Despite the growing interest towards stakeholder marketing, research aimed at understanding how the marketing function may engage with the different company’s stakeholders (beyond the customers) for value creation is still scant. Therefore, new horizons need to be explored in search for research avenues and effective practices that may entrust a concrete role for stakeholders in marketing. Among the strategic assets that may be used to strengthen relationships with both internal and external stakeholders, corporate heritage emerges as potentially one of the most interesting. Indeed, scholars and practitioners have widely acknowledged the strategic value of heritage, a multifacets construct considered as a specific attribute of corporate identity able to connect past, present and future and inspiring solidity and credibility in different audiences. Thus, heritage has become the core of a specific marketing literature stream. However, the possibility of using corporate heritage (at strategic and operational level) to engage different stakeholders seems to have been little explored to date. This study aims at investigating corporate heritage as a vehicle of multi-stakeholder engagement, through an in-depth analysis of 20 long-lived Italian firms that stand out for the wise use of heritage marketing strategies. Specifically, we adopted an inductive approach to uncover the process of heritage marketing followed by the investigated companies. Thus, the study helps to interpret and deepen the role of corporate heritage as a platform for stakeholder engagement, according to an integrated, strategic and multi-stakeholder perspective that has been to a large extent neglected by previous literature; furthermore, it presents an ideal decomposition of the strategic process of heritage marketing in key stages, with a precise indication of the stakeholder engagement opportunities referred to each stage; finally, it presents a categorization of the main tools and activities that companies may use to convey their historical and cultural heritage to the different stakeholders, both in and out of the business domain.

In consumer perception, sensory marketing plays a key role in promoting hedonic consumption and influencing customer experience. This relationship should be even more emphasized in services such as tourism. Due to its diversity, Cape Verde, a small island developing state (SIDS) according to OECD, has recently been promoted by its national tourist office as an archipelago of the islands of the senses. As such, this study aims to identify the main dimensions of tourist experience in one of the islands, Santo Antão, based on user generated content (UGC). Social media, namely online travel reviews, have been reported not only to influence consumer decision making but also to exert the strongest impact on behavior intention (Aye, Au & Law, 2013). Moreover, online reviews have been increasingly used in tourism services as well as considered by tourists as most useful and trustworthy (Au, Buhalis & Law, 2014). Taking into account the recognized limitations of traditional research methods, such as surveys, and the opportunities given by Web 2.0 sites, this research collected data of online reviews on that island of the senses from TripAdvisor, totaling 111 web reviews from its 10 most important tourist attractions. Data was subjected to content analysis by using Leximancer software in order to extract and organize information on words, concepts and themes stemming from visitor narratives. This lead to the generation of a concept map showing thirteen as the most common themes by their level of importance. The most frequently mentioned ones were crater and view, followed by hike. Place, landscape, island and sea came next. These were then followed by clouds, people, guide, taxi, mountain and water. This study analyses these findings bringing academic literature to the discussion. The current study was performed to add value to existing scientific research by fostering a deeper understanding of tourist experience in island destinations and focusing on an under researched country like Cape Verde. Management from national tourism organizations will likely benefit from this research since by implementing our text mining procedure to online reviews they can significantly improve their monitoring capabilities and be responsive to tourist feedback. These study´s limitations trigger the need to extend this research to other Cape Verde islands with the goal of identifying additional dimensions characterizing the diversity of this archipelago. This will also be matched with a thorough analysis of demographic and psychographic characteristics of the reviewers.

Contribution of Indonesia's economic creative to total Gross Domestic Product (GDP) increased for about 7.38%. To support the development, Indonesian Agency for Creative Economy continuous to improve its performance conducting a capacity building plan and one of them is through product innovation and promotion. In order to create innovation, there are many information and skill that individual party may not have. As a solution, collaboration can be the chosen strategy to develop innovation. The purpose of this study is to analyse the approaches, mapping stakeholders, and understand the operation in collaboration and promotion of Noesa as Indonesian fashion brand and Watubo rural artisans. The method used is exploratory analysis identify through the condition theory by Drucker (1993) with short ethnography study. The result of this research is to identify the effective and efficient approach to conduct collaboration between fashion brand and rural artisan, in production and promotion of indigenous fabric.

The study aims to analyze and compare how fashion brands of different categorization communicate in Instagram. Six global brands (Zara, H&M, Prada, Gucci, Nike, and Adidas) are chosen to be analyzed due to their different type/category of brands and their worldwide recognition. Netnography concept and method is used to conduct the data collection and data analyze during a period of time of six mouth. The results show that overall fast fashion brands (Zara and H&M) emerge to be more effective than other fashion categories in online communication. The Haute-de-couture brands (Prada and Gucci) reveal to be very similar in the way they communicate, demonstrating a good level of interactivity with consumers. The Sports brand (Nike and Adidas) have a low level of communication with the consumers and low number of photos and videos uploaded, which results in an average online communication of the brands in Instagram. This research highlights that to be successful in the online communication, fashion brands must be always updating photos and videos, they need to interact with consumers and make them feel a part of the brand, use celebrities to give more notoriety to the brand and be always present in the latest trends.

