Today, the ability to engage customers is a key factor of brand competitiveness in global markets. Not surprising, marketers are scrambling to figure how to utilize social media and other digital platforms to motivate customer engagement (CE), defined as brand-focused behavioral manifestations, other than purchases, resulting from individual and group motivational drivers. In this study we adopt consumer investment in trademarks perspective, suggesting that consumers proactively use global brand’s signs to express themselves, affirm values, communicate, and experience pleasure in digital platforms. The brand owners deploy trademarks to protect the symbols, which can distinguish the goods or services of a brand owner from those of other enterprises. We hypothesize that by registering trademarked signs in the host markets, global brands may facilitate CE and achieve superior performance. We empirically test these proposition using data for 125 global brands and trademark finings these brands in the twenty largest economies. The results of model confirm expectations that both trademarking in the host markets and consistency in using protected signs positively affected brand’s market share. The study provides managerial, theoretical, and policy insights in context of global brand protection.

We investigate the incremental predictive power of three consumer dispositions – xenocentrism, cosmopolitanism and ethnocentrism – on domestic and foreign product purchase intentions, after taking the impact of consumer demographics and product category-specific variables into account. Using data from an online survey of 201 Turkish consumers, hierarchical regression analysis reveals that widely used demographic variables (namely, age, gender and education) do not significantly influence consumer intentions to buy either domestic or foreign clothing products. Of the consumer dispositions, xenocentrism exerts a significant negative effect on domestic product purchase intentions, cosmopolitanism has a positive effect on foreign product purchase intentions, while ethnocentrism shows no effect on either domestic or foreign product purchase intentions. Implications of the findings are considered and future research directions identified.

The subscription model, prominent within the ‘subscription economy’ (SE), is now a popular form of business within many industries. In simple terms, a subscription model entails two parties (customers and firms) entering into an agreement whereby the patron commits to make regular payments to the supplier, who in exchange periodically delivers an agreed bundle of goods and/or services. Although mostly applied within Business-to-Consumer (B2C) markets (e.g. entertainment services, newspapers and media industry, software licences), the subscription model can be found in Business-to-Business (B2B) markets also (e.g. Rolls Royce ‘Power-by-the-hour model’). This unique form of commerce (i.e. committed repeat patronage) creates an alternative relationship between the buyer and seller to other more traditional forms of business.

Increasingly, companies’ attempts to become more sustainable are framed in terms of transitioning towards sustainable business models (SBMs), whereby central logic of how the company offers value to customers is challenged (Yang & Evans, 2019). This transition requires companies to rethink the way value and resource consumption are coupled in their operations (Pieroni et al., 2019), as well as consider different ways of connecting with customer needs (Laukkanen & Tura, 2020).

The interest in the study of organizations’ ambidexterity (i.e., the capacity of combining organizational explorative and exploitative capabilities) entails expectations associated to its conceptual value and practical implications related to high-performing companies and long-term survival. In parallel, it is relevant to understand organizational ambidexterity under the marketing lenses, in particular, looking at the notion of co-creation and service-dominant logic. This study addresses the effects of organizational ambidexterity on organizational co-creation and evaluates whether these dynamics are different in SMEs and Large companies. We further assess how they contribute to the enhancement of firms’ performance. To the endeavor, we develop and empirically test a conceptual model.

Metaverse is a virtual world where users can engage in various activities, and its market is expected to grow rapidly in the coming years (Hwang, 2021). Generation Z, also known as digital natives, are heavily involved in social media and often share selfies, making them more sensitive to body image concerns (Ameen, 2022). In the metaverse, users can create customized avatars, allowing them to experience an ideal body image. This study applies the “extraordinary self” theory to avatar creation, a concept that explains how people create an ideal, fantastic, or transcendent self by consuming experiences that set them apart from their mundane real self (Procter, 2021). Based on the theory, this study examines how dissatisfaction with body image of Generation Z can lead to the creation of avatars that manifest an ideal body image, which in turn, can influence self-congruence with the avatar and self-esteem in the metaverse. This study also looks into the possible effects of enhanced self-esteem on user’s intention to purchase virtual products and their loyalty to a specific metaverse platform. Therefore, the following hypotheses are developed.

