected as Western endorsers while Aaron Kwok, and Lin Chi-ling were used as Chinese endorsers. To reduce confounding effects by using a real brand, brand familiarity and brand attitude were included as covariates in the study. Findings Luxurious Perception of the Brand While controlling brand familiarity (p < .05) and brand attitude (p < .001), the language of the brand name, F(2,142) = 5.254, p < .01, had a significant main effect on the perception of a brand’s luxury quality. More specifically, a follow-up post hoc test indicated that subjects who saw the ad presenting the foreign brand name in Latin showed a stronger perception of a brand’s luxury quality than did those exposed to the ads that presented the Chinese brand name or both of the foreign and Chinese brand names. However, we found no significant difference between the presentation of the Chinese brand name and the presentation of both foreign and Chinese brand names. On the other hand, the ethnicity of the endorser was not found to have a significant effect on the perception of a brand’s luxury quality (p > .05). The results further revealed a significant interaction between the language of the brand name and the ethnicity of the endorser on the perception of a brand’s luxury quality, F(2,142) = 5.647, p < .01. Specifically, Figure 1 shows that both brand names produced a weaker perception of a brand’s luxury quality than the foreign brand name only when the Western endorser is presented, however, both brand names produced an equal effect to the foreign brand name only when the Chinese endorser is presented. The language of brand name, while controlling brand familiarity (p < .05) and brand attitude (p < .001), exhibited a significant effect on purchase intention, F(2,142) = 3.472, p < .05. A follow-up post hoc test revealed that the presentation of the foreign brand name or both of the foreign and Chinese brand names in the ad generated higher purchase intention than the presentation of the Chinese brand name. However, there was no significant difference between the conditions of the foreign brand name and the both brand names. With respect to the main effect of the ethnicity of an endorser on purchase intention, the data did not exhibit a significant effect (p > .05). No significant interaction effect between the language of brand name and the ethnicity of an endorser emerged (p > .05). Mediating Role of Luxurious Perception of the Brand To confirm the moderated mediation of the perception of a brand’s luxury quality on purchase intention, the PROCESS macro model 8 was performed. The study found significant effects of the interaction on the perception of a brand’s luxury quality: βBrand name x Endorser = .54, SE = .17, p < .01. Then, when we examined the joint effects of the interaction effect and luxurious perception of the brand on purchase intention, no significant effect was found from the interaction; βBrand name x Endorser = -.02, SE = .24, p > .05, emerged on purchase intention. However, the effect of the perception of a brand’s luxury quality was still significant; βBrand name x Endorser = .33, SE = .12, p < .01. This implies that the interaction effect of the two independent variables had an indirect effect on purchase intention through the perception of a brand’s luxury quality (CI95, 1,000 bootstrapped samples [.0492, .4229]). Specifically, the perception of a brand’s luxury quality mediated the effect of the language of brand name on purchase intention only in the condition of a Western endorser (CI95: [-.3161, -.0429]), but not in the condition of a Chinese endorser (CI95: [-.0298, .1254]). Discussion The study supports the argument that a brand name is a strong cue for consumer judgment (Thakor & Lavack, 2003; De Mooij, 2010; Elena & Segev, 2012) by suggesting that when a brand uses a foreign brand name (Roman Alphabet), consumers are more likely to view the brand as luxurious; also consumers are more likely to be willing to purchase the brand than when it uses a Chinse brand name. Interestingly, bilingual brand naming has been found to be somewhat complicated. The study suggests that using both foreign and Chinese brand names is as ineffective as using a Chinese brand name only for luxurious perception of the brand. This may be because the use of a Chinese brand name along with a foreign brand name dilutes the cultural meanings (e.g., status, social distinction, etc.) that the foreign brand name on its own transfers to consumers. With respect to purchase intention, however, the use of bilingual brand naming produces an effect equal to the use of a foreign brand name only. This finding indicates that a brand name may be more associated with the perception of brand’s luxury quality than intention to purchase the brand. This further implies that the effectiveness of a glocalization strategy of the brand name by adding a Chinese brand name to an original foreign brand name should be considered with caution. In addition, the current study extends prior research on multi-cue