Using two samples of LinkedIn portraits from American (n = 480) and Israeli (n = 300) users, we found that most LinkedIn portraits adhere to popular recommendations found on the Internet. However, there were cross-cultural differences in the level of formality and adherence to popular advice, with Americans more than Israelis presenting themselves in a formal manner and in an appropriate location and position. Occupation categories did not prove to moderate the cultural effects on the portraits features. Future research is needed to generalize these findings to other cultures, geographical areas, religions, and occupations. These findings have implications for SNS users and recruiters.

Digital revenues from music and video have surpassed the physical revenues and, remarkably, access-based services are solely responsible for the growth of digital revenues, whereas (legal) downloading behavior and revenues from paying for ownership are declining (ERA, 2017; IFPI, 2017). However, access-based digital consumption business models are heavily dependent on customers’ continued use of their services. Through two studies, this research aims to investigate customers’ behavioral trajectories in digital entertainment services. Study 1 examines cross-lagged effects of non-financial personal investment on frequency of use and vice versa, while relating attitudinal and demographical antecedents to both trajectories. Study 2 investigates the moderating influence of financial investment on the relation between non-financial investment on frequency of use in a video streaming service with a freemium business model and studies at what point in time users decide to switch from a free service to a paid service. The results of the first study indicate that there are effects of the frequency of use of a service on the amount of non-financial investment put in the service (i.e. creating a list of favorites for later consumption), but the effects of non-financial investment on frequency of use are only found for women. Furthermore, in line with the self-service literature, perception of hedonic rewards is the strongest predictor of frequency of use and the amount of non-financial investment made in the service. For men, perceived ease of use is negatively related with the amount of non-financial investment made, indicating that men are less likely to see the added value of personal investment, when it is easy to find what they are looking for. Lastly, older people perceive new digital entertainment platforms as less hedonically rewarding, less easy to use and less useful, suggesting that they are more favorably disposed towards traditional forms of entertainment, such as the traditional TV. The results of the second study are still in progress and will be presented at the 2018 GMC conference.

In service encounter, value creation comes not only from customer-to- service provider interaction but also from customer-to-customer interaction (CCI). A number of studies have demonstrated that the CCI plays an important role in perceived service quality, value creation, and customer satisfaction. Although prior researcher have explored the effect of CCI, they have focused more on traditional service encounter which service employee is present than on technology-based self-service (TBSS) encounter without employee presence. TBSS is an activity or benefit based on hard technologies that service providers offer so that customers can perform the service, or parts of the service by themselves. Focal customers can be influenced directly or indirectly by other customers in service encounter. To examine the effect of ICCI on service quality in TBSS, we conducted two studies. Study 1 focus on the impact of ICCI on service quality and the mediation of service experience. Study 2 explore whether the service failure moderates the relationship between ICCI and service experience. In experiment 1, a single factor (other customers: presence VS. absence) experiment was conducted with two different level of ICCI. Results show that compared with other customer absences when other customer presences focal customer perceived service quality is lower. That is, ICCI has a significant main effect on service quality. In addition, Experiment 1 provided evidence that a partial mediating factor underlying the relationship between ICCI and service quality was customers’s emotion. In experiment 2, A 2 (other customers: presence VS. absence) × 2 (service failure: yes VS. no) between subject design was conducted. An ANOVA on negative emotion yielded a significant ICCI × service failure interaction. The participants in the other customer presence condition experienced service was more discomfortable when the service was failed than when the service was succeeded. However, this effect was strengthened for the other customer absence condition. With advances in information technology, there has been a proliferation of self-service technologies across the services sector in the past decade. The quality and experience of technology-based self-service are very much worth the attention of service providers. Our study reveals the effect of ICCI on service quality and the mechanism by the mediation of negavtive emotion and the boundary condition of the link between ICCI and negative emotion. These results suggest that service providers should avoid ICCI, such as providing closed ATM, kiosk, and so on. In addition, the firms should try their best to guide customer to ensure the production and delivery of self-service to reduce service failures.

This research explored antecedents of stickiness of m-commerce sites, based on the push–pull–mooring (PPM) framework, which was developed to explain what leads people to move from one original location to another. In the current study, the stickiness of m-commerce sites was used as the opposite concept to switching. Therefore, pull effects refer to the positive factors which make consumers stick to an m-commerce site, while push effects refer to the negative factors which make consumers not stick with an m-commerce site. After reviewing the literature, responsiveness, ubiquity, enjoyment, and effectiveness were selected as the pull effects, while privacy concern and efficiency were selected as the push effects. The amount of money spent in specific mobile sites was considered as a mooring effect. According to the results of the structural equation modeling analysis, efficiency actually had a negative impact on stickiness of m-commerce sites. Also, a test of the mooring effect suggested that the negative impact of efficiency on stickiness of m-commerce sites was greater for people who spent more money in their mobile shopping compared to those who spent less. For both the high and low spending groups, responsiveness was the important pull effect as it was the strongest predictor of enjoyment for the low spending group and the strongest predictor of effectiveness for the high spending group (note that enjoyment and effectiveness had the strongest positive impacts on stickiness of m-commerce sites for the low and high spending groups, respectively.). Therefore, the fast response and feedback on m-commerce sites should increase consumers’ stickiness to these sites regardless of the amount consumers spend on these sites. On the other hand, the duration and retention of the low spending group of consumers were influenced by enjoyment the most.