As interactive marketing devices that serve as proximity-marketing tools, AI-powered voice assistants (VA) provide consumers with highly innovative convenience, which in turn fosters consumer–brand relationships (Wang, 2021). This research aims to explore the role of AI-powered VAs as a positive technology that offers consumers a sense of positive experiences, thus contributing to building a consumer-brand relationship. Based on the positive technology paradigm and transformation of flow strategy, this research conducted a 2 (locus of agency: high, machine-centric vs. low, human-centric) by 2 (brand image and voice congruency effect: incongruent vs. congruent) between-subjects experimental design. Then, ANOVA and structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis were conducted to explain how perceived control, flow, and happiness induced by the interaction with brands’ AI-powered VAs lead to the formation of brand loyalty under the moderating influences of brand image and VA’s voice congruency. A total of 316 participants were recruited via Prolific. The ANOVA analysis highlights the importance of user-centric agency, as people tend to desire to control their environment (White, 1959). Further, the results suggest that the congruency between brand image and VAs also leads people to positive reactions, as it improves their comfort and control (Rodero, Larrea, & Vázquez, 2013). SEM analysis results found that perceived control was a crucial factor that led participants to flow experience (Ghani et al., 1991). Further, this study found that perceived control could lead to a much broader aspect, such as an increase in happiness. Therefore, the overall study findings support the potential of AI-powered VAs as a positive technology. This research contributes to human-machine interaction, positive technology paradigm, and VA literature. In addition, this study provides beneficial insights for marketers and app developers.

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

Mental distress has been consistently reported to be highly prevalent after collective traumas, alongside physical and personal damages. When left untreated, these will worsen survivors’ ability to function. Research also points to unmet needs, related to job security and a sense of belonging. Our study aims to identify a clustered-dimensional approach to people’s experiences after a massive urban violence apart from traditional categorical psychopathological assessments. This cross-sectional internet-based study included 1305 Lebanese adults, 4 months after the apocalyptic Beirut Port explosion. Emotions, attitudes and needs were assessed using iCode software, measuring explicit answers and implicit reaction time. First and foremost, explicit responses revealed alarming levels of distress (75-80%). Latent class analysis further differentiated three groups on seven different dimensions derived from principal component analysis. People who experienced the most intense emotional distress and intrusive thoughts had higher country dissatisfaction and job worries. Faith and community resilience buffered the negative emotionality of those affected in spite of avoidance and intrusion. The last group was less distressed by the trauma with a marked sense of community and an overall reduced country and job dissatisfactions. These findings suggest that integrating implicit responses helps cluster people’s experiences after a collective trauma above and beyond single demographic criteria as vulnerability to mass violence is quite variable within seemingly homogenous samples. They also provide insight onto hard-wired attitudes and needs post-trauma. It mostly taps into multi-factorial individual vulnerabilities and protective factors to better refine targeted interventions for at-risk subpopulation outreach and foster resilience in unstable environments.

In order to communicate brand concepts and values to the young generations, many brands are highly active on social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Brand-Generated Content has already become the most common marketing strategy for fashion brands and plays a significant role in influencing consumers’ purchase intention. With increased competition on social media platforms, companies need to understand which posting features can bring in more consumer engagements such as number of likes and comments on social media platforms. In this paper, we develop (1) a model to predict the number of likes and (2) a methodology to detect anomaly of posts that have unusually high percentage of negative user comments based on Instagram design variables, including semantic text meanings, facial expressions, color scheme and background of photos, and post timing, among others. We collected a data set of brand-generated Instagram posts from ten fashion brands. The data covers the image, text, and user comments posted between 2019 and 2020. Image features were extracted using Convolutional Neural Network, and text topics were generated through Latent Dirichlet Allocation. Our results will help managers design Instagram posts to increase consumer engagement and to reduce negative consumer reactions.

Social media has become popular in both business and research as many studies have explored the impact of this medium on the purchase behavior of consumers but surprisingly not in the domain of counterfeiting. Social media has become a significant part of today's lifestyle and it has created new channels for brand manufacturers and consumers to communicate. The present study tries to assess the impact of social media determinants on counterfeit purchase intention. The study explored three factors of social media namely social media platform, user-generated content, and social media word of mouth. Further, the study checks for the mediation effect of consumer attitude between social media determinants and purchase intention. The data for the present study were collected from three metropolitan cities of India namely Delhi, Kolkata, and Mumbai. The PLS-SEM was used on 406 respondents for further analysis and validation. The results revealed that there is a significant relationship between social media platforms, user-generated content, and purchase intention. However, an insignificant relationship was found between social media word of mouth and purchase intention. Further, the study suggested that attitude mediates the relationship between social media determinants and the purchase intention of consumers towards the purchase of counterfeit products in India.

