This paper examines the impact of thanks from the sellers on consumer satisfaction in the tourism industry. Study 1 shows that thanks from the sellers (vs. no thank from the sellers) will decrease consumer satisfaction. In this process, perceived fairness and perceived value play a serial mediation role. Study 2 shows that the pricing type (the fixed price vs. the flexible price) plays a moderate role on the impact of thanks from the sellers at the end of a transaction on consumer satisfaction. This paper introduces transaction utility theory and culture difference to explain the seemingly inconsistent phenomenon. Introduction The present studies focus on retailers expressing gratitude and, especially, how the communication of retailer expressing gratitude or not affects consumer satisfaction under the tourism purchase environment. Image that you encounter a seller is selling the souvenirs in the tourist spot you just visit, you would like to buy one of the souvenirs, such as a special cup with the souvenirs logo, you conclude a deal with the seller eventually, after that, the seller thanks for your purchasing and you leave. One question arises, will consumers feel less satisfaction when sellers say nothing than when they say “Thank you” at the end of a transaction? Theoretical Background Thanking is one of the speech acts or communicative acts frequently and abundantly utilized in human interactions, even though, most of these studies have focused on a western perspective, little is known about the experience of tourists from Asia. In western countries, people are accustomed to saying "thank you" after the benefit of others. Some behavioral responses may resemble the expression of gratitude (e.g., saying thank you to a waiter in a restaurant), but may instead be an automatic polite response not grounded in emotion (Buck 2004; Emmons and McCullough 2003; Fazalehasan et al 2017). However, in Somali and China culture, people are not used to expressing thanks, which makes many Americans or Australian feel rude or impolite (Chiu and Hong 2013; Robertson 2014). Here we test the prediction that gratitude from retailers may affect consumer satisfaction in a potentially counterintuitive manner. In other words, we hypothesize that gratitude from the retailer may lead to lower consumer satisfaction. This prediction draws from both the existing literature on gratitude as well as from research on culture difference and transaction utility theory from the response to gratitude. Research Design Two experiments have been conducted to test the hypotheses. Study 1 will provide support for the three central hypotheses regarding perceived fairness inference (hypothesis 1), perceived value inferences (hypothesis 2), and consumer satisfaction (hypothesis 3). Study 2 will test an important boundary condition. This study shows that the proposed negative effect of saying thank you (vs. saying nothing) holds only if the price of product is fixed. Result and Conclusion In the study 1, we found that sellers saying thank you after the transaction leads to less consumer satisfaction. Therefore, an important contribution of our work emerges from our melding of the literature on perceived fairness and value and demonstrating that gratitude from the sellers dictates which literature is more applicable in relationship marketing. Furthermore, we also examined the mechanism in study 2 and explore a boundary condition. We discovered that when the price of a souvenir is fixed, consumers feel more satisfaction when sellers say nothing than when they say “Thank you” at the end of a transaction. Conversely, when the price of a souvenir is not fixed, which is to say when consumers can bargain in the store, consumers feel less satisfaction when sellers say nothing than when they say “Thank you” after the transaction