This paper studies the impact of retailer dominance on the product line design in a distribution channel. We revisit the elegant framework proposed by Villas-Boas (1998) in which a manufacturer sells his products through an independent retailer to heterogeneous consumers. We show that retailer dominance may completely eliminate the possibility of product line offering, irrespective of whether retailer dominance takes the form of price leadership or quality leadership. In addition, when consumers are sufficiently heterogeneous, product line offering may benefit the manufacturer without sacrificing the retailer’s profit, thereby creating Pareto improvement along the distribution channel. Given this Pareto improvement, retailer dominance may lead to an upward-distorted quality and the possibility of product line extension compared with either the integrated channel or the case with a weak retailer. Retailer competition does not necessarily restore the incen-tive to offer the product line, but may generate either quality degradation or quality enhancement. Our analysis establishes a threshold policy on the consumer composition for the retailer to pursue the price or quality leadership.

Digitalization has generated massive amounts of available data sources (Wedel and Kannan 2016). Consequently, firms aim to exploit this additional value – particularly in decision-making (Barton and Court 2012). However, potential misleading consequences of Big Data for companies have not been examined yet – neither in practice nor in research. Addressing this research gap, the current investigation first uncovers questionable managerial outcomes and behaviours generated by Big Data. The results of a first paper-and-pencil experiment show that executives tend to rely on Big Data even in a domain where this may be misleading (i.e., innovation) (Martin and Golsby-Smith 2017). Interestingly, this relationship is found to be particularly evident for top-managers. A second online study does not only replicate the findings in a correlational setting but beyond sheds light on its mechanism. We show that Big Data activates top-executives’ promotion focus leading them to become more risk seeking and egocentric. In study 3, we replicate these findings through experimentation and moderation underlining its robustness. Finally, we detect a lever to avoid that Big Data leads to less defensive decision behaviour (study 4).

The present paper is an addition to the relevance debate in marketing literature. Research is said to be ‘relevant,’ if it leads to change, alteration or validation of how managers think, talk or act. However, the majority of the literature on relevance debate talks about the decline in relevance, yet no study has scientifically measured it. The present study uses content analysis to analyze the trends in different types of relevance across three different eras of marketing eras (i.e., commoditization, generalization and post-debate era). We also conducted a second study to check the relative importance of different types of relevance to the managers using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). The results reveal a U-shaped curve of the relevance across these different eras. They also reveal the influence of the relevance debate on the research conducted by academicians. Out of the eight types of managerial relevance identified, “Forecasts” was ranked the highest, followed by “Rhetoric devices” and “Uncovering causal relationships.” Finally, the study also presents a view for an academician to shape his/her research concerning the current needs of the industry.

Every year consumers spend billions of dollars on impulse purchases across the globe. Noticeably, occasions for impulse buying have been expanding due to new technologies and the growth of e-commerce that enhanced both the consumer’s accessibility to products and the ease of purchase transactions (e.g., one-click purchase) (Strack and Deutsch 2006). For instance, the retail store have become ubiquitous—being present on our desktop, in our mailbox, on our phone, in subway platform, in gas station kiosks—and reaching every street corner in our neighborhood. Such ubiquitous nature of mobile commerce combined with the introduction of IT devices (e.g., smartphones, tablets) makes consumers even more vulnerable to the sudden, powerful, and persistent urge to buy something instantly (i.e. impulse buying) (Rook 1987; Watson et al. 2002; Danaher et al. 2015). From the perspective of firms, this indicates that marketing opportunities to influence shopper attitudes and behavior can emerge at any point in the shopping cycle from the couch in a person’s living room to the shopping cart in mobile devices and media (Shankar et al. 2010; 2011). While impulse buying has been a well-known approach to explaining empirical deviations from the rational choice model in the literature (Strack et al. 2006), previous researchers have mainly focused on antecedents of impulsive behaviors, such as mood (Rook and Gardner 1993), self-construal (Zhang and Shrum 2009), chronic goals (Ramanathan and Menon 2006) and consumers’ self-loneliness (Sinha and Wang 2013). However, relatively little has been studied on what factors drive consumers to purchase products impulsively and how firms can utilize marketing activities (e.g., 4Ps) to engage consumers in such behavior. There exist a few studies paying attention to the interaction of individual characteristics and marketing variables for impulse buying (e.g., Bell et al. 2010; Inman et al. 2009; Narasimhan et al. 1996) but several issues still can arise from measurement problems, self-selection, lack of marketing variables, and limited breadth of product categories. In particular, researchers have used the term ―unplanned‖ purchases exchangeably with impulse purchases despite a conceptual distinction between the two terms: impulse buying is defined with three key components; unplanned, difficult to control, and resulting in emotional response (Rook 1987). In other words, mostly all impulse purchases are unplanned, but not all unplanned purchases are impulse buys and we cannot rule out other alternative explanations (e.g., it is a ―reminder‖ purchase based on true needs). In this study, therefore, we aim to differentiate two terms and investigate the consumers’ impulsive purchase behaviors using the actual behavioral data with respect to product characteristics, customer demographics, timing and controllable marketing activities such as advertising. We obtained the data from one of the leading TV shopping channels in Korea on 2,657 products and 17,848 air time slots covering a broader range of both hedonic and utilitarian products including electronics, food, fashion, home appliances, and so on (7.8 million orders and 2 million order cancels). Unlike typical supermarket shopping where consumers can actively search products, programming on TV shopping channels are shown randomly to viewers which helps us rule out self-selection problems. Most importantly, distinct from previous studies, we use an objective measure for impulse buying by exploiting the actual order placement and subsequent order cancellation (i.e., regret with retrospective judgment about purchase decisions). We find that product characteristics are the primary factors explaining the half (60.5%) of impulse purchase ratio variations followed by marketing variables (20.4%), and timing fixed effects (10.9%). Interestingly, we find little evidence of consumer demographics (1%) as a driver for impulsive buying behavior. Consequently, we focus on the interplay between product categories and marketing activities. Specifically, we classified the product categories into utilitarian and hedonic on the basis of the gross product categories and investigated the roles of two main marketing activities: advertising and price promotion. We find that the informative and persuasive roles of advertising (Akerberg 2003; Mehta et al. 2004) lead to a U-shaped effect on impulse purchases over time as the informative role attenuates over time but the persuasive role increases over time. While utilitarian products are more likely to be influenced by informative role of advertising and hedonic goods are more likely to be influenced by persuasive role of advertising, we detect that the U shape would be moved to the left (right) with a price discount (increase). In other words, price information does not change over time but the persuasive role increases over time with a price discount. Hence, our results can provide managerial insights for retailers and manufacturers to utilize point-of-sale marketing tactics and to improve their shopper engagement strategies to trigger impulse purchases.