models of country-of-origin effects by demonstrating the moderating role of the ethnicity of an endorser in the effectiveness of the language of a brand name. When a brand uses a Western celebrity endorser, the glocalization strategy of bilingual brand naming seems to be less effective; consumers have a weaker perception of a brand’s luxury quality, compared with a foreign brand name. However, bilingual brand naming is just as effective as foreign brand naming when it uses a Chinese celebrity as the endorser. Supporting previous findings about the synergistic effect of multiple foreign cues (Huang, Fan, & Zhou, 2008), this study implies while the foreign brand name still serves as a foreign cue in bilingual brand naming, the Chinese brand name attenuates the positive effect of the foreign brand name and weakens the synergistic effect from the foreign cues of the foreign brand name and the Western endorser. On the other hand, when a Chinese celebrity endorses the brand, there may not be a synergistic effect from the multiple foreign cues of the foreign brand name and the endorser. Therefore, adding a Chinese brand name to a foreign brand name may not significantly moderate the positive effect of the foreign brand name. Finally, this paper suggests that consumer perception of a product having luxury quality seems to be a strong driver in determining the purchase of a luxury brand, especially when a western celebrity endorsers the brand. Managerially, the study provides insights into the selection of an effective brand-naming strategy and an endorser for advertising when luxury brands do business in the Chinese market. Bilingual brand naming is becoming a common practice in China. Given such a trend in China, is the glocalization strategy on brand naming being deemed effective? If viewing advertising effectiveness from the perspective of enhancing luxurious brand image, the strategy of bilingual brand naming seems to work poorly in China compared with standardized foreign brand naming. It may not be that simple, though, because multiple cues are used to infer cultural meanings of luxury brands and, furthermore, the cues would interact with one another. Considering that many luxury brands use celebrities, especially Chinese celebrities in the Chinese market, foreign or bilingual brand naming is critical to the success of luxury brands, yielding equal effectiveness in luxury perception. This implies that if a brand uses a foreign brand name only, a Western endorser would be more desirable. If the brand adopts bilingual brand naming, then utilizing a Chinese endorser would seem advisable. The study further suggests that the localized strategy in brand name–the use of a Chinese brand name only–is not a good idea for luxury brands in China.

Some clothing manufacturers and retailers use attractive endorsers on their advertising. However, according to recent research, consumers with low body esteem evaluate the clothing items more negatively when they try them on in the fitting room and find that they are inferior to the attractive advertising endorser wearing the same items (Dahl, Argo, & Morales, 2012). Is it always true? Should clothing companies not use attractive endorsers? When Dahl, et al. (2012) emphasized the negative impact of an attractive endorser and discussed body esteem, they implicitly assumed body-related consumption, in which consumers wear clothing items to enrich their physical appearance. However, other research on fashion has suggested that consumers often wear clothing items for self-expression (e.g., Piacentiti & Malier, 2004). Luxury fashion brands have been particularly regarded as symbols of wealth, so consumers wear luxury fashion clothing items to show off their high status (Shavitt, 1989; Wilcox, Kim & Sen, 2009). Thus, status-related consumption should be considered in addition to body-related consumption. Considering status-related consumption, this research introduces another kind of self-esteem, i.e., status esteem, which refers to how confident consumers are in their status. Assuming that there are two types of self-esteem, body esteem (or external esteem) and status esteem (or internal esteem), both of which are related to clothing, we hypothesize that consumers low in status esteem will evaluate a status-related product more positively than consumers high in status esteem when their consumption aligns (vs. when it does not align) with an attractive endorser even though they are low in body esteem. To test the hypothesis, we conducted three laboratory experiments. The result of multiple regression analysis showed that our hypothesis was supported. By suggesting that even consumers with low body and status esteem can evaluate status-related product positively, when finding that they are inferior to the advertising endorser in terms of body, this research expands our understanding on how attractive advertising endorsers affect consumer evaluation of clothing items focusing on two kinds of selfesteem, body and status esteem.

