This study answers an important question for university social media advertising. Does processing fluency of the brand and brand identity (e.g., name, logo, symbol etc.) of the university affect the behavior intention of target customers for the university? The results show that name processing fluency (especially pronunciation), advertising processing fluency, brand awareness, brand value, and brand ranking significantly impact behavior intention. In addition, target audience’s individual social media behavior (e.g., general attitude toward the social media, frequency of social media use and involvement) explains the attitude toward the university advertising in social media.
Over the past decade, in-feed native advertising has become one of the most popular forms of online advertising, attracting attention from both academia and industry. Compared to traditional online ads, in-feed native ads are less intrusive and have more engaging content, effectively reducing users' tendency to avoid ads and improving advertising effectiveness. Despite existing review studies, most of them focus on specific aspects of in-feed native advertising, such as ad identification, disclosure, or regulation, and lack an overview of the relevant literature. Moreover, with the diversified development of digital media forms, the widespread application of AI technologies, and the improvement of consumers' ad literacy, in-feed native ad research faces new issues and practical challenges. Thus, a systematic review of existing research is necessary to identify valuable future research directions.
The hospitality, tourism, and travel (HTT) industry has a significant environmental impact due to its water, energy, and waste production. One of the main challenges faced by the HTT industry is the reduction of the negative environmental impact of hotel businesses. Recent studies have shown that consumers are willing to pay a premium for green hotels that adopt environmentally friendly practices to minimize their impact on the environment. While interest in these practices has been increasing, not all consumers are familiar with actual benefits of green hotels. Therefore, it is necessary to employ strategies to increase consumers’ awareness and encourage positive pre-purchasing decisions when selecting a green hotel.
As one of the biggest service-oriented industries worldwide, the hotel industry significantly contributes to environmental degradation in several ways. Service marketers, consumers, and policy makers are increasingly aware of the damage that excessive natural resources depletion in the guise of water and energy consumption and CO2 emissions by hotels might bring about to the planet. As a result of the growing global concern about climate change, there has been an increase in consumer demand for environmentally-responsible hospitality options. One such option is green hotels, which are environmentally-conscious hospitality properties that are gaining popularity worldwide at a rapid pace. Consumers who prioritize eco-friendliness are willing to pay a premium for green hotels. However, unlike tangible products, services such as hotel experiences are subjective, emotional, and therefore, difficult to evaluate before actual usage. One of the prominent ways in which consumers assess green hotels’ credibility is through user generated content in the form of reviews.
This study investigates social media posts on Twitter concerning cryptocurrency marketing. We applied unsupervised Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling and sentiment analysis techniques to 98,716 tweets to examine the Twitter content for subjects and sentiments related to cryptocurrency. We discovered that tweets about cryptocurrency fell into four categories, with “cryptocurrency trading,” “NFT airdrop,” “cryptocurrency affiliate program,” and “Dogecoin on social media” being the most popular. Most of the topics had positive sentiments. Theoretical and practical implications for developing cryptocurrency marketing communication strategies are discussed.
Augmented reality (AR) is a technology that overlays user surroundings with computer-generated images (Baek et al., 2016). It provides users with an enhanced view of their environment with digital content such as text, pictures, videos, three-dimensional (3D) objects, and even tactile and olfactory experiences (Du et al., 2022). This technology has significant potential for use in advertising, enabling realistic product visualisations and virtual product try-ons via social media (Baek et al., 2016).