Product labels are one way for advertisers to provide information to purchasers on product quality (Atkinson & Rosenthal, 2014). Label policies have been issued to promote information disclosure on food products in some developed countries. Recent years have also seen increasing attempts to promote healthy eating in emerging markets. In China, nutrition labels became mandatory under the nutrition labeling acts. The laws require nutrition information to be presented at the point of purchase as well as in establishments where food is prepared or consumed. Additionally, similar actions were taken by India (India Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, 2011), Mercosur members and in South Africa (Brazilian Ministry of Health, 2012; Institute of Food Technologists [IFT], 2011). While nutritional labeling has received a lot of attention both in academia and from the press, some key gaps remain in the nutrition labeling literature. First, a great deal of marketing research has focused on consumer responses (e.g., Balasubramanian & Cole, 2002; Hieke & Taylor, 2012; Ippolito & Mathios, 1995; Parker & Lehmann, 2014; Shah, Bettman, Ubel, Keller, & Edell, 2014) and firm responses (e.g., Moorman 1998; Moorman, Du, & Mela, 2005; Moorman, Ferraro, & Huber, 2012) to nutrition labeling laws. Although stock market investors express greater interest in information about nutrition issues that can be integrated into financial analyses (Global Access to Nutrition Index [ATNI] Investor Statement, 2013), the issue of how standardized information requirements affect investors’ responses in financial markets has been understudied. As used here, standardized product-information disclosure refers to a requirement to present facts about firms’ offerings in a common format using uniform metrics (Moorman et al. 2012). Understanding the extent to which investors consider product information-disclosure polices when they make investment decisions is important because a company’s financial health is not only the ultimate measure for the success or failure of any strategic initiative (Luo & Bhattacharya, 2009), but also one of the most important measures of public policy effectiveness (Joshi & Hanssens, 2010; Srinivasan & Hanssens, 2009; Schwert, 1981). Moreover, urgent concerns have spilled over from the product market to the financial market (Chen, Ganesan, & Liu, 2009) due to the enormous economic costs and damage to firms’ reputations in product-harm crises (e. g., melamine contamination in several Chinese brands of infant milk powder) (Ngo, 2014). Another gap in the literature is how nutritional-labeling requirements affect emerging markets. In contrast to the situation in long-developed countries, emerging markets are subject to different pressures for food marketers and thus a distinctive environment surrounds the regulation of food product labeling. In China, food safety and quality is considered an urgent concern, and the issue has forced regulators and companies to take action (Yan, 2008). Unlike mature stock markets, the majority of investors in China are individuals (Chen, Li, & Shi, 2010). The Chinese markets are under-regulated and deficient in gathering and disseminating information to private or public organizations, and it is difficult for listed firms with insufficient records to form reputations (Singh et al., 2005). As a result, information asymmetry is accentuated and imperfect signals released from firms highly impact investor decisions. Thus, examining the effectiveness of labeling requirements in developing economies is important as is comparing these results to those found in more developed countries. Despite the importance of the issue in emerging markets, empirical work for investigating investor response to the public policy of nutrition labeling (Ghani, & Childs, 1999) or firms’ nutrition claim strategies (Cao & Yan, 2016) has been restricted in developed markets (e.g., the U.S.). Little is understood the changes in corporate financial performance because of regulations requiring product information disclosure in emerging markets. As a result of the pressures for consumer protection and regulation, it is increasingly important for policy makers to be able to understand the financial consequences of such regulation because of information disclosure policies (Moorman et al., 2005). Thus, an additional contribution of this study is to help better inform the policy debate in emerging markets. To fill these research gaps, we investigated the influence of the influx of standardized product information on the stock market. Specifically, we conducted an event study to examine the effect on firms’ stock values from the issuance of the food nutrition label acts (FNLAs) in China, a fast-growing emerging market. The acts require food manufacturers to provide standardized nutritional information on pre-packaged food labels. This study contributes to the marketing literature on the financial impact of regulation in emerging markets. In China, on the day the FNLA was issued, they were associated with positive abnormal stock returns of related firms. This result is contrary to the study by Ghani and Childs (1999) that reported that the NLEA passage showed a negative impact on firms’ stock prices. Second, the financial value from the issuance of regulations was strengthened by three marketing leverages—advertising, donations, and R&D. Finally, although Moorman et al. argued that the NLEA increased the number of small-share firms exiting the U.S. market (Moorman et al., 2005), we found that in the short term, large firms benefited less than small firms from product information disclosure in China’s stock market. These findings provide empirical evidence that regulatory controls create changes in shareholder wealth and provide an assessment of the financial market’s perceptions regarding the role of mandatory product- information disclosure in future corporate growth. In addition, evidence of the effects of regulatory changes on wealth is of significant value to policymakers and market participants as they evaluate the benefits and costs of information disclosure in emerging markets.