We study retailer app use and shopping behavior by investigating whether and how app adopters’ preferred store registration (PSR), a voluntary enrollment of store loyalty program, can lead to changes in purchase behaviors among the adopters in offline stores. A panel dataset from a large bakery franchise chain was studied using difference-in-differences with propensity score matching for causal inference. The results show that customers who participated in PSR increase their spending, compared to customers who did not. In addition, the results confirm that the PSR-spending relationship is moderated by customer and store characteristics; customers who visited infrequently and spent less prior to PSR participation increase their purchases, and they spend more at stores with better service quality.

Extant studies assessing determinants of peer-to-peer (P2P) accommodation prices have mainly focused on individual listing-level analysis, with a less attention to inter-regional dynamics between cooperation and competition. While Airbnb has announced how to set a pricing strategy tool called “smart pricing” to help hosts gauge rental rates, many hosts find that its suggesting prices are too low, failing to offer a robust picture of their destination market (Jiang et al., 2022). This calls for a research on how P2P accommodation hosts can benefit from coopetitive pricing strategy – a hybrid behavior of cooperation and competition that occurs among hosts or regions (Chim-Miki & Batista-Canino, 2018).

From the standpoint of developing a transformative service to create improvements in collective wellbeing (Anderson & Ostrom, 2015), evidence of a sport–resilience relationship is gradually accumulating in the literature (Kim et al., 2022). Sport management and social science scholars are making considerable efforts to understand how sport entities with transformative services can contribute to consumer resilience—an intervention through a sport consumption experience that affects people’s abilities to cope with adversity (Inoue et al., 2022; MacIntosh et al., 2020). However, little is known about the sport industry and spatial consumer behavior in terms of consumer resilience. Although previous researchers have identified a macro-level association between sport industry and community resilience from a bird's eye view (Kim et al., 2021), it could not determine how and where sport industry at a macro level can be related to individual-level resilience through metaphors of Consumer Desire. Specifically, the spatial patterns of sport consumption (i.e., consumer spatial behavior) can be a result of sport consumer behavior affected by spatial context upon heterogeneous features of sport industry across regions (Kim et al., 2021) in the environment–behavior paradigm (Olsson & Gale, 1968). The macrolevel clustering of the sport industry in a region (environment) can be a community resource to provide individuals with the opportunity for sport consumption (behavior), which promotes the micro-level psychosocial factors for sport consumer resilience (Inoue et al., 2022). Furthermore, recent work illustrates heterogeneous spatial interaction at the regional level of the sport industry and individual-level sport consumption (Kim et al., 2022), suggesting the elaboration of cross-level spatial interaction models (Kim et al., 2021). Accordingly, in this study we aim to not only (a) determine spatially heterogeneous interactions in the association between sport industry and consumer spatial behavior in affecting consumer resilience, but also (b) identify what effect spatial interaction has on cross-level relationships. Using data focused on a multiscale-based nested geographic structure (e.g., individual-level consumption by zip code, county, state, and nation) that could elucidate the sport consumer spatial behavior, We collected multiple types of data from Florida, including the location quotient of the main seven sport industries (e.g., sport facilities) and socioeconomic factors (e.g., social vulnerability) at the county level from secondary sources. In addition, we acquired individual-level data from Qualtrics panels (1,107 Florida residents) to measure sport consumer spatial behavior (e.g., location-based sport consumption experience) and consumer resilience using the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale. To address spatial interaction and heterogeneity, we used a comprehensive analytical model for global and local spatial analysis, including a spatial multilevel mediation (SMM) model and multiscale geographically weighted regression (MGWR) model. As a result of the SMM model, the county-level cluster of sport facilities affected individual-level participatory sport consumption, which enhanced consumer resilience (cross-level interaction effect). However, considerable spatial non-stationarity appeared in the spatial interaction, indicating interregional interactions in the cross-level effects within a county. The results of MGWR indicated significant spatially heterogeneous patterns in the association between the cluster of sport facilities and participatory sport consumption. That is, it was clarified that the spatial heterogeneous effects of the clustering of sport facilities on sport consumer spatial behavior are associated with consumer resilience. This empirical interdisciplinary work, including sport management, geography, and consumer psychology, advances knowledge of consumer spatial behavior and resilience by demonstrating heterogeneous spatial interactions. Practically, the current study calls for spatial management planning and strategy in sport industry for enhancing consumer resilience through spatial sport consumption, considering spatially varying patterns.

