The market for counterfeit luxury goods is growing rapidly, with estimates suggesting that counterfeit trades are valued at around $4.5 trillion globally, with 60% to 70% of this being made up of counterfeit luxury goods. Research has shown that counterfeits dilute the perceived quality of luxury brands and reduce consumers' purchase intentions. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are a form of ownership record that is linked and stored on a blockchain.

The development and application of NFTs has gained great attentions. Especially, with the eyes on the potential of Metaverse and Web 3.0, NFTs are regarded as one of the foundational parts of the future internet. The main contribution of NFTs is the innovative solution for creating digital uniqueness through its property of non-fungibility. With this property, the ubiquity caused by replicable data on the current internet can be advanced with NFT-backed uniqueness, which can assist in certifying authenticity, authorship, and possessions of contents, products, and assets online. This has tremendous meaning for the luxury brand industry, which has been struggling with the ubiquity of the internet for years. The emergence of NFTs, however, represents hope and a potential mean to represent scarcity in a digital context. By the use of NFTs, luxury brands’ conservative digital marketing strategies and their ways of production design, marketing, consumer management could be fundamentally changed. This study aims to discuss the NFT marketing strategy from the perspective of luxury brands. Particularly, the study will investigate the desirability strategies in these luxury NFT cases. To do so, the study uses a socio-technical perspective to understand how luxury brands embody the desirability strategy through NFTs, by considering the technical factors of NFTs (i.e., design, issuance, and ecosystem functioning) and social factors of desirability (i.e., exclusivity, rarity, prestige, and creative leadership). The study explores applicable strategy of how to realize luxury desirability through NFT technics. As a result, this study investigates 39 luxury NFT cases from 2021 to 2022, including the NFTs launched by famous luxury brands such as Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Burberry, Dolce & Gabbana, and KARL LAGERFELD. The study showcases three within-case analyses to exhibit vivid examples of NFT innovations. Besides, the study generates a common framework by a complete cross-case analysis. The framework contains three domains and seven dimensions to guide further luxury NFT innovations and contributes to theory development in the field of NFT marketing and branding.

This paper examines how consumers evaluate digital products with multiple Non-fungible Tokens (NFTs), which are blockchain-enabled cryptographic assets that represent proof-of-ownership for digital objects. The study predicts that people prefer fractioned NFTs (unique fractions of a digital object) versus duplicated NFTs (identical digital objects with distinct numbers) due to their preference for uniqueness. The study also examines the moderating role of product attributes, predicting that preferences for fractioned NFTs will be reduced when the product provides unique aspects, such as a serial number.

Blockchain is an immutable ledger that records transactions and tracks assets using a common communication protocol. It stores a copy of the blockchain and implements a consensus function to verify transactions. Blockchain is applied to industries beyond finance, such as retail, to maintain security and transparency. Consumers with knowledge of blockchain technology are likely to be affected when evaluating products with blockchain embedded, impacting their product evaluation. The study investigates the impact of blockchain technology on consumers' product evaluation and how knowledge of blockchain and product quality moderate its effects.

This research examines the impact of visualizing virtual luxury products in the metaverse on consumers' perceptions of luxury products in the real world. We explore the metaverse as a marketing platform and investigate the relationship between the quality of visualization of virtual luxury products and consumers’ evaluations of real luxury products. The study hypothesizes that poor visualization quality of virtual luxury products will decrease the evaluation of authentic luxury goods, and this effect will be mediated by decreased perceived authenticity. Additionally, we predict that the negative effect will be mitigated by high-quality visualization.

Virtual influencer marketing is an emerging research area due to the increasing popularity of virtual influencers across the social media landscape. However, existing literature falls short when it comes to explaining how consumers perceive the attributes of virtual influencers and what their roles are in determining the cognitive acceptance of the messages they communicate. To address the research gaps, this study pursued the objective of exploring the cognitive processes of individuals being exposed to the information elicited by virtual influencers. We adopted Social Influence Theory, which postulates that there are three processes of influence acceptance, namely compliance, internalisation and identification, each of which is conditioned by a set of different factors. To address the research objective, this study was carried out in two stages. In the first exploratory stage, we drew on relevant research to identify the attributes of virtual influencers, which could predict the three influence acceptance processes. To ensure the accuracy of the results, three approaches to the validation and filtering of attributes were used, i.e.: a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of 126 papers discussing the characteristics of influencers and a survey-based ranking of the importance of the generated attributes. As a result, we found that the top 8 statistically significant factors are warmth, relatedness, interactivity, competence, empathy, uniqueness, fairness and credibility. In the second stage, based on a sample of 601 respondents, we analysed the associations of the identified attributes with cognitive processes using a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA). The analysis showed different configurations of the core and peripheral predictors of compliance, identification and internalisation. For a high level of compliance, a high level of interactivity is a core condition; for a high level of identification, empathy, competence, fairness, interactivity, and credibility act as core predictors. A high level of internalisation is associated with two core predictors, namely interactivity and relatedness. The findings of the study contribute to the extant literature on virtual influencers by providing empirical evidence about the cognitive acceptance of influence elicited by virtual influencers and the characteristics of non-human opinion leaders that shape consumers’ attitudes and behaviour. The findings offer practical insights into how to enhance the persuasiveness of virtual influencers’ messages.