The purpose of this research was to examine simultaneously health halo and health horn effects across two fast food restaurant brands that have healthful or unhealthful images (i.e., McDonald's and Subway). Specifically, we investigated the moderating effects of nutrition information disclosure and dietary restraint on behavioral intention of four menus from the two brands. Two menus from the McDonald’s and two menus from the Subway, respectively, had been selected as stimuli, and each menu represented health halo confirmation (the Roast-Chicken sandwich) / disconfirmation (the Italian-Spicy sandwich), and health horn confirmation (the Big Mac burger) / disconfirmation (the McSpicy-Cajun burger), respectively. This study employed a mixed factorial design: 2 (nutrition information: present vs. absent) X 2 (dietary restraint: restrained eater vs. unrestrained eater) X 4 (menu type: a health halo or a health horn (for the Subway and the McDonald’s with objective healthfulness). The survey was conducted on October 11- 17, 2016, by a research company, Macromill EMBRAIN in Korea, which possessed more than 1 million panel members. Cell sizes were 149 and 146 for the between-subjects factor. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the nutrition information disclosure experimental conditions (either present or absent) and presented with all four menus. The results showed that the behavioral intentions of all three menus, except health horn disconfirmation menu, were decreased. In particular, the effect size of health halo disconfirmation menu (decrease in behavioral intention) was the greatest. There was no difference in the behavioral intention of four menus between the restrained eater and unrestrained eater. Thus, brands positioned as healthy should well manage the expectation levels of their customers. A brand positioned as healthy, such as the Subway, has to manage the health expectation of its customer not get too high, or the brand has to continuously strive to satisfy its client's expectations. A brand positioned as unhealthy (eg, McDonald’s) needs to actively develop low-calorie menus, healthy menus or similar side dishes. Although indulgent menus would account for the majority of the revenue, existence of healthy menus / side dishes would lessen the guilty feelings of the customers of the restaurant and the brand. This is the first study which identified both the health halo effect and the health horn effect on restaurant brand image. The results of this study confirm the need to provide nutrition information on dining out menus and would help consumers choose healthy menus.

When choosing, people often anticipate how they might feel about future outcomes, and use those feelings as guides to choices. Although the impact of emotions on decision-making is well-documented, both theoretically and empirically, relatively limited efforts have been made to quantitatively incorporate such anticipated emotions, specifically regret, into the discrete choice model, which is a workhorse for investigating various consumer choices in marketing. Regret theory suggests that the most relevant emotion in the context of decision-making is regret, which is the emotion that we experience when realizing or imagining that our current situation would have been better, if only we had decided differently. Consumers are known to be regret-averse and motivated to avoid regret. What is unique about regret is that it is directly linked to the choice or decision at hand, while other emotions relevant to decision-making may occur in the absence of a decision because these emotions are related to aspects of outcomes or uncertainty. In transportation science, a new econometric, multinomial, multi-attribute reference-dependent discrete choice model of random regret minimization (RRM) based on regret theory has recently been proposed. In this paradigm, individuals are assumed to make decisions so as to minimize the anticipated regret, which is experienced when a foregone alternative performs better than the chosen alternative at attribute-levels. However, there have been limited efforts to utilize the RRM to investigate consumers’ choices although marketing has long been interested in understanding consumers’ choices. Furthermore, despite the growing interest in the RRM in other disciplines, relatively little is known about the potential drivers for the decision rules of utility-maximization and regret-minimization. In this research, we attempt to shed light on a potential consumer-specific driver for decision rules between random utility maximization and random regret minimization in discrete choice modeling to gain a better understanding of consumers’ decision process, while introducing the RRM in the marketing domain. Specifically, we investigate what types of consumers are more likely to be regret-minimizers or utility-maximizers based on regulatory focus theory. We posit that chronically prevention-focused consumers are more likely to be regret-minimizers while chronically promotion-focused consumers are more likely to be utility-maximizers. We employ a latent class modeling framework to incorporate structural heterogeneity of decision rules to test the hypotheses using a discrete choice experiment on US residents. Notably, while the hypotheses are supported, a portion of prevention-focused consumers are in fact more likely to be utility-maximizers rather than regret-minimizers, indicating that the consumers’ regulatory focus is not entirely mapped with the decision rules on a one-to-one basis. The empirical finding further suggests that consumer-specific variables other than consumers’ chronic regulatory focus may be useful for identifying a regret-minimizing segment.

