In the hospitality and tourism sectors, service robots have become increasingly adopted by companies to facilitate frontline service to reduce human labor, improve efficiency and provide better customer experience. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic has intensified consumers’ demand for service robots to reduce human contact. To better understand the impact of service robots in the service sector, researchers have been examining user behavior of different technologies. While prior empirical studies have mainly focused on utilitarian-based acceptance models, other perspectives, such as the interpersonal relations, have been largely overlooked. With the ubiquitous of social media, people become connected but alone, leading to negative effects on interpersonal relations.

This research investigated the effects of para-social interaction (PSI) in online and traditional celebrity endorsements. The data was collected by distributing questionnaire sets. And covariance structural equation modeling was used to analyze the model. The findings showed that para-social interaction is the moderator variable in the online celebrity endorsement effect.

Environmental concern has escalated as the climate crisis is an increasingly prevalent issue for the global society. Further catalysed by the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, consumer behaviours are shifting, materialising in greener purchasing behaviour and heightened expectations of environmental brand practices. This phenomenon is affecting consumer attitudes and behaviour towards fashion brands. As such, credible environmental marketing strategies are increasingly central to brand success, influencing brand credibility perception.

Humans turn to other humans for decision making. They don’t know how the algorithm operates but they understand how a human mind operates. Ergo, they would be more likely to follow a human’s recommendation.

Due to the development of the internet and communications technology, the media market has undergone significant changes in the 2000s. In the past, when the types of media were not diverse, media content was mainly consumed through TV, radio, newspapers, etc., but as varied, it allowed users to watch the content anytime and anywhere. ‘Snack Video’ which is produced in a short length and consumed in commuting time and leisure time, and ‘Snack Culture’ which is a popular lifestyle trend of consuming short-form cultural content, is now widespread. The representative content of snack content is video clips. Various of media provide video clips, such as portal sites, SNS, and TV programs. YouTube is effective in increasing purchases than the other channels. Over-The-Top (OTT) is another pillar of the new media market, which has emerged with the development of the internet and communications technologies.

Despite the orientation towards online retailing journey accelerated by the application of new-age technologies in the pandemic context, the role of the physical store still has a central role in luxury shopping in the digital omni-channel perspective. Digital technologies have increased their impact on consumers (Evanschitzky et al., 2020; Klaus & Zaichkowsky, 2020; Kaplan & Haenlein, 2020; Davenport et al, 2020; Huang and Rust, 2021a; Pantano et al, 2022). In today’s digital age, AI is one of the new-age technologies raising growing interest for their potential disruptive impact on marketing and retailing in different sectors (Forbes, 2022).

This study investigated how immersive VR store experience generated consumers’ urge to buy via self-imagery and pleasure. It also identified that the processing varied by the level of self-relevance to the VR store. The findings suggest that the impact of VR store experience can be expanded to impulsive/compulsive purchases.

Using a tablet (versus a mouse) when shopping online has been shown to increase a shopper’s overall preference. Three studies demonstrate that this effect is robust across various contexts. We hypothesize that consumers will like the products they explore on touch devices (e.g., tablets) because they can more easily imagine using the products (Shen et al., 2016). When given the opportunity to explore the items on the touch devices, even utilitarian products and that this effect will be robust across different contexts.

Food waste is a major sustainable development problem in the world, and the promotion of ugly food may help address this issue. According to cue utilization theory and the VAB model, the primary purpose of this research is to investigate the role of green packaging in ugly food with multiple internal and external cues. A conceptual model with eight hypotheses are proposed. Conclusion, contributions of study and research limitations are finally shown.

With the dramatic advance in artificial intelligence, the use of an AI anchor in the news industry is a subject of great interest. An AI anchor is a computer-generated news anchor that mimics the human voice, appearance, and facial expressions to present the news. As the focus of this study is to investigate how the news media utilize an AI anchor in the news program, the research questions are as follows: (1) What are the differences in news topics between AI and human anchors? (2) How does the viewership differ based on these topic choices, with a focus on the emotional impact?

