This work aims to deepen how to cope with marketing challenges of XXI century, characterized by turbulent and dynamic environments. Specifically, it explores the theoretical underpinnings to develop an Agile Marketing Capability’s framework and propositions. This study performs an in-depth literature review on IT and Dynamic Marketing Capabilities to provide the features, components, functions and types of an Agile Marketing Capability. Given the extreme innovativeness of this topic in marketing realm, it represents a first attempt to understanding the Agile Marketing Capability, which requires further theoretical and empirical contributions and refinements. The framework and propositions of this research may be useful for managers and decision makers to figure out the advantages of the Agile Marketing Capabilities’ employment in current marketplaces.
Two experimental studies examine the effect of morality metaphors in advertising on consumer indulgence. The results of Experiment 1 provide evidence to suggest that consumer rebelliousness mediates the effect of morality metaphors on indulgent consumption, with Experiment 2 providing further evidence of the rebelliousness process underlying the immorality-indulgence effect.
In this study, we present results of two experiments on hedonic and functional products designed to (1) explore consumers’ third-person perceptions of sex appeals in advertising (2) determine which constructs are effective on third-person perception across the product types (3) and, examine whether conceptual models are moderated by public exposure to sexual stimuli or not. The findings suggest that public exposure to the sexual stimuli is a factor that causes some differences on the antecedents of the third-person perception, and behavioural outcomes of the third-person perception across the respondents’ cultural background and product types.
Ingredients are the component parts or elements of something. Brands often portray a product’s ingredients, components, and parts as humanlike messengers in advertising and packaging. Nature’s Way, for example, humanizes a strawberry for their Vita Gummies by portraying it with eyes and a mouth. This study explores whether imbuing ingredients or components with humanlike features influences consumer perceptions and decisions. The results of Study 1 demonstrated that anthropomorphizing an ingredient successfully intensified consumer purchase decision in a coffee shop context. However, not all humanized ingredients were effective. The data from Study 2 revealed that anthropomorphizing a primary ingredient was more likely to increase purchase intentions than anthropomorphizing a secondary ingredient. This effect was mediated by quality perceptions. While prior research investigated the effect of product anthropomorphization on consumer responses, our study mainly focused on humanizing the ingredients that constitute a product, an important topic that has not yet been investigated in the marketing and consumer research.
In this research, we explore the role of interpersonal personalization in brand offerings in engendering the representations of ‘which dimension’ of brand personality (Aaker, 1997) and the subsequent effect on consumer attitude toward and connection with the brand (Fournier, 1998). Experiment 1 reveals that interpersonal personalization is different from customization with unique benefit in developing sincerity in brand personality. It demonstrates the positive effect of personalization on brand attitude through formulation of a sincere brand. Experiment 2 provides empirical evidence that personalization encouraging consumer’s involvement in the product design process allows consumer’s greater engagement with and investment towards the brand, which then manifests favorable brand attitude. The findings of this research offer insights on how brands can take advantage of personalization practice in their product or service offerings to engage consumers, and subsequently develop a close relationship with them. This research makes an important contribution to the brand personality literature through identifying a specific marketing approach (i.e., interpersonal personalization) as an effective strategy in developing a specific type of brand personality (i.e., sincerity). In sum, this research offers new view on how to manage close relationship with consumers, which is a significant practical implication for marketing managers.
Customer online engagement is crucial to online travel websites which depend online reviews to attract new users and maintain current ones. The distinctive features of public attractions in tourism and the unique webdesign of TripAdvisor create an empirical environment for this study to explore the influence of customer experience and satisfaction on their engagement in posting reviews regarding public goods. Based on a sample of TripAdvisor-listed attractions and considering the information from over 37,000 online reviews, the empirical findings suggest that (1) customer online engagement is stronger (weaker) on paid (public) attractions, and (2) the positive effect of satisfaction on customer engagement in posting reviews is more evident among public attractions rather than paid attractions. This study concludes by offering managerial implications to regulators of public attractions, operators of travel websites, and managers of paid attractions.