As cryptocurrencies continue to gain viability as an asset class, institutional investors and publicly traded firms are beginning to enter into positions in digital currencies. While generating profits may be the primary purpose, corporations also wish to advertise to their stakeholders that they are keeping up-to-date with latest technological developments, trends, and cutting-edge investment opportunities in enhancing the wealth of the shareholders. The marketing and financial signals with the involvement in blockchain platforms and digital currencies intend to demonstrate the efficiency of corporate operations, and the agility in the utilization of the retained funds. What firms may not be considering however, is the effect these assets may have on their risk profiles. This paper aims at measuring the effect of digital currencies on the risk and returns of publicly traded companies, deciphering the motives behind holding a cryptocurrency as an asset, and determining whether one reason for holding is more impactful than another. Four largest publicly traded holders as well as four of the most prominent digital currencies are explored. The findings from the study contribute to the literature in corporate risk reporting, in marketing and financial motivations of digital currency holdings, and in digital currency risks. The conclusions of the study also make a case for firm transparency through detailed reports of the risk effects of digital currency holdings.
This study aims to address two important questions: will advertising on mobile short-form video apps jeopardize the value perception of luxury brands (RQ1), and if so, how will self-deprecating online reviews eliminate these negative effects (RQ2). An experimental design approach was employed to investigate the proposed research questions. Three experiments were conducted to test the hypotheses. SPSS was used for data analysis. The study 1 finds that compared with traditional media, advertising on mobile short-form video apps shortened the psychological distance between consumers and luxury, therefore has a more negative impact on consumers’ perception of luxury brands. The study 2 reveals that self-deprecating online reviews can eliminate the negative effects of advertising of luxury brands. On the basis of previous research, this paper proves the negative influence of social media on luxury brands in the scene of new social media-mobile short format video application. In addition, it also studies the moderating effect of online comments, especially self-deprecating comments, on consumers' perception of luxury brands. This study outlines theoretical contributions and practical implications for the luxury marketing management and made suggestions for future research in the field of luxury marketing in Social Media.
Involving issues of environmental, consumer safety and health, and/or social concerns, a morally controversial action refers to an activity that does not have a single standard of ethics for all people, making it challenging to draw a clear line between what is ethical versus unethical. Despite its ambiguity, any firm can be involved in it, especially when the firm operates in the global marketplace where a variety of social, health, and environmental consequences surrounding a given action are questioned by consumers. If consumers come to know of a familiar brand’s morally controversial behavior, it can create approach-avoidance conflicts in their minds; they may see the brand’s action as mismatched with their own moral standards (“avoidance” manifested through a measurable construct––moral incongruence), while being tempted to justify the action (“approach” manifested through moral rationalization).
Local consumption is considered to have a positive environmental and social impact. A new supply chain strategy has been devised to provide small and medium-sized local farms with enhanced efficiency and accessibility: a bidirectional distribution. Bidirectional distribution is a practice of backhauling local produce on emptied wholesale trucks for redistribution through wholesale markets while employing the existing network of rural stores and wholesale suppliers. Building on the cue utilization theory, this study investigated the effect of product information about bidirectional distribution on consumers’ perceived environmental value, personal well-being value, quality beliefs, and community social and economic value.
To address the existential threat of climate change, it is important to study environmentally sustainable products and marketing strategies to promote such products. A repurposed product is created by transforming old objects into something of greater value that serves a different purpose. For example, transforming an old tie into a coffee cup sleeve or turning a discarded oil can into a drum. Thus, repurposed products are one form of waste reduction via reuse. Repurposed products have become popular in the marketplace. There is, however, little research on repurposed product consumption. Furthermore, Gen Z is a relatively unexplored population in past research on sustainable consumption. To address these research gaps, our study identified segments of Gen Zers based on their perceptions of repurposed products via a person-centered approach. Our results provide strategies for effective marketing of repurposed products. Implications for marketers are provided.
The rise of social media has brought the existence of “foodie” and “food bloggers” in the culinary business. The word “foodie” refers to those who highly favor and engage with food and spend a substantial amount of time collecting culinary experiences and visiting famous restaurants, while a food blogger is an individual or a foodie who uses a communication platform to share recipes and passion for food through reviews based on his or her experience. Culinary businesses use food bloggers to help promote their products and encourage consumers to try their products, which are believed to be effective as the viewers or the followers tend to take their recommendations.