Considering meat consumption's massive impact on climate change, environmental NGOs are increasingly campaigning to encourage consumers to reduce unsustainable meat consumption, i.e., to eat less and/or better meat. They usually use messages based on environmental appeals to do so. Yet, the effectiveness of such appeals in international campaigns may depend on countries as cultural beliefs influence food consumption behaviors. Therefore, in this research, we explore the effectiveness of such campaigns across 5 European countries, controlling for individual cultural orientations. Considering an environmental degradation appeal, we first show that countries have no influence on the campaign’s effectiveness, unlike specific individual cultural orientations, including masculinity and uncertainty avoidance. We replicate these results in the same 5 countries considering an alternative appeal, i.e., animal welfare. Recommendations to international NGOs managers result from these results.

In the last decade, labels have been multiplying on food products (e.g., organic labels, Nutri- Score) to foster nutritious and sustainable food purchases, as such raising the question of the effect of multi-labelling. In this article, we use the prism of information processing and specifically address the question of multi-labelling when the labels have simultaneously positive and negative valences. Such a situation could confuse consumers and therefore, harm multi-labelling ability to empower consumers. An experiment shows that 1/ adding a good Eco- Score to a good Nutri-Score enhances warm glow among the most ecology-sensitive consumers, though it does not significantly increase purchase intentions, 2/ adding a bad Eco- Score to a good Nutri-Score increases consumer confusion (i.e., a discomfort due to ambiguous stimuli that requires mental efforts to cope with) but does not decrease purchase intentions. Recommendations to food managers and public policy makers result from these results.

This study focuses on critical brands, design, and material functionality in contemporary golf, workwear, and outdoor clothing. The research employs a detailed case study approach, analyzing product characteristics to gauge current industry trends and predict future trajectories in functional clothing. The results reveal an industry-wide adoption of advanced materials and ergonomic design features to enhance performance, comfort, safety, sustainability and durability. A noticeable shift towards sustainability, versatility, and adaptability is also identified as a growing consumer expectation. In conclusion, the study offers an all-encompassing view of the functional apparel market, potential future trends, and concrete applications for enhancing the Korean civil defense uniform.

Recently, there has been an increase in human casualties and property damage caused by large-scale disasters such as massive wildfires, concentrated heavy rainfall, chemical accidents, and infectious diseases. To enhance the citizen protection capabilities of civil defense personnel, it is necessary to ensure their capacity to perform on-site citizen protection duties and guarantee their safety. Particularly, the current civil defense uniforms are vulnerable to fire and waterproofing, and the safety is threatened when civil defense personnel perform field activities such as fire and flood damage. Therefore, there is an urgent need for research and development of civil defense uniforms to ensure functionality and safety. In this study, we aim to understand the duties of domestic civil defense units and the characteristics of on-site situations, analyze overseas civil defense uniform replication cases, and derive safety criteria for civil defense uniforms. Developing civil defense uniforms based on safety and functional criteria is expected to enhance civil defense personnel's capabilities and increase public welfare by deriving optimal performance for each mission.

Civil defense originally refers to the protection of civilians in the events of war-related disasters. Today, it encompasses a wide range of protection, rescue, and recovery activities not only aimed at minimizing the damage caused by war but also addressing natural and man-made disasters such as wildfires, typhoons, and floods. Civil defense uniforms are worn by volunteers who participate in civil defense training organized by practitioners, government officials, and military personnel. Therefore, more than 3,350,000 persons (+6.5 % of the Korean population) likely should wear civil defense uniforms. As such, the functionalities of civil defense uniforms need to be reexamined and improved in response to the wider and newer responsibilities of the civil defense system to protect the civil defense personnel from potential hazards and to help better serve the Korean citizens. The essential functions of civil defense uniforms were proposed by analyzing various civil defense activities. Per the level and type of safety hazards, the design and materials for civil defense uniforms should ideally differ, similar to civil defense uniforms in other countries. We surveyed the current Korean civil defense uniforms’ design, material compositions and important functionalities such as water repellency, water pressure resistance, and flame resistance. Compared to common functional workwear, we suggest room for improvement in the functional properties of civil defense uniforms. This research paves a new road for the functional design of civil defense uniforms to address a wider range of hazards, potentially leading to rational guidelines for protective workwear and government uniform development.