The service setting is more than ever dynamic. Customers’ engagement is changing due to the multiple interactions at different levels of the consumption experience journey. The customer as an active and engaged value co-creator raises new challenges to theory and practice. However, the connection between engagement and co-creation is scarce in the literature. The experience of the active hotel customer occurs through customer engagement with internal actors and factors from prepurchase through to post-purchase. Since value co-creation results from the engagement of multiple factors and actors (f/actors) in the process, it is essential to understand the actors’ activities that promote or obstruct this process. This paper proposes a connection between customer engagement (CE) and value co-creation framework to ascertain and depict the internal actors’ activities and factors that foster or hinder customers’ experience in the hotel industry. The researchers used qualitative methods (35 in-depth interviews, document analysis and 4 observation sessions) in seven regions in Ghana to explore the customer’s perspective. Data was analysed with Nvivo11, within a thematic analysis framework. Findings suggest that customer’s engagement within the hotel environment with multiple actors has an influence on customer value co-creation/destruction process. It found that positive and negative engagement fosters/hinders guests’ interactions which lead to value cocreation/ destruction. The research also discovered that negative interactions occasioned by any factor/actor triggers value destruction at multiple stages of the experience journey. The study suggests theoretical and managerial implications focused on the actors’ practices that foster or hinder customer engagement and value co-creation.
Engaged customers are a crucial asset in many service industries, especially in the tourism and hospitality context (e.g. So, King, Sparks, Wang, & Hall, 2016). Positive effects of customer engagement (CE), such as word-of-mouth, community participation, or provision of new ideas for services are likely to become increasingly important for companies and help them develop unique offerings and generate new revenue streams (e.g. Kumar & Pansari, 2016; Venkatesan, 2017; Verhoef, Reinartz, & Krafft, 2010). Although previous research has repeatedly emphasized the positive effects of CE, the patterns that bring about CE are less clear. This research contributes to the investigation of CE antecedents and draws on data elicited from a series of focus group discussions and interviews with customers, experts and executives in the services, hotel, and tourism industry. The findings from these qualitative studies point to complex patterns of customer and firm based antecedents (e.g. Brodie et al., 2011; van Doorn et al., 2010) that play a role in stimulating CE. Among other results, the findings show that customers exhibit different motives for engaging, such as feelings of familiarity, pride and belonging, helpfulness or emotions and companies need to adjust their approaches to meet these motives. In sum, these findings contribute to the literature on CE by unveiling different antecedents of CE and investigating their interplay. This article also contributes to the services and relationship management literature by investigating which relationship characteristics play a role in CE and how they bring about engagement behaviors.
Value co-creation has become an emerging venue of the customer engagement research. The purpose of the study is to investigate a model that represents the process (behavior and value) and consequence (satisfaction) of customer co-creation in the restaurant context. Specifically, with the theoretical support of service-dominant logic, the present study explores customer co-creation behavior as a key predictor of co-created value, which in turn leads to customer satisfaction. The results of the study confirm that customer value cocreation is a subtle process by examining the relationship between customer co-creation behavior at the “co-production” stage and co-created value at the “co-creation of value” stage. The findings of the study contribute to the evolving knowledge of customer cocreation of value, and offer practitioners in the hospitality and tourism industry effective marketing strategies based on re-examining customer relationships and engagement, thereby maximizing customer value.
To investigate the value co-creation process in wellness tourism, this study constructed a structural equation model of customer interactions with (1) the environment, (2) service employees, and (3) other customers relating to customer-perceived value and customer engagement. Empirical data were collected from 528 survey respondents who were at wellness tourism resorts. The results reveal that all three types of interaction have positive effects on customer-perceived value, and that perceived value positively affects customer engagement. Based on this finding, management recommendations for wellness tourism service enterprises are given.
This study discusses how firm-customer interactions impact customer engagement behaviors in the area of hospitality and tourism services. In the current study, two research questions are raised to answer: 1) what values are perceived by customers through firm-customer interactions during various service encounters? 2) how customer engagement behaviors are led by the customer perceived values? To test the proposed model, a quantitative approach is adopted. Amazon Mechanical Turk is used as data collection platform to collect responses with the aid of Qualtrics as questionnaire development tool. To reach the maximum scope of hospitality and tourism services, hotel guests, restaurant patrons, travelers, airline customers, and theme park travelers are included in the sample. This study adopts a quantitative approach to investigate the factors that contribute to the varied customer engagement behaviors (i.e. online ratings, online reviews, online blogging, and customer-to-customer interactions). Successful industry practices demonstrate that customer engagement brings many benefits and opportunities to maintain business sustainability and profitability.