Despite its innovative and avant-garde reputation, the luxury industry initially began showing a very low commitment to new online marketing tools and it held a conservative approach to selling when compared to other sectors. Nowadays, the context has dramatically changed and luxury brands are approaching with an increasing interest social networks as well as the online selling. This research aims to clarify the current strategic approaches of the players in the different luxury markets towards the social commerce phenomenon, from both a theoretical and an empirical point of view. The purpose is to test a framework that can be used to classify luxury companies’ strategies regarding social media adoptions based on actual theories on social media. Four strategies related to the social media adoption by luxury brands have been identified: the Social brand ambassadors strategy class (low promotional content percentage and low social commerce score) includes those brands that use social media for entertainment and user engagement; the Social showcases strategy (high promotional content percentage and low social commerce score) includes those brands that use their social accounts as online catalogues; the Social infotainers strategy (low promotional content percentage and high social commerce score) includes those brands that scored high in social commerce, mainly because of the provision of informative content and brand–consumer interactions, but they were linked to more entertainment-oriented actions rather than product-related ones. Finally, the Social sellers strategy (high promotional content percentage and high social commerce score) includes those brands that have integrated social commerce into their online strategies and have subsequently exploited the potential of social media to drive online and offline sales. The database is built using original data from a content analysis of 100 luxury brands’ postings on five different social media platforms – namely Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and Pinterest. The total final sample included 12,132 Facebook posts, 21,216 tweets on Twitter, 1,105 YouTube videos, 10,138 Instagram pictures/videos, and 117,359 Pinterest pictures. The main findings are the following: luxury brands adopt at this stage the Social brand ambassadors and Social showcases approaches; brands belonging to the perfumery, cosmetics, jewelry and watches markets show a more developed attitude towards the social commerce; in other luxury markets, such as wine and spirits, brands still adopt a Social Brand Ambassador strategy, while managers should increase the promotional content in order develop the social commerce. The Fashion & Accessories brands show a positive relationship between the percentage of promotional content and social commerce score. This means that social commerce adoptions depend on the single brand’s strategic choices, ranging from low adoption to best practices. In general, social commerce is still not widespread; many luxury fashion brands, while presenting new collections during fashion weeks, focused on fashion shows, backstage events, and celebrities, rather than really promoting the new product lines with materials, availability, and purchasing indications. This social media approach is mainly focused on increasing brand awareness rather than increasing social commerce. If managers aim at increasing social commerce they should add direct call to action and link the contents to e-commerce market place. Automotive brands are concentrated in the Social showcases area; This sector encounters natural limitations in the introduction of social commerce due to the difficulty of selling products through the digital channel; many brands have, however, devised strategies to approach their users during the purchasing process prior to the actual transaction to take advantage of the increasing ROPO phenomenon. Conversely, the Perfumes & Cosmetics sector shows a highly fragmented approach to social commerce. The content analysis based on single post contents has shown that actually the contents are based on pictures of the products, or the brand, information on events, and a large and increasing presence of video posts based storytelling about the history of the product and the brand heritage; the most social commerce oriented posts are picture or video focused on the product. The commercial contents that aim at developing the see now, buy now approach are mainly based on video shows.

The Chinese fashion market, which has typically been dominated by luxury brands, is expanding more into mid- to low-end fashion brands including global SPA (Specialty retailer of private label apparel) brands. This change in the Chinese fashion market is due to the growth of the middle class in China. The advance of the Chinese middle class is attributed to the fact that the wages of large city workers is improving due to the development of various industries, particularly IT. Recently, the Chinese government has initiated an anti-corruption movement, which has led to the prohibition of luxury goods consumption, and so the interest of Chinese potential fashion consumers has moved to the mid-to low-end fashion products imported from developed countries. In addition, young Chinese consumers' positive attitude toward online shopping is favorable for foreign mid-to low-end brands. These changes in the tastes of Chinese fashion consumers are favorable for Korean fashion brands in particular for several reasons. First, the Korean fashion industry does not have a history of producing luxury brands, but does produce many good mid- to low-end fashion brands. In addition, Chinese tend to consider Korean fashion and food culture as more developed and preferable due to the success of the Korean wave. Lastly, it is easy for Korean practitioners to offer online shopping and customer service. The emergence of mid- to low-end fashion brands started in Korea in the late 2000s when global SPA brands entered the market. Unlike Korea's soho brands, which are based on the "No-brand" strategy, global SPA brands have actually shaken up the market by offering reasonable prices for Korean domestic brand products that are of similar quality. Since then, consumers’ willingness to