Previous studies offered inconsistent empirical results for the influence of customer participation on service satisfaction. One possible explanation for this inconsistency is that existing conceptualizations of customer participation do not clearly differentiate the distinct roles of customer participation in service. To address this gap, Dong and Sivakumar (2015) have proposed an updated classification for customer participation based on “output specificity,” which refers to the degree to that the nature of the output is influenced by the person who provides the resource. The output of the customer participation can either be “specific” or “generic”. The “specific output” is defined as the expected service outcome can be idiosyncratic depending on whether the service is provided by the customer or the employee. In contrast, “generic output” refers to expected service outcome is well defined regardless of whether it is delivered by the service provider or the customer. How output specificity of customer participation influences service satisfaction still lacks of empirical examination.

We are living in a world that is increasingly digital and undergoing dramatic changes as a result. In particular for luxury fashion, growing numbers of online customers as well as fast changing business environment, luxury retailers face the challenge of differentiating themselves by offering a better online customer experience (Chen et al. 2021). By doing so, luxury fashion retailers are increasingly deploying chatbots in their service encounters to enhance customer experience (Roy & Naidoo, 2021). Chatbots are powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) (Hoyer et al. 2020) and are an example of AI robot that can provide human-computer interactions on a retail website (Lee et al. 2017). Intended to enhance the online customer experience, chatbots have the potential to provide a better understanding of the product performance, enable efficient use of customer time, and help build crucial customer relationships (Rese et al. 2020; Wilson-Nash et al. 2020; Xu et al. 2022). Therefore, chatbots’ potential has been highly valued by fashion retail industry and academia (Jiang et al. 2022).

Promotion of brand-related sustainability initiatives (BSI) is a modern managerial issue, as BSI seems to impact not only sustainability but also consumer psychology toward a brand. In this regard, the author has extended self-congruity theory and suggested the concept of brand-sustainability-self-congruence (BSSC) as the image congruence of the triad comprising brand, BSI, and self-concept. Former surveys report predictive effects of BSSC on consumers’ brand evaluation, leading to increased brand equity (Kumagai, 2022, 2023).

This research investigated how residential mobility affects consumers' trust in digital consumption environments (e.g., online shopping). Due to today's digitalization, consumers' trust in digital environments is treated as important. However, work has yet to be explored that the trust of digital environments can differ depending on residential mobility. This article highlights key findings from the relationship between residential mobility and trust in digital environments. Trust in digital environments may vary depending on residential mobility. As a result of the data analysis, the lower the residential mobility, the lower the trust in digital environments, while the higher the residential mobility, the higher the trust in digital environments.

Studies regarding the relationship between purchases and happiness have consistently found an experiential advantage: people are happier when purchasing experiential products (e.g., vacations and concerts) than material products (e.g., clothes and electronics) (Caprariello & Reis, 2013; Carter & Gilovich, 2010, 2012; Pchelin & Howell, 2014; van Boven and Gilovich, 2003). This phenomenon (i.e., experiential advantage) may make marketing efforts of service firms or any companies selling experiences relatively more effective and productive in that consumers will derive a great amount of purchase happiness. On the other hand, the same phenomenon may indicate innate challenges and hurdles for firms selling products carrying materialistic features. Considering the material-experiential spectrum, approximately 50% of the industries are seeming faced with this issue. In this research, we propose a solution with which mainly material-focused products can loom more experiential, thereby benefiting from the experiential advantage. In other words, we investigate how material goods can be perceived as experiential and they can offer greater purchase satisfaction compared to when they remain as merely materialistic. Specifically, noting that reasons for experiential advantages are originated from social aspects of experiential goods (e.g., self-presentation to other people, conversational values, reputation-building, etc.), the current study shows that posting on social media can imbue social aspects, which is a key drive of the experiential advantage.