Social media influencers have become a powerful tool in marketing in the past decade; consumers who engage with the influencers are more likely to trust their recommendations. A VI is a very attractive marketing tool for brands and businesses. However, there is little empirical work about why and how consumers react to the anthropomorphism of virtual agents. Therefore, this study develops an understanding of how consumers interact with VI, emphasizing the perceived anthropomorphism's role. Consequently, we aim to investigate antecedents and outcomes of perceived anthropomorphism of the VI from online consumers' perspectives to develop and implement effective marketing strategies on social media platforms.
In recent years, Metaverse has become one of the most popular buzzwords in digital transformation and marketing. The concept of the metaverse refers to a new paradigm for how we will use and interact with digital technologies within an immersive virtual environment (Dwivedi, et al., 2022).
Despite a surging amount of research on value co-creation in the social media context, research on how value co-creation and value co-destruction coexist from a system perspective remains scarce. This conceptual research aims to understand how social media allows for value to be co-created and/or co-destroyed in interconnected social networks. The study takes a first step toward integrating the two value processes in the social media context and opens up new research possibilities. By looking at value co-creation, we differentiate between values that are created from both firm and customer sides and show the value can be destructed if without cautions. From a managerial standpoint, the proposed framework could facilitate managers to build a more holistic view of creating social media value through collaboration with their social media users.
This research presents a conceptual framework for a comprehensive understanding of the causes of user migration from social media networking sites. The results of our survey show that users’ intentions to switch social media platforms are influenced by user satisfaction, alternative attractiveness, peer influence, and perceived switching costs.
The social constructionist theory of art states that the value of art and luxury brand design is constructed by social interactions. It distinguishes between an independent "reality" and a socially constructed "reality," in which meanings can differ. However, research on luxury fashion brands mainly focuses on consumers' reality and rarely examines the topic through a social constructionist lens. This paper looks at the impact of worldwide luxury fashion "designers’ reality" on "consumers’ reality” when evaluating the brand. Three studies investigated how consumers and designers perceive premium and luxury brand design.
In this research, we investigate the influence of Chinese consumers’ generation on the perception of “Made in China” luxury. This issue is of utmost importance for the Chinese government as Chinese consumers have now become the first luxury consumers in the world while China remains a non-legitimate dwarf in luxury manufacturing. To bridge this gap, we carried a quantitative survey involving 300 Chinese luxury consumers and tested the effect of consumers’ age on Chinese luxury products perceived luxury. Potential mediators are considered in our analyses, including consumers’ ethnocentrism and innovativeness, materialism, and cultural orientations (i.e., preference for individualism and tradition). The data are currently being collected. Our results will be discussed at the 2023 Global Marketing Conference in Seoul if this research is selected for presentation. They should help position current and future “Made in China” luxury brands and target Chinese luxury consumers.
Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become an important pillar in business practice. Luxury brands are no exception to this trend and have invested deeply in different types of CSR, and this is evident with companies such as Prada and LVMH. However, empirical research has demonstrated the paradox between CSR and luxury and has identified certain undesirable effects. The reason for this inconsistency in the results to date, is the lack of a comprehensive CSR categorization system. To be more specific, we integrated two dimensions - visibility and relevance - and have proposed a novel CSR type in four types, which is external-embedded, external-peripheral, internal-embedded and internal-peripheral. We can easily classify the CSR initiatives into this category, which means the source of undesirable effects can be clearly shown for luxury brands.
The purpose of this paper is to explore underlying antecedents for inconspicuous luxury motivations by developing and testing a conceptual model under the self-concept mechanism with the influence of cultural capital. A questionnaire-based survey is used to collect data, and structural equation modeling is applied to analyze the data. Although growing interests in academia focus on the relationship between cultural capital and inconspicuous luxury, quantitative studies are scant. This research contributes to the literature by empirically investigating the impact of cultural capital in the relationship within the construct of consumers’ self-concept and inconspicuous luxury motivations.