This study examines the impact of others' reviews (reviews, product ratings) on consumer responses (helpfulness & buying intention) in an online shopping platform. We propose that review features, such as review message construal and review inconsistency between review message valence and rating, determine review credibility as product-related information, which in turn influences helpfulness of review and buying intention toward the product. Specifically, low- level construal review messages will be perceived as more credible than high-level construal review messages, which affect helpfulness and buying intention. In addition, the effect of review message construal will be moderated by review inconsistency. The effect of the review message construal will be enhanced in the condition of review consistency (positive content-high rating & negative content-low rating), but it will be disappeared or attenuated in the condition of inconsistency (positive content-low rating, negative content-high rating).

With the rapid development and progress of modern social economy and science and technology, a new concept has emerged in the public's vision: the digital creative industry, which is a type of industry that combines modern information technology and cultural creative industries into one and integrates them, such as "the universe", virtual products, artificial intelligence, VR technology, and so on. Research by ARK INVEST shows that the compound growth rate of the "meta universe" will reach 17%, increasing from $180 billion currently to $390 billion in 2025. The mature "meta universe" can satisfy users to complete all social, entertainment, and other attributes similar to the real world.

Chatbot-based services in online travel agency (OTA) are rapidly spreading in order to respond more agilely to consumers' needs based on the digitalization of the travel industry. Although AI chatbots use anthropomorphism to provide social experiences on behalf of humans, research results on its effects are mixed. Therefore, based on construal level theory, this study suggests the degree of anthropomorphism (low vs. high) of chatbots prime mental representations of different construal levels (low vs. high) and the fit between anthropomorphism and communication context (communication types and conversation types) has a positive effect on use behavior. This research method consisted of sentimental analysis for exploring use behavior of AI chatbots and two experimental studies (study 1 and study 2) to examine the hypotheses. The results of this study expand construal level theory and avatar research to provide an understanding of the anthropomorphism of AI chatbots.

To promote the diffusion of environmentally friendly equipment, appropriate measures need to be taken for each target group. This study evaluated changes in the influence of mass media on PV installation intentions by generation, based on over 10 years of consumer awareness survey data and the number of newspaper reports.

The rapid digital transformation and the ever-changing needs of consumers have provided both academia and practice a stimulating setting and chance for grasping evolving opportunities and reinventing the traditional marketing approaches. Agility is one emergent approach to manage challenges like increasing uncertainty or high volatility. Due to its relative novelty, the extant academic literature on marketing agility is narrow, and although the operationalization of the construct is slowly expanding, there is yet the need for further refinement of the definition, the construct, terminology, and its dimensions. Similarly, in practitioner circles there is a growing “buzz” about implementing agile practices (e.g., continuous feedback-learning cycles, collaboration, flexibility, and speed) in the field of marketing to manage changing market environments. What exactly makes an organization, a department, or a team agile is, however, still blurred.

Based on expectancy theory, this study examines the extent to which franchisees share innovative ideas within the franchise system as a function of their expectation that the ideas are adopted (success expectancy), and their belief that such effort benefits their own personal interests (valence) under different service industries. In addition, satisfaction is considered as an additional motivator that may promote the sharing of ideas. We argue how can the decision maker (franchisor) be aware and take advantage of unknown innovative ideas the franchisees may have.

Cancel culture is a social media phenomenon that targets someone for bad behavior in a process of public shaming, or, being “cancelled”. I use qualitative analysis methods to identify elements of cancel culture’s narrative, and how cancel culture is representative of the end of a parasocial relationship.

Consumers have a strong desire to share their accomplishments on social media. They post about getting a promotion, completing an online course, finishing a marathon, or donating to charity. Companies also nudge consumers to make such posts. Understanding better people's beliefs about sharing achievement-related information with others is important.

Engaging customers is a critical requirement for sharing economy platforms (SEPs) to sustain and grow their user base. Although the interactions between users who consume the service (customers) and those who provide it (peer service providers) are the primary source of SEPs’ economic value, little is known about the role of interactivity in driving customer engagement. This research links these two important concepts by theorizing and empirically testing the influence of different dimensions of interactivity (two-way communication, participation, joint problem-solving) on customer engagement (cognitive engagement, emotional engagement, behavioral engagement) in SEPs.