Introduction In the last decade, the concepts of responsible or sustainable luxury (Vigneron & Johnson 2004; Bendell & Kleanthous, 2007; Kapferer, 2010; Janssen, Vanhamme, Lindgreen & Lefebvre, 2014) and digital or online luxury (Kim & Ko, 2010; 2012; Okonkwo, 2005; 2009; 2010; Mosca, Civera & Casalegno, 2018) have started receiving considerable attention, as separate areas of study. Scholarship shows that communicating CSR is more and more of a strategic decision (Sen & Bhattacharya, 2001) that needs to balance promises and performances of social instances (de Ven, 2008; Pomering & Donilcar, 2009; Hur, Kim & Woo, 2014;) and to impact on the audience positively through content, placement and motives of CSR messages (Jahdi & Acikdilli, 2009; Du, Bhattacharya, & Sen, 2010). Furthermore, with the explosion of digital contents and use, communicating CSR is even more challenging and firms increase their exposure to judgments of their real conduct (Christodoulides, Jevons & Blackshaw, 2011). Luxury players make an interesting case of investigation for the digital CSR communication, as they are peculiar both in the use of the online and in the implementation and communication of CSR (Vigneron & Johnson 2004; Bendell & Kleanthous, 2007; Kapferer and Bastien, 2009; Janssen et al., 2014). Despite some exploratory researches underline that luxury consumers are not so likely to see consistency between luxury and CSR (Davies et al., 2012) and yet, the communication of those activities can turn their perception negatively (Torelli et al., 2012), latest findings from empirical studies on luxury consumers show a growing interest in the communication of sustainability on the online (Janssen et al., 2014). However, few studies consider how consumers react and modify their perception in regard to CSR messages spread online, within luxury markets. This research has twofold aims. Firstly, it investigates the state of the art of leading international luxury players‟ CSR digital communication through the application of a theoretical framework developed by the authors for qualitative analysis of digital CSR communication contents, placement and purpose. Secondly, it explores luxury consumers‟ perception over specific digital CSR communications in order to verify whether and if there is consistency between CSR digital communication and consumers‟ reactions within luxury markets as well as underline emerging peculiarities in the way CSR is – and is expected to be – communicated online by luxury players. Theoretical development Creating experiences on the online became the imperative for luxury players (Okonkwo, 2010). This need is strengthened by luxury consumers, who are more willing to take part in the process of sharing brands‟ values through the online platforms, in a challenging multi-channel logic (Rifkin, 2000; Mosca et al., 2013). Luxury players seem to strive more than others to modify and integrate their products offer and communication on the online, because they have to adapt to a “pop” culture without losing their unique character and exclusivity (Aiello & Donvito, 2005) that can be, as some scholars suggest, identified with certain characteristics of sustainability and social responsibility (Janssen et al., 2014). The main contribution of this study is to allow a convergence between “responsible luxury” and “online luxury” by advancing the theoretical understanding of digital CSR communication within luxury markets, in terms of peculiarities, customers‟ perceptions and effectiveness. Research Design The study makes use of a theoretical framework for qualitative evaluation of web CSR communication previously developed by the authors, that is, in the context of the present research, enriched to include a qualitative investigation of all digital CSR messages (including web and social media). Firstly, the study applies the framework to 100 International luxury brands (representative of the principal luxury fashion-related personal products categories) selected from luxury reports by Deloitte, Reputation Institute and Interbrand in order to qualitative evaluate contents, placement and purposes of digital CSR messages. The qualitative evaluation is developed by the authors through the identification of KPIs reflecting the themes emerged in the framework, analysis of their frequency and Chi square test. Secondly, the study involves 400 luxury consumers within mature markets, who are tested around their perception of digital CSR communication of luxury players. The investigation over their reactions and perception of digital CSR messages is conducted through an online questionnaire and several focus groups. Statistical regression model, t-stat and comparison among the responses provided by consumers through the survey are conducted to analyse responses and match the data. Results and Conclusion Results show the that majority of the investigated players are extensively considering CSR as a core digital strategy, pointing out the growing communication of luxury goods that increased sustainability and social responsibility throughout the whole supply chain. The investigation on customers‟ perception outlines some discrepancies between players‟ communication and customers‟ reactions, showing several cases of misjudgements. On the one hand, some players fails in achieving customers‟ expectations and the actual raking of their digital CSR communication does not match the level of given perception. On the other hand, some digital CSR communications succeeds in creating positive overreactions, despite having previously evaluated as the minimum requirement as for CSR implementation and communication. Accordingly, some suggestions to managers are developed, not just around the three considered attributes of digital CSR communication (content, placement and purposes) but also around the context of buying behaviours linked to the core business and the brand values, which can be, somehow, strongly associated with sustainability and social responsibility. In particular, it emerges that luxury digital CSR communication is expected to be an integrated strategy between online and offline channels, focused upon facts, numbers, performances and results of CSR that should show high coherency with the luxury core business.

Why are CEOs not active on social media? It is increasingly critical for CEOs to not only be physically present at work but also be virtually present in the digital sphere. However, many CEOs are still reluctant to adapt social media or struggle to find the efficient approach to incorporate the tools into their communication strategy. The study explores how CEOs orient themselves in the digital world and make sense of social media. In particular, based on the view of impression management and institutional work, the research examines how CEOs translate their understanding into communication and selfpresentation strategies and activities. The results from 31 in-depth interviews with Chinese and Dutch CEOs suggest that leadership communication on social media is still going through the process of legitimisation in both institutions. Despite the growing popularity of personal branding, most CEOs do not interpret social media as the outlet for their personal and private use or independent from the organisational identities. While most CEOs champion the necessity of digital transformation for their organisations, they do not see clearly how their personal digital habits could potentially influence the process, despite their leadership roles. They typically identify social media as the functional platforms for information circulation and network connection. Multiple narratives and orientations do, however, coexist and they dictate social media decisions simultaneously depending on the context. There is also a prominent difference between the narratives of social media in the Netherlands and in China. Most Dutch CEOs wish active engagement from the organisations but practice passive roles themselves, while most Chinese CEOs are active for both personal and organisational use pressured by the intuitional norms. The research highlights the significance of cultural context regarding leadership communication even on social media. Given most platforms are designed, and arranged to have an international audience, CEOs and companies should be aware of distinctive norms and beliefs they are operated in the different societal institutions.

Reports indicate that in 2017, social commerce had become a 20 billion dollar industry. Given the developing world’s fatigue with social media, social commerce growth will likely be fueled by consumers from developing economies. While literature has investigated social commerce in the context of established brands in developed economies (e.g. Kim and Ko, 2012), it cannot yet explain consumers’ engagement with the uniqueness of social media commerce in developing economies. Social commerce in Southeast Asian economies are largely conducted amongst individuals or micro businesses. Since social media platforms largely do not provide commerce security nor support, consumers are more vulnerable to fraudulent practices. What factors motivate these purchases despite such risks? This study offers insights into how consumers’ motivated reasoning influences their willingness to purchase over social media. We focus on the social media store’s ease of use and perceived security as antecedents of trust. Specifically, we argue that perceiving a lack of ability to purchase from other channels would induce higher trust towards a social media store, despite low perceptions of ease and security of transaction. Data was collected from 224 Indonesian social media users who have been exposed to social media stores on Instagram. The findings suggest that when consumers perceive high control of how they could obtain desired goods, trust becomes a logical function of the perceived safety and ease of use of the shops. However, under low perceived control, consumers display high trust in social media shops despite not being convinced that they are safe nor easy to use. The findings extend our understanding about the antecedents of value creation in social commerce (Stephen and Toubia, 2010). Our results enrich prior literature by showing how motivated reasoning leads to biases in judgment to be in favor of desired goals (Blanton and Gerrard, 1997), and extends it in the novel context of social media commerce. Furthermore, by incorporating the literature on perceived behavioral control and motivated reasoning, the current study provides important empirical evidence for the presence of perceived control over alternate channels as a significant driver for trust towards social media shops. The current research also has a number of implications for social commerce providers in developing economies. This study shows that it is advantageous for managers to cultivate trust using interactivity and reliability to elicit a sense of security and ease of use. However, our findings also offers a caution for firms to not be lulled into a false sense of comfort by taking consumers’ trust at face value.