This study focuses on the digital generation in China and their engagement in social media to co-create values with firms. The study employed a qualitative research approach to first develop a social media co-creation value scale. This was followed by motivational analysis of social media engagement to co-create values. A spectrum of utilitarian and hedonic motives related to value co-creation behaviors via social media were then identified. Many theoretical and practical implications are provided based on the study findings.
Increasingly, mobile technology is becoming common in our everyday lives (GFT Technologies, 2016); nevertheless, mobile payments are not one of the most frequently used mobile services (Liébana-Cabanillas, Muñoz-Leiva & Sánchez- Fernández, 2017). Peer-to-peer mobile payment services (P2PM-pay) (also referred to as person-to-person transactions or P2P transactions) allow customers to quickly and easily transfer funds from their bank account or credit card to another individual's account via the internet or a smartphone. Prior studies on payment systems using mobile devices focused on analyzing other types of payment systems, the internal structure and safety protocols for each system, and their adoption by consumers (Ramos-de-Luna, Montoro-Ríos & Liébana-Cabanillas, 2016; Ozturk, Bilgihan, Salehi-Esfahani & Hua, 2017).
The aim of this research is to propose a standardized behavioral model of users’ intention to use P2PM-pay. The model has been defined based on a framework involving some of the main theories of technologies adoption from the perspective of social psychology (Fishbein y Ajzen, 1975; Davis, Bagozzi & Warshaw, 1989; Venkatesh & Davis, 2000; Venkatesh & Bala, 2008; Venkatesh, Thong, & Xu, 2012). Based on the literature review and in-depth interviews conducted of professionals from the Fintech (financial technology) sector, the model was structured based on three groups of antecedents (i.e., drivers, inhibitor and psychological dimensions) to explain the intention to use.
The model was evaluated using survey data of 701 participants with structural equation modelling (SEM) approach. The proposed model is based on classical technology adoption models but incorporates specific variables from mobile payment systems. It includes a total of eight antecedents of the intention to use the P2PM-pay app. Among these antecedents, three (i.e. perceived usefulness, subjective norms and personal innovativeness) are fundamental to the intention to use, while three others (i.e. individual mobility, perceived risk and perceived trust) have a lesser influence. The results also point out that the relationships of both perceived ease of use and hedonic motivation with the intention to use are not significant. Based on the findings, this research has important theoretical and practical implications in understanding the adoption of P2P mobile payment services.
Following a service failure, dissatisfied customers increasingly turn to brands’ social media outlets (e.g., Facebook brand page) to share their complaint with the involved company and other consumers. The majority of these other consumers (i.e., ‘recovery bystanders’) chooses to remain passive by simply observing the negative comment and the company’s attempt to restore the customer-brand relationship in public by means of ‘webcare’ (i.e., marketers’ communicative responses to online complaints (MIW); van Noort & Willemsen, 2011). For these observers the online service recovery process conveys valuable information for making purchase decisions. On the other hand, some consumers choose to become active, for instance, by making comments on the complaint or the company’s response and/or by ‘liking’ a comment (i.e., positive (brand-supportive) and negative (brand-unsupportive) ‘interactive virtual presence’ (IVP)). Given this interactive environment, recovery bystanders are exposed to strong social influence. Although recent research made some progress (e.g., Weitzl & Hutzinger, 2017), knowledge about the impact of this complex, social environment on recovery bystanders’ brand-related reactions remains scarce. In this study, we suggest that recovery bystanders’ level of susceptibility to normative influence (SNI) moderates the effect of different forms of webcare responses – accompanied by positive/negative IVP – on brand image. In 3 experiments (n = 1,387 consumers) we systematically manipulate response sources (i.e. ‘advocate-initiated webcare’ (AIW) vs. ‘marketer-initiated webcare’ (MIW)) and response types (study 1); interactive virtual presence via comments (positive IVP and negative IVP) (study 2) and Facebook ‘likes’ (positive IVP) (study 3). In explaining bystanders’ post-recovery evaluation of brand image we show that: Low-SNI bystanders, receiving AIW, as compared to MIW, show – regardless of webcare’s content – a significant increase. High-SNI bystanders, receiving AIW in the form of ‘vouching’ (i.e. an advocate counters a complaint with a ‘brand love story’) has the most pronounced effect – adding positive IVP (with additional, positive brand comments) even leads to a further improvement. However, adding negative IVP (with unfavorable brand comments) to marketer’s vouching reduced high-SNI bystanders’ image evaluation. Finally, when high-SNI bystanders receive advocate’s vouching and highly positive IVP (i.e., many ‘likes’), brand image evaluations significantly increase. This research draws scholars’ and practitioners’ attention to the opportunities – and perils – of cocreated service recoveries via social media.