pay for clothing has been reduced even further in the Korean market even though the low-growth trend in the economy has stabilized. So, it is very important to analyze and study the consumption tendency for low and mid-priced fashion brands among both Chinese and Korean consumers. The purpose of this study was to investigate how Chinese and Korean consumers perceive the personality of mid- and low-priced fashion brands and how such personality affects brand loyalty, commitment, and perceived quality. Brand personality is a vital area of research since fashion products are a type of consumer good that is consumed by users close to the body and which can express the self and the personality to others. Aaker (1997) developed a brand personality measurement scale consisting of five dimensions which many researchers have used in exploring the brand personality dimension in various industries. In the study of fashion in particular, the dimension of brand personality has been explored and its effects have been analyzed. However, most of the research has focused on luxury or high priced brands. Also, the research has not compared cultures such as China and Korea in this regard. Therefore, this study explored how Chinese and Korean consumers perceive some of the mid- to low-end priced brands originating in Europe and Korea. Also, the research examined how multiple dimensions of brand personality affected perceived quality, commitment, and brand loyalty. This study assumed that perceived quality and commitment may mediate the relationship between brand personality dimensions and loyalty. In order to conduct quantitative research, this study adopted scales from the previous literature to measure the variables used in the research model. A professional online research company conducted the survey, which was designed to be administered only to potential consumers of mid-and low-priced fashion brands who had purchased one or both European and Korean brands which were suggested in the survey. Also, gender (female), residential area (Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai), and age (21-39 years old) were controlled for. In this research, the European origin brand was the global SPA (Zara, H & M, ONLY), and there were eight Korean brands, including “Style Nanda,” which is popular in China (Refer to Table 1). The data collected on the 250 Korean and 250 Chinese participants were analyzed using statistical package SPSS 20.0. The brand personality dimension was explored using factor analysis which applied Varimax rotation based on the principle component method. As a result, even though the items included were found to be somewhat different according to the country and origin of the brand, the brand personality dimensions of the European global brands turned out to be similar and reflected “TRENDY, SINCERITY, AND COMPETENCE.” Also, Chinese consumers’ perception of brand personality in Korean brands was found to be similar to their perception of European brands. However, Korean consumers’ perception of Korean brands, which are of course their own brands, was more diverse reflecting “TRENDY, SINCERITY, COMPETENCE, AND OUTGOING.” This seems to be because Korean consumers may have had more chance to experience Korean brands either online or offline through visiting stores or being exposed to a variety of marketing communications. Thus, because there are more Korean brands than European, Korean consumers may be able to have an accurate perception of the personality of Korean brands. The conceptual model of the current research includes the relationships among multiple dimensions of brand personality in perceived quality, commitment, and loyalty. Also, the mediating effect of quality and commitment between brand personality and loyalty was examined. In order to test the hypotheses, hierarchical multiple regression using SPSS was analyzed and is described in Table 2 in relation to European brands and in Table 3 in relation to Korean brands. As expected, brand personality dimensions that were found to be a significant factor in perceived quality, commitment, and loyalty were likely to vary based on Chinese or Korean perceptions. For Korean consumers’ perception of global brands, while TRENDY was likely to be the most powerful personality dimension forming brand loyalty, its impact on loyalty seemed not to be mediated by quality but rather by commitment. Also, the influences of COMPETENCE on loyalty were mediated by quality and commitment. For Chinese consumers’ perception of global brands, the impacts of SINCERITY as well as TRENDY on loyalty were found to be mediated by quality and commitment. In addition, COMPETENCE seemed to have a rather direct impact on quality, commitment, and loyalty without a mediating effect. For local brands, Korean consumers did not seem to rely on brand personality or commitment when considering brand loyalty. Since the R2 did not improve at all with adding mediating factors such as quality and commitment, there was found to be no mediating effects in the Korean cases for local brands. In particular, while TRENDY directly impacted loyalty, OUTGOING was found to be significant only in its impact on quality. On the other hand, all three dimensions of local brand personality turned out to be significant influencers on loyalty and quality for Chinese consumers. The impact of TRENDY and COMPETENCE on loyalty seems to be mediated by quality and commitment. In this study, we found that mid- to low-end fashion brands seemed to reflect valid brand personality according to the brand’s origin (global vs. local) as well as consumers’ culture (Chinese vs. Korean). Also, the effect of brand personality dimension was different. This study contributes to the study of brand personality and the Chinese fashion market by comparing a conceptual model of the consumption behavior of Chinese and Korean consumers in relation to mid and low-priced fashion brands and brand awareness formation. In particular, the research revealed differences between Chinese and Korean consumers, suggesting different approaches for Korean fashion practitioners who are planning on entering China, which has not only a similar market to that of Korea but also one that is familiar to Korean practitioners.