Social media-based brand community becomes an important information channel strategy for marketing firms. Despite the growing academic interest in the issue, little knowledge exists on how social media-based brand community (hereafter SMBBC) could influence consumer brand evaluation. Accordingly, this study attempts to remedy the literature gap by integrating the community integration model, engagement in the OBC or SMBBC, and consumer brand evaluation to propose a conceptual model for investigating the effect of SMBBC environment on consumer brand evaluation. This study collected data from 402 respondents experienced in using SMBBC. The result revealed that SMBBC identification and company identification have a positive impact on brand engagement; whereas brand identification has a positive effect on SMBBC engagement, peer identification has a positive influence on company identification. In addition, both brand engagement and SMBBC engagement are found to benefit corporate brand equity and corporate reputation, respectively.

The present study compared social capital scales of a six-dimensional version (Model 1), a three-dimensional version (Model 2), and a two-dimensional version (Model 3) in the context of two types of online brand communities. Model 1 explains social capital with six constructs including interaction, trust, reciprocity, identification, language, and vision (Chiu, Hsu, & Wang, 2006; Williams, 2006). Model 2, a shorter version of Model 1, is identified with three dimensions of interaction, trust, and shared values (Lin & Lu, 2011). Lastly, Model 3 presents bridging and bonding as two key dimensions of social capital (Williams (2006). The present study used a quantitative online survey method. The sample size was 588; 301 for company-generated communities and 287 for consumer-generated communities. For comparison, three models were evaluated on two criteria: (1) the consistency in the dimensionality of each scale between two subgroups of online brand communities: company-generated and consumer-generated brand communities and (2) the predictability of the scale on consumer commitment to the brand community. The findings reveal that the three-dimensional model of social capital (Model 2) is more robust than the other models (Models 1 and 3). By comparing three social capital scales and identifying the context-specific scale, the current study contributes to the consumer behavior literature specific to social capital of social network sites. Also, this study helps marketers have a better understanding of social capital elements developed through interpersonal relationships in an online brand community.