Digital technological development has created different new possibilities. New products and services are developed to cater the needs and wants of these digital consumers (or digital natives). It has also changed the means of marketing communications. Social media has become an integral part of many people’s lives, thus social media marketing is found in the marketing strategy of every brand.
Western social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and so on are banned in China. In their places, Weibo, WeChat, Youku and more are the main social media channels in China and thus the main battlefields of social marketing for brands entering China Market. WeChat is the largest social network in China, with over 900 million users daily. Chinese users spend an average of over 70 minutes a day using WeChat, for nearly all types of services, including booking flights, restaurant table reservation, shopping, paying bills, hailing taxi, transferring money, and posting Moments on their walls, etc. Not only that, WeChat allows companies and celebrities to create official accounts to generate content for promotional purposes. Moreover, WeChat allows one-to-one personalized interaction between brands and the users.
To cater the needs of the new generation of Chinese digital natives, a mobile app eM++ was developed that creates new customer services and enables tailored fashion marketing. The eM++ app has three components. The first core component is 1Measure, which users can obtain their body measurements by skimpily taking two photographs of themselves in normal clothing anywhere and anytime. Without the involvement of expensive equipment, users can enjoy similar benefit of body scanning but more flexibility and convenience, they not only instantly receive their measurements but also have their digital body model and a shape analysis report. Based on this information, the second component of the app eShop allow users to shop fashion items currently available in different online fashion stores like ASOS, Zara, and H & M, etc. In eShop, users are suggested the right sizes to order for different fashion items, based on their measurements and shape information, and also mix-and-match recommendations. The last component is eTailor, where users can order clothing like suit jackets, pants and shirts that tailored made for them, but save the need to take body measurements in a physical store. This new digital service will first be launched in China as there is high demand on Made-to-Measure fashion and marketing through WeChat social media platform. This paper will discuss how to market this new digital service using social media like WeChat in China and consumers’ reactions to this new business model in this digital world.
To lead a movie to success, managers must understand why consumers buy tickets. Some go to the movies due to trailers or movie posters, others watch movies triggered by their friends’ recommendation. Using Bass (1969)’s terms, we may categorize the former type of consumers into innovators who are influenced by external factors such as advertisements and media reports. We may label the latter type as imitators who are affected by internal factors such as word-of-mouth (WOM). Consumers in the digital era, regardless of their motivation types, easily obtain information related to movies through webpages or social networking services. Therefore, marketers should focus on how online information influence the diffusion of products.
Additionally, each country has a unique cultural background, thereby resulting in different consumer behavior. Based on the prior arguments, we expect that the US movie market would show higher innovation effect and lower imitation effect compared to the Korean movie market. Opposite to the hypothesis, there are no significant differences in the innovation effect between the two markets. However, as expected, the imitation effect of US is significantly lower than that of Korea. In both markets, the advertising level and the publicizing level do not show any significant effect on the innovation effect. However, the two variables have significant and positive effect on the market potential. As predicted, the gender and the age heterogeneity of WOM are revealed to affect the imitation effect in the hypothesized direction. Product availability, measured with the number of screens, has a positive relationship with the innovation effect in the US market and with the market potential in both markets. Lastly, seasonality shows a positive association with the imitation effect in the US market and with the market potential in the Korean market.
The current research tries to explore key differences in the diffusion patterns of movies between the US and Korean markets by applying Bass diffusion model. Further, this study aims to discover the factors that bring about the innovation and the imitation effects in both markets. By employing data available online, the current study could provide practical implications on how to manage information delivered through online channels.