Unlike older generation whose consumption of music was bounded by their local culture, today’s young consumers access music beyond cultural boundaries. Many successful pop music in cyber space attracted billions of listeners from all over the world. The young generation born and raised in the digital age, are often thought to have altered sensory-neural characteristics because of their extensive use of electronic device since early childhood. This study investigates a perceptual saturation hypothesis which posits that in order to capture the young generation’s hard-to-get attention, online music must present a high level of energy and rhythm that is near the point of perceptual saturation. We conducted a functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) experiment with sixty-four young adults and found that total cerebral blood volume over prefrontal brain area was higher for a song that presents acoustic intensity near the point of perceptual saturation than a counterpart stimulus with lower levels of acoustic intensity. The degrees of prefrontal hemodynamic randomness decreased significantly while the participants listened to YouTube music that provided high levels of acoustic stimulation. Online popularity, recorded as the number of daily hits, was positively correlated with the total cerebral blood volume and negatively correlated with hemodynamic randomness.

Despite the growing trend of incorporating ethnic motifs, colors, and styles (i.e., ethnic-inspired designs (EIDs)) into mainstream fashion products in the US, there is yet a lack of understanding on what drives consumers to demand such products with EIDs. Although extant literature provides important insights as to what motivates consumers to favor EIDs, much of the studies have focused on the products’ appeals to particular ethnic groups with matching their cultural backgrounds. Less is understood on the core self-centric values mainstream consumers reflect into EIDs and the personal goal-pursuit they project by wearing them. We address this issue. Building upon Image Theory (Beach & Mitchell, 1987), our findings document that consumers’ purchase intent toward products with EIDs is more fundamentally driven by their aspirations to boost their self-view confidence by wearing EIDs (i.e., self-enhancement), which are guided by their core self-values that are represented by two personal values (i.e., cultural openness and seeking personal style) and two product values (i.e., perceived esthetics and perceived novelty).

Bargain shopping provides financial benefits and psychological pleasure to shoppers. Bargain shopping is fundamentally responsive behavior in that shoppers respond to various deals offered by retailers or manufacturers in the form of coupons, in-store discounts, or rebates. No matter how actively shoppers search, there are no deals available unless manufacturers or retailers offer them. This type of bargain shopping is found in most countries in the world that adopt market economy system. Haggling is another form of bargain shopping, which involves a process of direct and active price negotiation between a shopper (i.e., buyer) and a seller. Haggling is rarely found in institutionalized retail systems of Western countries. In Asian countries such as South Korea, it is customary to negotiate for lower price not only with street vendors or in free-standing stores in traditional market places but also in the conventional retail stores located in metropolitan shopping areas. In Korea, even foreign travelers are often advised not to buy at the initial offer price. The travelers experience difficulties negotiating with sellers because they rarely have such haggling experience in their own cultures. We view haggling as another form of bargain shopping that is uniquely observed in Asian cultures. However, it has been hardly researched in mainstream marketing literature. The purpose of our study is to explore the nature of haggling experience from a shopper’s perspective. Uncovering the underlying dynamics of the haggling process will provide rich insights into the understanding of retail markets of Asian countries. A qualitative interview was conducted with eighteen individuals who were known as or who reported to be a good haggler. Ten participants were male and the rest were female. Participants’ age raged from 20 to 27 years old. Fourteen were college students and all but one were Koreans. Interviews were conducted in Korean except for the one international exchange student. Semi-structured interviews were conducted for about an hour with each individual. Data included their experiences of shopping including haggling, strategies to obtain good deals, and feelings of bargaining. Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Data were analyzed with open coding and a focused coding method. Participants reported they haggled over the price of various goods including clothes, consumer electronics, and mobile phone in various retail shops except for department stores and high-end brand stores. Even the foreign participant mentioned they haggled with sellers otherwise she would have felt being ripped off. The first theme emerged is that haggling is grounded on consumer’s shopping capital. It seems natural for Korean participants to engage in the price negotiation. They had informally learned effective haggling from their parents and older siblings during their childhood and from peers and friends after they grew up. They reported that they learned to haggle otherwise they would be overcharged. They develop various skills based on their own and other shoppers’ experiences. This