Introduction Social media marketing is an attractive marketing method for fostering relationships with customers. About 30% of social media users find social networking sites important when searching for information about brands as well as showing their support towards them (Nielsen, 2017). This engagement with brands on social media is one of the factors driving company outcomes. For example, consumer engagement in social media brand communities is found to have a positive impact on purchase spending (Goh, Heng, and Lin, 2013), brand equity (Christodoulides and Jevons, 2012), and brand attitude (Schivinski and Dabrowski 2016). Consumer engagement involves both consumer interaction and co-creation of the content (Smith and Gallicano, 2015). In order to enhance engagement with brand content, marketers must persuade consumers to interact with those messages by sharing, commenting or liking them (Chang, Yu, Lu, 2014). Hence, interaction is the crucial step towards improving consumer engagement. While marketers rely on experimenting in order to find elements that drive consumer interaction, researchers use vast social media data in order to examine relationships between brand message characteristics and consumer interaction with those messages. For example, (Vries, Gensler, and Leeflang, 2012) studied the impact of post’s vividness, interactivity, content, position of a post and valence of comments on brand post popularity as represented by number of likes and comments. Other researchers such as (Wang et al ,2016) examined the impact of topic, tone and the length of post on social media engagement defined not only by the number of likes and shares, but also by the likability of characters featured in the post. Chang, Yu, and Lu (2014) studied how argument quality, post popularity, and post attractiveness can lead to consumer engagement. Similarly, (Lee and Hong, 2016) investigated the impact of emotional appeal, informativeness and creativity of a message on positive consumer behavior towards brand message. However, little is known so far about the effects of the frequency and spacing of brand-generated content on the dynamics of consumer interaction. Advertising research shows that advertising frequency has an impact on various consumer behavior and attitude outcomes and suggests that there is an optimum level of exposure to advertising that yields greatest results (Schmidt and Eisend, 2015; Broussard, 2000). Moreover, research on advertising repetition in traditional channels suggests an inverted u-shape relationship between ad repetition and message effectiveness. This happens because at a certain number of exposures negative factors, such as boredom and irritation (Heflin and Haygood, 1985), kick in and overweigh positive ones. As a result, the effectiveness of an ad starts diminishing. This effect is also known as the wear-out effect. On the other hand, (Lee, Ahn, and Park, 2015) suggest that inverted U-shape relationship between repetition and attitude towards the brand does not hold true in online environments. This is the case because users can control their exposure to advertising, therefore they do not expose themselves to the ad to the extent that they feel adverse toward it. As firm-generated brand content on social media is a form of advertising, it is interesting to examine, whether wear-out effect occurs in the context of social media and user interaction. In addition, the effect of advertising repetition is found to depend on the time period, or space, between ad exposures (Janiszewski, Noel, and Saywer, 2003). Spacing between exposures affect learning (Sawyer, Noel, and Janiszewski, 2009), attitude towards the brand (Schmidt and Eisend, 2015), purchase spending (Sahni, 2015), attrition rate and customer response (Dreze and Bonfrer, 2008). Moreover, recent study by (Wang, Greenwood, and Pavlou, 2017), who investigated the influence of posting on the propensity to unfollow the brand on the largest social media in China WeChat, found that posting leads to higher likelihood of unfollowing the brand, which in turn has a negative effect on the long term sales. However, WeChat may be considered to be more intrusive than Facebook because of the differences in how followers get notified about new brand posts. Therefore, it is interesting to examine whether the same effect of posting holds true on Facebook. Finally, viral marketing research suggests that the growth rate of interaction with the content depends on the rate of creation of other messages (Karnik, Saroop, and Borkar, 2013). Based on the findings from previous studies, it is evident that frequency and spacing may have a significant influence on the level and growth rate of user interaction. Furthermore, two-sided advertising research suggests that inclusion of negative information in product related messages can yield better results in terms of persuasive power than if no negative information is included (Eisend 2006). In addition, political communication researchers found that sentiment-carrying Twitter messages tend to be retweeted more often and more quickly (Stieglitz and Dang-Xuan, 2013). Therefore, it is suggested that the effect of message frequency and spacing on the level of consumer interaction is moderated by the sentiment of the message. In other words, the optimal level of message frequency is expected to be higher for emotionally-charged firm-generated brand messages as compared to neutral ones. Hence, the following research questions are proposed: RQ1: How does frequency and spacing of brand-generated content affect the dynamics of consumer interaction on social media and how is this effect moderated by the sentiment of the content? RQ2: How does posting on social media affect the unfollowing by brand followers? RQ2a: Does the spacing between messages help reduce the negative effect of posting on the unfollowing by brand followers (if such effect is present)? Research Design & Theoretical Development In order to answer these questions two data sets were gathered via Facebook’s API consisting of 6,471 and 932 brand posts respectively. Two separate data sets were needed to examine the frequency effects on the overall level of consumer interaction as well as on the growth rate of interaction. Therefore, post and page data for 7 international brands from 5 different product categories for the period of 2 years were collected to examine the frequency effects. To investigate the effect of posting on the growth rate of consumer interaction, 11 brands were tracked for the 7-week period in order to capture the development of the interaction. In addition, the impact of posting on the propensity to unfollow the brand was examined. Consequently, three separate regression models were built to test the hypotheses. Results showed that frequency of posting and the level of consumer interaction has an inverted u-shape relationship and that the level of consumer interaction is positively influenced by the space between the posts. Further, findings suggest that posting on social media is positively associated with unfollowing by followers and that the growth rate of interaction of the post depends on the rate of new message generation by the same brand. The conceptual model is presented below. Result and Conclusion The study has few theoretical and practical contributions. Answering to the call for research (Vries, Gensler, and Leeflang, 2012) to include the dynamic aspects of interaction, this study contributes to the social media literature by examining the effects of the rate of new message generation on the growth rate of interaction of the post. In addition, this study adds to the stream of research on the wear-out effects in online environments by including higher number of exposures and by testing the type of firm communication (social media communication) that previously has not been studied. Finally, this study contributed to the recent research (Wang, Greenwood, and Pavlou, 2017) by examining the effect of posting on the unfollowing by brand followers. As for practical contributions, findings of this study have implications for marketing managers with respect to the frequency and spacing of posting. This study provides evidence for a more moderate posting strategies in terms of frequency.

This paper utilized the dual coding theory (Yang, Hlee, Lee, & Koo, 2017) and theory of latent state–trait (LST) (Steyer, Schmitt and Eid, 1999) to the application of consumer impulse purchasing behaviors and further revealed that the number of reaching can thus be identified as a trigger for impulse buying on social media. Three inputs (number of color, text length, number of photo) and three outputs (number of likes; number of comments, and shares; and number of clicks on post) are used to develop this marketing message performance assessment model in the social medial based on the literature and expert opinions through data envelopment analysis (DEA). The disaggregate efficiencies are also assessed in order to improve the individual input resource performance in a total-factor framework. Resource-saving target ratios (RSTR) for 60 marketing message in a five-star hotel chain. The empirical findings indicate that the average total-factor text length efficiency (TFTLE) is worse than the total-factor photo efficiency (TFPE) in the Facebook platform in the five-star hotel chain. This result suggests that photo message is more attractive for viewer than the text message. Managerial discussion and the future studies are discussed.

The power of social media is colossal considering that the number of worldwide users is expected to grow even more in the future reaching 2.95 billion by 2020. Because of the apparent customer engagement in these platforms, companies spend on average 11% of marketing budgets on social media and this expenditure is expected to grow to 19% over the next five years (CMO Survey, 2017). However, the main challenge the companies are facing is how to convert the social media investments into effective marketing and contribution to company’s performance. The customer engagement (CE) in social media catches a strong attention from scholars (Brodie et al., 2013) as well as experts of online marketing (Dessart, Veloutsou, & Morgan-Thomas, 2016). Even though there is a significant progress in the conceptual (Van Doorn et al., 2010) and empirical (Brodie et al., 2013) analysis of CE, its clear understanding remains still insufficient. Customer engagement’s definition requires more attention as there is inconsistency in the terms because of a lack of agreement on the terminology (van Doorn et al., 2010). Noticeable differences exist concerning also the measurement of CE and what exactly this phenomenon encompasses (Dessart et al., 2016). Particularly, the empirical studies show incongruity in the number and the nature of the dimensions (Sprott et al., 2009; Brodie et al., 2013). To investigate the complex and emergent occurrence of CE in social media, this research endorses a managerial-oriented approach using rich qualitative data from three different sources covering a variety of views for different social media platforms (41 companies/24 advertising/communication agencies, and 10 research/consulting firms). The results illustrate the gaps among customer engagement’s conceptions, the customer engagement dimensionality, and the metrics of social media performance beyond customer engagement.