While social media marketing opens a variety of new windows for enlightening brand–customer relationships, a gritty puzzle is that brand recognition does not invariably echo with customers’ perceived value. This provokes the need to uncover the missing pieces in bridging the gap between brand recognition and customer perceived value. This research falls within the innovative new work in the marketing literature in positing co-creation as a crucial mediator in facilitating the impact of brand recognition on customers’ perceived value. Based on social identity theory, we also investigated how co-creation is moderated by virtual communication identification in influencing customers’ perceived value towards a brand. We conducted a survey via a sample of 386 current Gogoro customers. Gogoro is the biggest and most well-known Taiwanese producer of electric scooters. Our findings contribute to the extant marketing research by emphasizing that the key stimulus of increased customer perceived value towards a brand is active co-creation initiatives via virtual brand communities, and that the effects of co-creation are further strengthened when customers’ virtual communication identification is high.

Voice assistant devices (VADs), driven and improved by artificial intelligence, have been adapted for consumers (e.g., Hey Google and Alexa) and are widely used for their daily lives (Guha et al., 2022; Rabassa, Sabri, & Spaletta, 2022). Consumers benefit from the use of a VAD as it makes their daily lives more convenient, more comfortable, and simpler (Zierau et al., 2022). At the same time, companies can also benefit from interactions with VADs by collecting consumer-related data and storing it in large databases for marketing purposes (Guha et al., 2022; Rabassa et al., 2022).

In recent years E-commerce platforms recommend some products for consumers based on their shopping history and user persona. However, sometimes, unfamiliar products or styles would be recommended to consumers unintentionally or intentionally. Curiosity drives consumers to try but this idea would be declined with the consideration of product fit uncertainty. Augmented Reality (AR) is the integration of digital information with the user‘s environment in real-time (Hilken et al. 2018), it can deal with issues related to physical apprehension that hinder consumers’ online shopping (i.e, clothes, cosmetics), especially for the unfamiliar style. This study aims to investigate whether AR technology could improve consumers' purchase likelihood. Augmented Reality (AR) can enhance customer experiences in a multichannel environment (Hilken et al. 2017). AR Integrates online experiences into the offline experience (Hilken et al. 2018), such as virtual try-on or magic mirrors. Customers often find it difficult to imagine how firms’ products and services fit them personally or fit with their environment (Hilken et al. 2018). Drawn on AR, consumers can easily evaluate the fitness between themselves and the selected products. Prior studies have explored the different underlying processes of why AR technology could improve consumer purchase intention and customer experience. For instance, according to the situated cognition theory, AR creates a feeling of spatial presence (Hilken et al. 2017). The usage of AR benefits mental imagery, improving decision comfort (Heller et al. 2019). AR can compensate for consumers’ need for touch and offer hedonic and/or utilitarian benefits (Gatter et al. 2022). Based on media richness theory, AR offers more information for customers (Hoffmann et al. 2022), which represents a fitting concept for customers to evaluate the product (Javornik 2016).

Algorithms are rapidly altering the way society operates (SIOP, 2020). Algorithms are used in modern businesses for tasks such as hiring, advising investors on financial matters, recommending new products to customers (Shankar, 2018). However, lay people frequently oppose them, a phenomenon known as algorithm aversion (e.g., Dietvorst et al., 2015). While prior research tries to address this issue by identifying cognitive and affective predictors of algorithm aversion, we seek to contribute to the algorithm aversion literature by investigating an understudied antecedent of people’s support for algorithm adoption—their cultural values (Dietvorst & Bartels, 2022).

This research investigates the impact of specific emotions in electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) on the monthly donations received by a non-profit organization (NPO). We employ the empathy-helping (empathy-altruism) hypothesis as a theoretical foundation, proposing that donation motivations should inform eWOM fundraising appeals. To do so, we analyzed 71,462 tweets about a charity from 23,430 users, categorizing them as either marketer-generated content (MGC) or user-generated content (UGC). To automatically detect six distinct emotions in the text, we utilized a transformer-transfer learning approach for emotion detection. This model was trained in a sequential manner, starting with self-reported emotions in over 3.6 million tweets and progressing to socially agreed-upon emotion datasets to mimic social-emotional development stages. Our findings revealed that emotions prompting empathy (such as sadness in MGC) and positive empathy (like joy in UGC) positively influence donation amounts in line with the empathy-helping hypothesis. We offer insights on how social media marketers can leverage these results to create and manage tweets that boost donations. This study contributes to marketing research and practice in three ways: (1) by being the first, to our knowledge, to examine the effect of specific emotions in eWOM on donation decisions, (2) by introducing a novel machine learning model capable of detecting emotions in large-scale eWOM, and (3) by providing actionable recommendations for NPOs to increase donations via emotionally driven social media messaging. As a result, marketing managers can more effectively use social media platforms to foster emotional connections between NPOs and donors.