Although wellness may represent a status symbol in some contexts, recent studies have pointed that healthy food remains largely associated with a negative social image (Stead, McDermott, MacKintosh, & Adamson, 2011). This negative perception may very well represent a hindering factor to the adoption of healthy food by a large number of people and contribute to the health and economic problems associated with high BMI. This paper investigates whether the social status of healthy food can be improved. Manipulating the number of followers on a social media account, we study how this social validation cue can stimulate consumers to eat more healthily. Furthermore, we explore the mechanism that may lead to positive consumer responses towards the message and the healthy food. A between-subject experiment on 290 individuals aged between 17 and 65 shows that the process relies on social influence driven by the influence of presumed influence (i.e., an individual’s perception that a message strongly influences others and consequently impacts his/her own reactions to the message (Noguti, & Russell, 2014)). Implications for the promotion of well-being behaviors are discussed.

Individuals consume products and services as a means of symbolic self-expression in private and public contexts (Ahuvia, 2005; Belk, 1988; Harmon-Kizer et al., 2013). The body should be seen as the continuation of the individual, as the self is exhibited to others via its embodiment (Borelli and Casotti, 2012). Thus, the body functions as object that can serve self-expressive purposes and consumption behaviors (Schouten, 1991). Meanwhile, cosmetic surgery is described as a “fashion object” (Venkatesh et al., 2010, p. 468) and a form of extreme symbolic consumption that uses the body as an object to express the self (Schouten, 1991). Research indicates that individuals use of cosmetic surgery as a means of self-identity reconstruction (Askegard et al., 2002) and that motivational antecedents such as sociocultural influences, competition with others, media influence, body appreciation, and a materialist orientation are drivers of cosmetic surgery (Henderson-King and Brooks, 2009; Markley-Roundtree and Davis, 2011; Swami et al., 2009). Contrary to prior evidence, we argue that besides being a consequence, cosmetic surgery acts also as an antecedent that influences materialist consumption practices through changes to a consumers’ self. Surprisingly, despite the growing number of cosmetic surgery procedures around the globe and the self as a key driver of consumer behavior, no study to date has explored how cosmetic surgery acts as an antecedent of materialistic consumption practices through potential alterations of an individual’s self. We carried out semi-structured in-depth interviews with 10 South Korean participants. Our participants were 22 to 57 years old, representing a range of income and professional roles. They had previously undergone plastic surgery procedures such as double eyelid surgery, breast enhancementt and nose surgery. First, our findings suggest that materialism is not just an antecedent of cosmetic surgery propensity (Henderson-King and Brooks, 2009), but also that cosmetic surgery influences materialist consumption practices (e.g. cosmetics, beach vacations) through changes to the self. Second, our findings indicate that individuals need to control influences how cosmetic surgery shapes the self. Specifically, consumers seek cosmetic surgery to bridge the discrepancy between the physical self (provided by nature) and their “sought” psychological self. Third, our findings illustrate the role of marketplace cultures and, in particular, socio-cultural driven factors that interact with the self in a cosmetic surgery context (Arnoud and Thompson, 2005). Fourth, our findings show that cosmetic surgery leads to various emotional outcomes through changes to the self (i.e. pride, self-satisfaction, subjective happiness, and increased guilt). We contribute to discourses of embodied practices (e.g. cosmetic surgery) related to the self and materialism (e.g., Richins, 2012; Schouten, 1991; Venkatesh et al., 2010).

China emerges to be one of the largest wine importing and wine consumption countries in the world. With the rapid growth of Chinese wine market, it becomes an essential issue to understand the wine importing and distribution practices in Chinese wine market. This study was designated in the context of Australian wine trading to China to explore the characteristics of wine importing channels and wine retailing models in China. A semi-structured interview approach was adopted in this study to fulfil the research purposes. 15 Chinese wine industry practitioners were recruited through the 1st wine tourism trip fair in Ningxia, China, in May 2017. Interviews were transcribed and analysed using NVivo 11. The results revealed the features of 8 wine importing channels from Australia to China, and 4 distribution models in the wine retailing market in China. Regarding the wine importing channels, the 8 main importing channels were (1) retailers selected wines directly from Australian wineries; (2) retailers adopted the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) mode to produce wines; (3) supply chain businesses imported wines through their business networks; (4) wine business companies invested in overseas wineries; (5) companies purchased wines from wine exhibitions and fairs; (6) companies purchased wines from Hong Kong and other neighbouring SAR districts; (7) companies imported wines from other wine business operators; (8) companies smuggled wines by transiting from Southeast Asian countries. In addition, 4 retailing models were identified through the interviews, including (1) complete control over the distribution channels; (2) brand franchising and wholesaling; (3) enterprise subscription; (4) retailing through e-commerce and supermarkets. The findings suggested that OEM mode represented the most popular importing channel in present Chinese wine market, whilst the vendor group purchasing was the most profitable distribution models in the retailing market. Implications for wineries and wine business companies were also provided in the paper.