The recent addition of Instagram feature, ad labels for sponsored posts, enables users to explicitly identify sponsored posts, increasing the level of transparency of posts (O’Brien, 2017). In sponsored posts in social media, followers are aware the marketing efforts that go on behind the user generated contents and message threads. Thus, the impact of postings on the followers’ behavioral response may vary depending on the levels of trust that followers have with the brand sponsored Instagram posts. In that regards, retailers implementing Instagram platform have faced creating more persuasive postings that can build the posting credibility and generate positive responses toward the brand. Grounded upon the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986), this study attempted to identify determinants of persuasive postings that build the message credibility of brand sponsored Instagram posts and positive responses toward the brand and to examine how the levels of trust followers have with the brand sponsored Instagram moderate the persuasion process when followers elaborate the postings. Data was collected via online survey and a total of 263 responses were determined to be usable in this study. Structural equation modeling was used to test the study hypotheses. The study results showed that post popularity and the argument quality of the post were determinants of the persuasive posting, increasing message credibility and yielding positive response towards the sponsored brand. Interestingly, post attractiveness was not a persuasive post characteristic. The results implied that post popularity and argument quality of post increased Instagram post credibility. These characteristics of posts have persuasive power to increase the post credibility, leading to a positive response toward the sponsored brand. Consumers’ levels of trust on the Instagram post sponsored brand moderated the persuasive process. The result supported that consumers with a low level of trust on the Instagram post sponsored brand carefully read a wide range of information and pay more attention to argument quality of posts, which consisted of the post content and other followers’ input regarding the product. Through the lens of Elaboration Likelihood Model, this study suggests that retailers should pay particular attention on the argument quality of a post and post popularity. The argument quality of a post is the influential factor determining persuasive and credible posts, further leveraging post credibility for consumers with a low level of trust on the sponsored post.

This study represents the first attempt to investigate how consumers expect sport management to respond to sport celebrity transgressions, while still protecting their corporate social responsibility. Consumer responses were resourced from online forum sites and the investigation noted that consumers expect sport management to respond to sport celebrity transgressions in several ways. Findings indicated that consumers noted specific sport celebrity transgression responses: 1) suspension; 2) apology; 3) fine; and 3) develop educational programmes for sport celebrities. Additionally, consumers indicated that these response strategies should be consistent and uniform through all types of sport.

The twenty-first century has been shaped by various catastrophes and scandals of companies which negatively influence the consumers’ perception of the firm. As a result, consumers nowadays are more skeptic and expect transparent information from companies such as details on product origin, labor standards and environmental aspects. Companies can profit from greater transparency on an organizational level through the improved interaction with their employees and business partners (Parris et al., 2016). Hultman and Axelsson (2007) propose that increased transparency by a company could have not only positive, but also negative results. Furthermore, consumers, too, are expected to participate in change towards more societal responsibility (Vitell, 2015). Thus, the purpose of this research is to investigate the influence of a) relevant types of corporate transparency and b) potential consequences on consumer attitudes and behavior such as perceived credibility, skepticism and purchase intention that can lead to consumer responsibility. This research applied a mixed-methods design in the context of the fashion industry. The findings of Study 1 (in-depth interviews) indicate that the two most relevant types of corporate transparency are supply chain transparency and cost transparency. In Study 2 (scenario-based experiment), these two types of transparency were tested for their effects on credibility and skepticism. Building on Information Processing Theory of Consumer Choice, the experiment showed that corporate transparency has a positive influence on the perceived credibility of a company and thereby decreases consumer skepticism. In contrast, it doesn’t have an influence on the consumer’s felt responsibility. Moreover, corporate transparency has a positive influence on the consumer’s responsible purchase intention. It is important to note, though, that the two types of transparency do not yield different results. In other words, as long as a company provides more infor-mation than commonly expected, e.g. on the production sites or on labor costs, perceived credibility of the company and, thus, consumers’ purchase intentions can be increased.

Introduction Recently, Corporate Social Responsibility(CSR) is becoming very important issue in the corporate growth and marketing strategy. In this study, based on Carroll (1979, 1991)’s conception of CSR study, we categorized the CSR types into the five underlying dimensions – i.e. economic, legal, ethical, benevolent, and environmental responsibilities. We tried to investigate the effects of consumer’s perception of the five different types of CSR on the corporate brand equity. More specifically, we used the corporate image, consumer-company identification, and the level of trust which have been used as important variables in the previous brand value studies as the underlying mediating variables of the research model. Theoretical Background and Research Model Based on the conceptual background and our research questions, 11 research hypothese regarding the consumer perceptions of the five different types of CSR, corporate image, consumer-company identification, trust, consumer loyalty, and corporate evaluation were developed. We also tried to include the moderating effects of CSR congruence and consumer’s CSR orientation between the CSR types and mediating variables of the final research model. Results and Conclusions To test the research hypotheses and our research model, we conducted questionnaire survey and collected 552 consumer data for the final analysis. Through the confirmatory factor analysis, reliability and validity of the study constructs were verified. By using the structural equation model, research hypotheses were tested and most research hypotheses were statistically significant and accepted. The final research model also showed the statistical significance with the goodness-of-fit indices. The managerial implications of the study results for the corporate marketing managers and the limitations of the study were also discussed.