learning process reflects the role of shopping capital in haggling, context-specific form of human capital (Kwon & Kwon, 2007; Ratchford, 2001). Consumers hold various levels of shopping capital. Shoppers employ different shopping strategies to maximize their shopping value depending on the degree of the possession of shopping capital (Kwon & Kwon, 2013). Likewise, haggling is bargain shopping that utilizes their holdings of shopping capital for financial benefits. Hagglers negotiate for better prices using the knowledge and skills that they obtained, accumulated, and updated over time. Hagglers hold a set of skills, such as pretending not to have much interest, or starting from an unreasonably low price and going upward rather than downward in negotiation. The shopping capital applied in this type of haggling is considered as general, including product knowledge, retail system, and price and promotion information, which is transferrable to other shopping contexts. Competitive disposition was observed in haggling drawing upon shopping capital. These hagglers stated that they felt a sense of accomplishment and had a pride of having expertise and control over the negotiation process. One participant mentioned haggling as a “zero-sum game.” Haggling is to buy at the lowest possible price and win over the seller or other shoppers. The second theme emerged is that haggling is grounded on consumer’s relationshiporiented disposition. The focus of relationship-oriented haggler was less on their expertise and shopping knowledge. They pursued good deals drawing upon the relationships established over time and/or the feelings of closeness and relatedness with the sellers at the point of sales. This type of hagglers makes conscious efforts to build and maintain good relations with the sellers of the stores that they patronize. Participants stated that they sometimes stop by the store just to say hi. The recommended the store to friends and brought it up to the sellers on their next visit. In the case of shopping at a new store, they tried to make good impressions by smiling, having good manners, or talking kindly to the seller. One participants stated that he tried to create a sense of connection with the seller by asking personal questions: “where are you from?” “What high school did you go to?” “Where do you live now?” “Do you watch X drama?” This feeling of connection provides the foundation for friendly negotiation and makes it difficult for the seller to say no to their request for discount. Cooperative disposition was observed in relationship-oriented haggling. These hagglers view the negotiation process as a way of obtaining the outcome that benefits both parties (i.e., shoppers and sellers). The lowest possible price is not the goal of their negotiation. Their goal is to reach the optimal price point that is cheap enough for the shopper and, at the same time, that yields a reasonable profit to the seller as well. Seeking for the mutual interest is the most distinctive aspect of this deal shopping, in contrast to the competitive disposition of shopping capital-based hagglers. Relationship-oriented hagglers emphasized the importance of trust. Even in the stores that they visit first time, the hagglers determine whether they can trust the seller based on their appearance and manners of conversation. Feelings of trust appear to be the necessary condition to proceed to the negotiation process in pursuit of reaching at the price point that benefits both parties. This cooperative disposition of haggling reflects the value of Asian culture emphasizing the harmony and interdependence among the members of a social system. The two types of haggling discussed above, the competitive shopping capital-based and the cooperative relationship-oriented haggling, should not be understood as mutually exclusive categories. Although some participants showed a strong tendency of one or the other category, a good number of participants appeared to take hybrid approaches of a goal-driven competitive disposition and, at the same time, being considerate of the seller’s interest. The findings present implications for understanding the intertwining nature of global and local consumption. The former type of haggling is based on the human capital that is applicable in the global consumption context as well as in multi-shopping channels. Savvy shoppers from any corner of the world would shop at global shopping sites (e.g., Amazon.com) based on their shopping capital. They also adeptly shop while traveling abroad. On the other hand, the latter type of haggling is based on performance of interpersonal communication in the local shopping context, mostly at brick-and-mortar retail stores that adopt free-price system. Because this distinctive type of haggling requires face-to-face contact, it is mainly applicable to local shopping experience. However, some online shopping sites began allowing price negotiation through chat rooms, we believe that the utility of relationship-oriented haggling would be more extensive in the global context in the future, which warrants further studies. Our study is one of the first scholarly efforts that attempt to explore the nature of price haggling in retail contexts. The two distinctive approaches of price negotiation appear to utilize different sources of expertise and have different assumptions based on and goals to achieve. These findings of Korean retail market can provide a foundational understanding toward more broad explorations of unique haggling behaviors in various Asian cultures. More future research is suggested in other Asian countries related to this topic.