Over the last decade, e-commerce platforms for goods and services have been widely explored by the marketing literature. Coherently, e-commerce is emerging as a relevant distribution channel also in the wine industry. This notwithstanding, wine e-commerce platforms show a slower growth rate whether compared to other goods and services categories – such as electronic and digital products. This is particularly true in Italy where the total volume of e-commerce sales in the food and drink sector are less than 1% of the total online sales. Therefore, it is important to investigate the underlying mechanisms explaining consumers’ positive and negative intentions to purchase wine online. This will in fact allow both theoretical and practical insights to wine industry marketers. Hence, this study proposes and empirically tests a conceptual model concerning the antecedents of consumers’ intention to purchase wine online. Specifically, the objective is to identify the differences that are specific to the context of the wine buying process. The 5 steps of the purchasing process – need perception, pre-purchase, purchase, post-purchase, intention of repatronage – are analyzed through eleven determinants such as risk aversion, convenience propensity, product information availability, degree of independence in purchasing, shopping enjoyment, channel layout, shipping conditions, loyalty intention, and free-riding behavior. Data were collected from a sample of Italian 570 online consumers who habitually purchase wine online. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM) were used for testing the hypothesized relationships. Results show that product information availability and convenience propensity significantly influence the digital channel selection and, consequently, loyalty and patronage intention. Building on these results, the present study suggests that wine industry should focus more on digital channels’ layout in order to better stimulate consumers’ loyalty and intention to provide positive feedbacks. Yet, it also emerged how this kind of channel is useful at most when targeting price sensitive consumers. Theoretical and practical implications are thus provided along with suggestions for future research in the marketing literature.