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication is generally regarded as good and necessary to inform stakeholders of a company’s CSR deeds. However, research has recently uncovered the practice of “greenhushing” within the context of the hospitality industry (Coles, Warren, Borden, & Dinan, 2017; Font, Elgammal, & Lamond, 2017). Greenhushing means that companies de-emphasize green credentials and CSR activities. Going on holidays is an indulgent act that might result from people feeling they have earned some luxury, including behaving lavishly in terms of resource consumption and responsible behavior. Thus, curtailing this indulgent, irresponsible guest behavior without compromising a guest’s holiday experience is a key challenge for hotels. This paper explores whether the assumption that customers do not want to hear about CSR communication while on holiday is true from the customers’ side and what type of communication achieves to curtail unethical behavioral intentions. Based on 594 usable responses from an online survey, we undertake a moderation analysis with a multi-categorical antecedent variable (different communication stimuli), pro-environmental identity as a moderator and behavioral intentions for “unethical” behavior as a dependent variable using PROCESS 3.0 for SPSS (Hayes, 2018). The results provide partial support for our theoretical predictions.

The study of environmental behavior is widespread in the literature. However, while substantial consideration has been given to home environmental behaviors and sustainable consumption, far less research has focused on workplace environmental behaviors. The values-beliefs-norms (VBN) model is a framework that has been utilized to examine environmental behavior but the model has rarely been applied to a workplace setting. This paper examines the “4Rs” (reducing use, reusing, repurposing, and recycling) of workplace environmental conserving behaviors, based on Ones and Dilchert’s (2013) taxonomy, along with all elements of the VBN framework. This research identifies relationships between these variables via a quantitative methodology. In doing so, this study presents a new and important application of the VBN framework to employee pro-environmental behavior and suggests potential directions for using related interventions and communications to improve environmental behavior in organizations.

As visual marketing gains a more critical role in marketing communications, consumer eye-tracking data has been utilized to assess the effectiveness of those marketing efforts (Croll, 2016; Glazer, 2012). With eye-tracking data, researchers can capture consumers’ visual attention effectively and may predict their behavior better than with traditional memory measures (Wedel & Pieters, 2008). However, due to the complexity of data: its volume, velocity and variety, known as 3Vs of Big Data, marketing scholars have been slow in fully utilizing eye-tracking data. These data properties may pose a challenge for researchers to analyze eye-tracking data, especially gaze sequence data, with traditional statistical approaches. Commonly, researchers may analyze gaze sequences by computing average probabilities of gaze transitions from a particular area of interest to another area of interest. When the variance of gaze sequence data in the sample is small, this method would uncover a meaningful “global” trend, a trend consistent across all the individuals. However, when the variance is large, this method may not enable researchers to understand the nature of the variance, or the “messiness” of data. In this paper, first, to overcome this challenge, we propose an innovative method of analyzing gaze sequence data. Utilizing the singular value decomposition, our proposed method enables researchers to reveal a “local” trend, a trend shared by only some individuals in the sample. Second, we illustrate the benefits of our method through analyzing gaze sequence data collected in an advertising study. Finally, we discuss the implications of our proposed method, including its capability of uncovering a hidden “local” trend in “messy” gaze sequence data.

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is one of the best available devices that can record the activities of living human brain non-invasively. Its precision and high spatial resolution is matched by none other methodology. The entry barrier to fMRI research is exceptionally high. fMRI has widely been used in medical and scientific research, but its application to marketing research has been limited because of two important reasons. First, the cost problem. The MR scanning devices often cost multi-million dollars and using fMRI for marketing research can be costly. Second, analyzing data from fMRI study is another formidable task. fMRI measures the brain’s hemodynamic activities using voxel as a measuring unit; Voxels are often a cubic with 2 to 3 millimeters on one side. Since a typical adult brain represents over one million voxels in one scan volume, and each scan generally has 2 to 3 seconds of interval time, one experimental block of 40 seconds, for example, will create over 40 million data points. Compared to a typical marketing research data which in general have two dimensions (2d) of rows and columns, fMRI data is inherently 4d with added dimensions of voxel and time. Furthermore, the fMRI signal is sensitive to various sources of noises. In this talk, we offer support for marketing researchers who want to explore fMRI method for their research in the future. First, we discuss issues related to experimental design for fMRI experiments. We explain preprocessing steps that are recommended for fMRI data and show how to apply statistical methods to make inferences that can increase internal validity. Then, we will explicate how to apply big data analytics to fMRI data during this talk to find deep insights into customer’s brains. A real neuromarketing fMRI data will be used to break down the steps for fMRI research and data analytics. Finally, we will open a discussion to discover future research opportunities for marketing research using fMRI. The purpose of this talk is to lower the entry barrier of fMRI method in neuromarketing research so that more people in the marketing field can benefit from the most advanced scientific achievement of our time and discover deepest insights into our customers.