Introduction
Online shopping has become an important part of people’s daily lives. The very nature of online shopping makes it unlikely for consumers to examine products with their senses (e.g., touch, smell) as they can do in offline stores. The consumer obtains information from a variety of online sources (sellers, other buyers, and third parties) to assess a product and make a purchase decision. This variety of online information (e.g., product description, reviews and ratings) informs and persuades consumers. While sellers’ decisions comprise most information displayed on their product’s website, other information is shown because consumers have a moral, ethical, and legal “right” to know (e.g., ingredients, weight, size) (Jacoby, Speller, & Berning, 1974).
Regarding the latter information, some countries (e.g., the U.S., China, Canada, the EU and India) have regulations that require pre-packaged food manufacturers to provide a nutrition-fact label and claims displaying standardized information on product packaging (Health Canada, 2010). We ask the following question to public policy makers and marketers: Should online pre-packaged food shops also need to present nutrition facts? There are two perspectives one might adopt regarding the array of information confronting online shoppers. The first perspective deals with human information processing. This position maintains that humans’ ability to assimilate and process information has finite limits during any given unit of time, and that once these limits are surpassed, behavior tends to become confused and dysfunctional (Miller, 1956; Driver & Streufert, 1969). Conceivably, such information overload might also occur in online shopping. Online shoppers often make their selections from a range of products, each with an array of information. Moreover, they make such purchase decisions within a relatively short time period.
An alternative perspective is that nutrition-fact information provides key cues for consumers to assess product quality in the online marketplace. Cues can be categorized as extrinsic or intrinsic to the product (Maheswaran & Chaiken, 1991; Anderson, 1981). Extrinsic cues are product-related attributes that can be altered whereas intrinsic cues are inherent to the product itself (e.g., ingredients) and cannot be easily altered (Rao & Monroe, 1988; Purohit & Srivastava, 2001). An online shopper's evaluation of a product is based upon both intrinsic and extrinsic cues. In the online shopping environment, few intrinsic cues are available to consumers and the disclosure of nutrition facts (an intrinsic product feature) can help to fill this gap.
Theoretical Development
The understanding of how nutrition information presentation influences online food sales is a substantial topic for both industry and academia. With the convenience of online shopping, the potential for food producers and retail stores to take their products online is enormous. eMarketer (2014) reports that online food and beverage purchases increased 15.2% in U.S. retail ecommerce sales, and that this trend will remain consistent. Online food shopping is extremely popular in China, with 92% of consumers purchasing food or beverages at least once a month (Weber Shandwick, 2014). Moreover, eMarketer (2016) reports that by 2020, one-fourth of China's online purchases will be made directly from foreign websites or from third-party platforms. Thus, it is important for other countries to learn about the Chinese market. Among these potential issues, whether nutrition-fact information affects consumer purchase decisions in the online shopping context remains unexplored. Nutrition-fact labels have proven to be useful cues for consumer purchasing decision in offline conditions (Shah, Bettman, Ubel, Keller, & Edell, 2014). However, researchers have been unable to determine the effects of nutrition information in online conditions with network virtualization (Mavlanova, Benbunan-Fich, & Koufaris, 2012) and information multiplicity. In addition, the nutrition information disclosed by online sellers may cue consumers to acquire healthy food. Previous research has found that when information pertaining to a food’s nutritional content is provided, less-healthy food tastes better (Raghunathan, Naylor, & Hoyer, 2006). This literature raises the issue of whether nutrition information is more effective for healthy or unhealthy products. In summary, we investigate the effect of nutrition-fact information on online food shopping. The research questions address: (1) whether and how nutrition-fact information influences food sales in online conditions; (2) how nutrition-fact information interacts with other online extrinsic cues (i.e., word of mouth and historical sales); and (3) whether nutrition-fact information is more effective for healthy or unhealthy products.
Research Design
We then address these issues using panel data collected from Taobao.com (the largest online shopping platform in China). We selected 45 days as our study period, and the sample comprised 273 sellers. In addition, we conduct an experiment using an eye-tracking system to test the necessity and helpfulness of nutrition-fact information.