The paper presents consumer taste preferences of Indonesian coffee based on consumers’ EEG recording as biological response to elicit preferences towards several coffee products. The study employs applications of neuroscience methods to analyze the physiological choice process. Coffee consumers were asked to evaluate several Indonesian coffee products by using wireless EEG headset with 5 channels to collect EEG signals from participants’ brain areas that can give us a measure to estimate consumers’ preferences. Introduction Coffee is one of the most widely consumed beverages in Indonesia. Earlier, Irfan Anwar, Chairman of the Association of Indonesian Coffee Exporters and Industries (AICE), said domestic coffee consumption in Indonesia grows by an average of 8 percent per year. In 2017 total consumption may reach 350,000 ton. Coffee consumption is estimated to grow in Indonesia in the 2017/2018 season from 3.1 million bags of (60 kilogram) coffee to 3.3 bags of coffee. This growth is attributed to the establishment of new cafes and coffee corners (usually in the business centers and malls in the bigger cities) as well as the increasingly popular "coffee-drinking lifestyle" among the nation's expanding middle class segment. In Indonesia, Coffee ranks third in the table of food and beverage categories in terms of annual turnover and the value of the coffee market is growing rapidly. This results in increased competition on the market, as well as an increasingly extensive product offer. This, in turn, means that the consumer is often spoilt for choice when choosing one product from among many available on the market. The final decision as to the selection is determined by a complex set of factors such as the quality of the product, its brand, convenience and the method of preparation, as well as the price. “We are now drinking more quality coffee and we now have a better understanding of the quality that’s consumed in the developed world,” Irfan (Chairman of the Association of Indonesian Coffee Exporter - AEKI) said. When selecting among the coffee products , consumers are guided by their subjective evaluation, they rely on their own senses, experience, knowledge, trend and similar vague criteria. Therefore, the main objective of the article is an analysis of consumer taste preferences on several indonesian coffee in Indonesia market. Understanding their preferences will make it possible to develop a marketing strategy and product development for coffee industry in Indonesia market. To investigate the consumer’s taste preferences of several indonesian coffee, there is consumer neuroscience the emerging interdisciplinary field in marketing, that combines psychology, neuroscience, and economics to study how the brain is physiologically affected by stimuli (Lee, Broderick, & Chamberlain, 2007). The human brain activity as biological response of consumers will be monitored and provided evidence of how product cues related with sensory inputs (taste) can affect consumer’s attitude and offer the hope of characterizing choice process in coffee consumers (Ohme, Reykowska, Wiener, & Choromanska, 2009). Literature Review The Sense of Taste The beverage companies should create the products that appealing to the sense of taste. These impulses transmitted with sensory nerves to the relevant centers in the brain and interpreted. The taste of sense varies according to cultures, lifestyles, habits etc. (Carter, et al 2013). Human Brain The human brain is the command center for the human nervous system. It receives input from the sensory organs and sends output to the muscles. One way to address whether taste as stimuli can affects consumers’ preferences towards several indonesian coffee based on consumers’ brain response is to record from multiple brain regions simultaneously while subjects perform choice tasks (Lee et al.,2007). In this research we will focus on frontal lobe, temporal lobe, and parietal lobe area that can draw consumer attitude through sensory system process. Electroencephalography EEG is an emerging research tool for evaluating sensory responses to stimuli. It provides important insight into the electrical activity of the brain cortex that reflects true emotions and feelings during coffee product consumption (Knutson et al., 2007). Methodology For coffee taste preference, 30 participants were involved in this study by using non probability judgmental sampling. The participant, are coffee consumers and purchasers of coffee product. They must have normal vision, never had neurological nor psychiatric disturbances and right handed. Sample Preparation And Serving The sample preparation is using the SCAA method. Samples are roasted 24 hours before cupping and allowed to rest for at least 8 hours. The coffee samples are created according to the size of one serving cup and placed on the ziplock plastic packaging immediately so that the aroma does not subside. The sample should remain on the ziplock packaging until the brewing process. The particle grind size should be slightly coarser than normally used for paper filter with ratio of 8.25 grams of coffee per 150 ml of water. Following the rules from SCAA, cupping glasses is tempered glass with size between 207 ml to 266 ml, with a diameter of up to between 76-89 mm. The temperature of the water approximately 93℃ when poured into the ground coffee, water must wet the whole coffee grounds. Wait in about 8-10 minutes until the sample temperature reaches 71℃, then the evaluation should begin. Data Collection To test Neural Response of the participants who were conducting experimental tasks by Emotiv EPOC Neuro Head Set International 10/20 System (Figure 1). EEG was recorded for 3 minutes. Before the testing session, each subject received detailed instructions regarding the experiment. They were instructed to minimize body and brain movement as possible and asked to remain relaxed throughout the experiment. In order to ensure subjects understood the task requirements, pre-experiments were given to practice. During the EEG recording session, the subjects were seated in a comfortable chair in a quiet room. To start the session, using a click for warning signal, and 3 seconds later we used another click as imperative signal to order the experimenter inject the stimulus (Table 1). Everyone will try the coffee by cupping in accordance with the SCAA rules. The subject tastes the stimulus for 3 seconds. Stimulus was manually injected into the subject’s mouth via a hand-held syringe connected to a tube in quantities of 20 ml each time to know until the after taste of coffee. Each stimulus was repeated 3 times with the inter block interval 10-15 minutes. The data then recorded using OpenVIBE 0.13.0 and EPOC Panel Control software and then analyzed using MATLAB R2015a which complemented with EEGLAB. The electrodes were placed on F3 - F4 and P7 - P8 sites. All participants were instructed not to consume any food or beverage other than water min 12 hour before testing to minimize time-of-day effects by reducing pre-experimental activity. Result & Discussion The respondents were consists of 80% males and 20% females, their age were 18-63 years old. Majority of the respondents (85 %) spend between Rp 1.000.000 and Rp 20.000.000 per month, 9% of them spend less than Rp 1.000.000 per month, while the remaining 6% spend more than Rp 20.000.000 per month. Most of respondents were university students (81%) while the rest (19%) were private employee and entrepreneurs. Based on cross tabulations test, we found that age (X2=8.351, p=0.017<0.05) and monthly expense (X2=9.266, p=0.034<0.05) affects the Korean food consumptions, while gender and occupation were not. This results supported Ton Nu et al. (1996) and Saba (2001) findings that was shown food habits and taste preferences are mostly related to age. The primary aim of the current study was to expand the previous research by examining the effect of taste on cognitive performance for investigating taste of several indonesian coffee. We test 10 Indonesian coffee with different origin, roasting level, and post harvest process. Coffee origin: (1) Java Preanger; (2) Aceh Gayo; (3) Toraja Sapan; (4) Bali Kintamani, and (5) Wamena Papua Roasting level: (1) Light; (2) Medium; and (3) Dark Post Harvest Process: (1) Wet Method; (2) Semi Wet Method; (3) Dry / Natural Methods; and (4) Honey Method The results showed some electrophysiological reactions and the most preffered coffee was Bali Kintamani coffee with honey process and dark roasting level (p=0.02; p>0.00) and the least preffered coffee was Toraja Sapan Coffee with washed process and dark roasting level(p=0.00; p>0.00). Different coffee stimulus had shown different interest, relaxation, and stress level. The highest interest level coffee had shown an increase in relaxation level. And it was determined that slowing down on brain waves parallel to that case and participant keeps away the stress. In the other hand, when they drink interested coffee an increasing had been determined on their brain activity and wave changing connected to stress. According to these data, they felt relaxation when thay drink the liked coffee but they felt stress at the opposite. Conclusions The results of this study indicate that different coffee stimulus had shown different interest, relaxation, and stress level. Most of coffee consumer like Bali Kintamani coffee with honey process and dark roasting level. Since this study was a pilot, we would extend such investigation to further more participants having various food preferences.