This study assesses the interactive effect of shelf-based scarcity and shelf organisation on luxury purchases. Previous studies have addressed multiple factors surrounding shelf based scarcity (e.g. Parker and Lehmann 2011; Van Herpen et al 2014) however none has considered perceived luxuriousness as a potential explanation for the effects of shelf-based scarcity; nor have many studies used a luxury context. This study therefore examined whether product luxuriousness, product popularity, product supply and/or product quality serve as underlying mechanism of shelf-based sacristy effects. The study recruited 125 consumers and the experiment followed a mixed factorial design. The luxuriousness of the brand and the organisation of the shelf display were manipulated between subjects, whereas stock level was manipulated within subjects. Data collated consisted of both self-report and psycho-physiological methods (brainwave and facial expression) Low stock level was perceived to more tidy than medium and high stock level when the shelf display was disorganised; a significant interactive effect (Mlow = 4.06, Mmedium = 3.71 4.77, Mhigh = 2.86, ps = .025, p < .001). Significantly higher perceived product quality was reported for low stock product than high stock product (Mlow = 5.34, Mhigh = 4.79, p < .001), as participants’ perceived high stock to be restocked more frequently. Results of bootstrapping indicated that perceived luxuriousness was found to be the only significant partial mediator for the effect of stock level on approach motivation, further supported by brainwave and facial expression analysis (Indirect = .066, 95%CI = [.0043, .1362], p < .001).The direct effect of stock level remained significant after accounting for the indirect effect (Direct = .11, 95%CI = [.0117, .2091], p < .001). This study is the first to use psychophysiological methods to validate self-report findings and to examine perceived luxuriousness as a plausible explanation of the shelf-based sacristy effect.