Through this study the influencing factors for the development of a national dress for Tanzanian people was explored. The need and desire for this development received support from several groups including the Tanzanian Government, local tailors, NGO’s (Non-Government Organisations) and Tanzanian societies. This stage of the study focused on the effectiveness of traditional Tanzanian textiles’ motifs and natural symbols in the design process employing imported recycled second-hand clothes (mitumba). Qualitative data was obtained through interviews and focus group discussions. The study explored what Tanzanians need to strengthen their national identity and the use of recycled mitumba within a national dress. The study used a co-design style workshop for the development of the national dress as a different approach to addressing the issues identified in Tanzania regarding National dress. The participants added valuable contributions providing ideas for cultural conservation through building a national identity, ideas for strengthening the concept of recycling mitumba and suggestions for the incorporation of kanga and kitenge as inspirations for the design of a national dress in order to promote national identity. The study examined the presence of mitumba from abroad, several styles of indigenous traditional dress worn by different ethnic groups in Tanzania and reasons for strengthening Tanzania’s national identity. This paper reports on the main primary research activities and finding used for the experimental textile and dress designs, and includes the plan for the next stage of the project.

Luxury goods are characterised by a series of traits such as exclusivity, rarity, premium price, high quality and aesthetic value, but also to specific methods of production that focus on notions of excellent workmanship carried out by expert craftspeople. This paper focuses on the problematic relationship between craftsmanship and the luxury fashion industry by examining how representations of craftsmanship are employed by luxury fashion labels in their communication strategies. In particular, the strategies employed by Dolce&Gabbana will be examined. It will be argued that the label has emphasised in its online communication the craftsmanship involved in the creation of its products, but it will be observed how that element is presented only in association to limited categories of goods, and not to the totality of products that are associated to the name of the fashion brand. The case study of Dolce&Gabbana will be explored with regards to the role that the label's online communication strategies attributes to notions of Italian handmade craftsmanship, and in this sense those practices will be examined in terms of national identity. This phenomenon will also be contextualised in terms of the contemporary marketing strategies employed by luxury fashion labels and the relationship they hold with regards to traditional conceptualisations of luxury.

At the end of the twentieth century the decline of the domestic knitting craft was of paramount concern to the yarn companies and retailers that served this market sector. As demand reduced in the UK so did the number of specialist retailers. This was as detrimental to the yarn companies as it was to the craft. Research undertaken in 1999 by the author suggests that it is probably true to say that the knitting craft was at that point in time at its lowest point of popularity throughout the entire twentieth century. Throughout the twentieth century in the UK the popularity of crafts as domestic leisure pursuits fluctuated. Increased interest is reported to be primarily related to economic recession, where necessity is identified as being the greatest motivation for craft engagement; and craft engagement declines when the economy is more buoyant. There is evidence to support claims that the popularity of crafts in general experienced rise and fall throughout the 20th century correlating with times of austerity during economic downturns, thus suggesting that crafts were still largely taken up then as a necessity which could be contested. This paper reports briefly on the reasons behind the rise and fall of the hand knitting craft’s popularity throughout the last century in the UK before focusing on the latter decades in order to expose the factors related to the more serious decline of the craft in the 1990s. It discloses the perceptions of the craft at the end of the century and provides the foundation for the next stage of the research project which will involve an investigation of the craft in the early decades of the twentieth-first century. The paper draws predominantly on company and trade reports such as Keynote and Mintel and on previously unpublished survey materials from the late 1990s that were designed to explore the state of the hand knit craft at the close of the twentieth century.

Prolonged observations of fashion students highlighted a limited understanding of garment construction quality, technical knowledge and skills, timescale boundaries, and a lack of confidence to experiment with construction techniques; it was the realisation of these issues which initiated a study to revitalise and enhance sewing skill capability through a purposely designed resource tool. While originally developed to be used by fashion design students the resource tool when fully developed would also be useful for craft dressmakers to develop and enhance their skills and expertise. In the fashion student context an extensive literature review substantiated the observed sewing skills which was also verified by further industry personnel through interviews. While the salient points from the literature review and interviews are given the main purpose of this paper is to outline the development stages of the proposed resource tool which was designed to serve as an aid to revitalise and enhance garment construction knowledge, skills and expertise. The resource samples were inspired by clothing collections held in two UK archives thus offering an opportunity to revitalise some of the more complex construction techniques that are no longer used in modern mainstream fashion. The usefulness of the resource tool is also given along with future developments to improve the system.