This study empirically verified the endorsement effect of a restaurant platform as a reliable third-party organization on changes in customers’ attitudes toward restaurants by measuring big data-based consumption values using customers’ reviews and applying difference-in-differences. The results indicated that endorsement effects are effective when specific cues are provided and under unusual circumstances such as the pandemic.

Crowdfunding – obtaining funding from a large pool of investors, where each one provides a relatively small amount of money, usually through the Internet – has become an innovative alternative channel for project funding. Historically, culture sector has stood at the forefront of adopting crowdfunding, with ArtistShare active from 2003 as a funding platform for music projects. Despite this, there is still lack of research dedicated to the role and impact of crowdfunding in the culture sector.

Crowding is widely observed in various tourism contexts. Compared with natural scenic areas, theme parks have concrete boundaries and are physically, economically, or culturally separate from the surrounding area, it also brings problems with carrying capacity and visitor management. Data shows that China has become a critical theme park market, and crowding has become a major problem for theme park operators in China. This study examined the effects of human crowding on visitors' emotions, satisfaction, and behavioral intentions using the M-R model as a framework. The investigations were conducted in Shanghai Disneyland and Zhuhai Chimelong Ocean Kingdom, 295 and 410 valid questionnaires were collected respectively.

Assertions in current academic research and practical discourse that promote agility reduce the importance or prominence given to organizational strategic planning. While firms today are required to become agile and thus quickly and timely respond to emerging market challenges, the strategic planning process is perceived as rigid, slow, and somehow obsolete and may contradict agility. These present practitioners with a dilemma regarding the relevance of planning in this era. This study examines the pertinence of strategy planning in this agile age and its effect on firms’ business performance. In addition, since the environment in which firms operate play a significant role in determining strategies, when maintaining strategic planning, organizations need to consider internal and external factors that may change the effect of planning on performance. Hence, the study also explores market scanning (an external condition) and fault tolerance climate (an internal condition) under which the relationship planning-performance varies. Based on a quantitative research, data from organizations, and insights from fit-as-moderation approach, a conceptual model and research hypotheses are designed and tested. Common and acceptable analysis methods were employed to test the hypotheses. Initial findings indicate that strategy planning should not be deemphasized in contemporary days since it is associated with better financial (e.g., sales growth) and nonfinancial (e.g., new customer acquirement) outcomes. Additionally, performance consequences of planning are dependent on firm external and internal conditions. While the positive planning-performance relationship is associated with higher levels of market sensing, it is negatively associated with higher levels of fault tolerance. The findings have well-timed theoretical and practical implications for the business and strategy literature. Managers considering the necessity of planning strategies should recognize its relevance and take into account contingencies examined in this research.

Many companies seek to position their brands as global players to benefit from favorable quality and prestige inferences. Yet, recent research calls into question whether global brand positioning strategies are invariably beneficial. In many Western markets, the political environment becomes increasingly tense, with nationalism and ethnocentrism on the rise. Against this background, we seek to answer the question: How does political ideology influence the effectiveness of global brand positioning strategies? Do global brand positioning strategies create more value in liberal or conservative environments?

This paper investigates how the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in services may potentially have a negative impact on consumer wellbeing due to the fear of being replaced by AI. Drawing on temporal self-appraisal theory, the study proposes that the fear of being replaced by an AI agent (as opposed to a human) has a negative effect on consumers' psychological wellbeing. The research suggests that this fear negatively affects consumers' perceptions of self-continuity, and that self-continuity perceptions mediate the relationship between fear of AI replacement and psychological wellbeing. Furthermore, the study explores how the type of task intelligence replaced by AI, whether thinking or feeling tasks, moderates the effects of AI on self-continuity and wellbeing.