The young generation that was born in the digital age grew up with digital technologies; they listen to music online on web sites like YouTube, which provides access to music by artists from all over the world. We conducted a functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) experiment with fifty-six young adults. The human brain generates electrical waves as long as it lives. Since the dynamic nature of brain rhythm is at work in all kinds of human brain function, neuroscientists have used brain rhythm to understand brain function. Since the work of Gerstein and Mandelbrot (1964), many attempts have been made to use random-walk analyses to account for brain responses like the spiking of neurons, cell migration, and motor variability. Like any other biological system, the brain pursues functional efficiency at all levels of operation—in the brain’s case, from the neuronal cell level to the neural network level. Before one can determine the presence of a periodic rhythm versus a random state in brain activation, one must determine whether external stimuli can shape the brain’s modulation pattern. Brain-wave patterns are affected by whether the neural circuit that governs a particular set of brain functions reaches a significant level of activation. The bottom-up processing of external stimuli can be affected by top-down processing; in other words, the execution of higher-order cognitive attention can affect the degree of randomness in the bottom-up processing of external sensory inputs like that of music. Unlike EEG signals, the rhythms of hemodynamic signals are not commonly calculated, possibly because hemodynamic signals are sluggish. The random-walk test on neural time series has been applied only recently to magnetoencephalography (MEG) data (Kipiński, König, Sielużycki, & Kordecki, 2011), and it has rarely been applied to hemodynamic signals measured with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS). However, since hemodynamic responses are the result of neurovascular coupling—a dynamic event among the brain’s neurons, glias, and vasculatures—it is possible to calculate the degree of randomness of hemodynamic signals as surrogates for neuronal activity. While brain activities are inherently random and noisy in their natural state, when the brain rhythm is modified by music that provides appropriate levels of sensory stimulation, the brain’s signals will begin to reflect the music’s rhythms. This reflection is called “attunement.” The effect of sensori-neural stimulation on hemodynamic responses measured by fNIRS has been reported in neuroscience research that found that auditory stimulation and music elevated the concentrations of oxygenated hemoglobin (HbO2) and total hemoglobin (HbT) in blood flow to certain regions of the brain (Hoshi & Tamura, 1993; Kotilahti et al., 2010; Sakatani, Chen, Lichty, Zuo, & Wang, 1999). However, studies have shown decreases (increases) in children’s (adults’) prefrontal cerebral volume after they play computer games. For example, one study suggested that the level of attention may modulate the directional changes in HbO2 and HbT concentrations (Nagamitsu, Nagano, Yamashita, Takashima, & Matsuishi, 2006). The brains of children who find that a game lacks adequate levels of perceptual stimulation do not require an additional supply of oxygen, but adults who find playing the same game a cognitive challenge require more effort to perform the same task, so they require elevated levels of oxygen in their brains (Ferreri et al., 2014). According to musical theorists, when the brain is entrained, the attention follows the music (London, 2012). When members of the digital generation listen to music, the perceptual stimulation level is likely to related to the degree of randomness in brain responses as well as the quality of the sensory experience. Drawing on the literature review, we predict that TBF is higher for a stimulus that is above OSL than the TBF for a counterpart stimulus that is below OSL. We also predict that the hemodynamic rhythm of related brain regions to music that is above OSL adopts a regular predictable pattern. Hence, we propose the following research hypotheses: H1: Digital music that provides acoustic stimulation near the OSL creates brain responses in the form of higher TBF and lower randomness in HbO2 concentrations than does digital music that provides acoustic stimulation that is below the OSL. Functional Near-infrared Spectroscopy The transparency of biological tissue to light in the near-infrared wavelengths makes NIRS possible. NIRS is non-invasive and portable, and it has a cost advantage. The incident near-infrared light from a transmitting optode (source) is scattered through the tissues, and the reflected light is detected by a receiving optode (detector). The amount of the source light that a tissue absorbs depends on the light’s wave length, and the oxygenation status determines the brain’s absorption of the light. The loss of the intensity that is due to the absorption of the photons can be measured in units of optical density (Zaramella et al., 2001). The changes in [oxy-Hb] and [deoxy-Hb] can be calculated according to the modified Beer-Lambert law (Kocsis, Herman, & Eke, 2006) using two wave lengths of near-infrared light—in our case, 780 and 850nm. We used a 12-channel wireless fNIRS system (Biomedical Optics Lab, Korea University) with sampling rates of 8 ~10 Hz to measure the participants’ hemodynamic response while they watched the videos. The system consists of three light sources and five detectors (a 3×7 grid). The fNIRS probe was attached to each subject’s forehead. The detectors of the lowest line were set along the Fp1 and Fp2 electrode line according to the international 10/20 system. Measurements from channels 1, 2, 11, and 12, which contained noise from movements of the subjects’ heads, hair, and sweat, were excluded from further analysis. Neuroscience research has recorded acoustic stimulation in various regions of the brain, including the temporal brains of newborn babies (Hoshi & Tamura, 1993) and the frontal brains of adults (Sakatani et al., 1999). Since infrared light cannot penetrate hair, brain regions that are not covered by hair, such as the prefrontal cortex, are well-suited to an fNIRS study. When a member of the digital generation listens to music online, the motivation is usually enjoyment, so brain activity changes that are due to popular music should occur in brain areas that are associated with reward-related processing—that is, the medial pre-frontal cortex (mPFC) (Haber & Knutson, 2010). As the mental function of pleasurable experience that is modulated in the medial frontal cortex increases, TBF to this region increases. In particular, the processing of sounds is dominantly modulated by the brain’s right hemisphere (Kaiser, Lutzenberger, Preissl, Ackermann, & Birbaumer, 2000). We analyzed TBF to the right brain area of the mPFC at channel 5 using fNIRS. The research hypothesis predicts that songs that provide strong sensory stimulation above the OSL increase the TBFs of those in the digital generation more than do songs that present a sensory stimulation level that is much under the OSL. TBF can be directly obtained as a product of HbT (Wyatt et al., 1990). After the music began in the experiment, the subjects’ concentrations of HbT increased until HbT reached its peak at around five to eight seconds; then it decreased for the next thirty seconds. There was a divide of hemodynamic responses between the two songs that had more than a million hits per day (A and B) and the remaining three (C, D, and E). We conducted repeated measures of ANOVA on TBF, measured at forty seconds, for the five songs, since TBF at the end of each set of song segments can represent the digital generation’s level of sustained attention. The multivariate test for the model was significant, and the main effect of songs on TBF was significant (Wilk’s Lambda 0.75, F(4,51)=4.249, p=0.005,  ). After the forty seconds of each song were over, the TBF levels remained at the highest level for song A, followed in order by Songs B, C, D, and E. Pairwise comparisons after the Bonferroni correction showed that there was a significant divide in the length of time that the TBF levels remained at the highest level between songs A/B and songs C/D/E (p<0.05). Other differences were not significant, possibly because the neural data contained large individual difference variances (between-subject F test: F(1,54) =38.501, .p<0.001, ). The results support hypothesis 1. Next, we examined the relationships between TBF and daily hits, and BORP and daily hits. The Pearson correlation coefficient between TBF and daily hits was 0.88 (p<0.05), and the correlation coefficient between BORP and daily hits was -0.96 (p<0.05). Pairwise comparisons after the Bonferroni correction showed that, there was a significant divide in the length of time that the TBF levels remained at the highest level between songs A/B and songs D/E (p<0.05). Other differences were not significant, possibly because neural data contains a large portion of individual variance (between-subject F test: F(1,54) =372.675, p<0.001,  ). These results are consistent with our hypothesis 1b that pop music that presents stimulation above OSL can reduce the randomness in hemodynamic signals. The changes in the participants’ hemoglobin concentrations while they listened to popular songs show a mean-reverting tendency with low BORP—a “rhythm” such that a system recovers order and balance in due time. The brain’s response to less popular songs were random-walk processes, which represents a neural drain, a process in which brain fails to recover from oxygen depletion because of boredom. In conclusion, we found that total blood flow to the right medial prefrontal cortex increased less when the young adults were exposed to music that presented acoustic stimulation near the optimal sensory load (OSL) than it did when they were exposed to songs with a level of stimulation much below the OSL. The degrees of hemodynamic randomness decreased significantly while the participants listened to online music that provided near-OSL stimulation. Online popularity, recorded as the number of daily hits, was significantly positively correlated with the total blood flow and negatively correlated with hemodynamic randomness. These findings suggest that a new digital media strategy may be required that provides a sufficient level of sensory stimulation as an essential part of marketing to the digital consumer generation.

Measuring consumers’ emotion with self-report methods has remained a challenge in luxury marketing. In comparison to self-report measure, psychophysiological methods promise to provide a scientific, objective and sensitive measure of the neurophysiological basis of emotional processes. The objective of this paper is to: (1) examine the feasibility of using psychophysiological methods in luxury marketing; (2) compare the capability of psychophysiological methods to capture emotion beyond those measured by self-report methods; and (3) better under luxury consumers’ emotion processes. In this study, brain wave analysis, heart rate, skin conductance, and facial expression were used to investigate consumers’ emotional response toward luxury marketing stimuli. The psychophysiological findings identified anger, interest and arousal as key emotional processes that affect consumers’ reaction to luxury branding. These findings show that psychophysiological methods are not only feasible in informing luxury branding practices but also provide insights into luxury consumers’ emotional experience beyond those captured by self-report methods.