Results and Conclusion
The results show that the nutrition-fact information has a significant impact on sales. More specifically, consumers are more likely to choose sellers with the nutrition-fact information, and the healthy (unhealthy) food with nutrition-fact information tends to attract more (fewer) purchase. In addition, our results reveal some interesting interactions between nutrition-fact information and other cues. Specifically, WOM and historical sales strengthen the sales impact of nutrition-fact information. Our eye-tracking experiment leads to several interesting results. First, consumers pay attention to nutrition-fact information and spend considerable time reading it. Second, a long fixation length on nutrition-fact information would reasonably increase sales.
This study makes several academic contributions. First, we extend the topic of nutrition information to an e-commerce context. Second, this is one of the first studies to examine the role of nutrition-fact information from an experimental perspective. Third, we supplement the findings of previous studies on the role of food type. This study also provides several practical implications. First, governments could require online sellers to reveal nutrition information in a truthful and detailed manner at the point of sale. In addition, labeling policies not only increase nutrition awareness and protect consumers, but they can also offer a profitable path for marketers. Second, sellers should design nutrition information and other cues strategies jointly. Third, compared with unhealthy food, nutrition-fact information is more effective for the purchase of healthy food. Sellers might be encouraged by this trend and consider more strategies to display nutrition-fact information on healthy food.
Introduction
In order to solve the information asymmetry and make full use of resources (unused goods, spare capacity and so on), the sharing economy, which based on the application of mobile internet technology and focused on the consumption of the right to use, is developing rapidly. Lack of trust is considered to be one of the important problems hindering the development of sharing economy. Möhlmann (2015) said that trust is a fundamental determinant of sharing economy development and ensuring shared satisfaction. At present, sharing economy enterprises have established product evaluation system and docked a third party credit rating system (i.e. Zhima Credit) to promote consumers’ trust. However, with most enterprises are becoming more and more consistent in evaluation and credit rating system, there is a new problem emerged: how to further deepen consumers’ trust in order to promote consumers’ intention to participate continuously (Zucker, 1986; Lewis & Weigert, 1985).
Granovetter (1985) mentioned that trust is the product of social relationships. Botsman and Rogers (2011) made it clear that social networks play an important role in building trust in sharing economy. And people are always more willing to accept the opinions of people who have social relations with them (Lu, Zhao, & Wang, 2010). Hence, with the feature of participant of everyone in sharing economy, it is necessary to further strengthen consumers’ trust through the social interaction among consumers and between consumers and sharing platforms.
Theoretical Development
Sharing economy is based on LBS and other new technologies to realize the matching of supply and demand information across time and space. And to a certain extent, it solves the problem of information asymmetry in the era of e-commerce. Yet consumer have new requirements for product information. For example, consumers are more concerned about whether the utility of products and services can meet their needs (i.e. some consumers are more concerned about when to reach their destination than the performance of the car). But it is difficult for company to understand each everyone of consumers’ utility preference and publish product utility information based on these preferences (Xie & Gerstner, 2007). Because this kind of utility preference has the characteristic of timeliness and personalization. Therefore, consumers’ perceived uncertainty about the utility of the product will also affect the consumers’ trust.
In summary, we then address these research questions:(1) can the promotion of trust between consumers and sharing platforms be achieved through the socializing of sharing platforms and then affect consumers’ intention to participate continuously; (2) if so, which type of privacy protection method and social information can promote consumer trust; and (3) does the impact of sharing platform socialization on consumer trust vary according to consumers’ concerns about the perceived utility uncertainty of the product.
Research Design
We then address these issues using experiment data. The first experiment was a 2 (social media: have, not have) x 2 (individual trust propensity: trust, not trust) between-subject design on the intention to trust sharing platform and participant continuously. Perceived utility uncertainty was added to this design as a moderator. Moreover, the second experiment was a 2 (social information type: hedonic, utilitarian) x 2 (degree of privacy protection: week, strong) between-subject design on the intention to trust sharing platform. Our scales come from existing scales and optimize it according to the characteristics of sharing economy (Schneider, 1999; Dhar & Wertenbroch, 2000; McKnight, Choudhury, & Kacmar, 2002).
Results and Conclusion
The results of the first experiment show that whether or not the social platform has no significant impact on the consumer trust if the individual tends to trust others. And for individuals who tends to do not trust others, they are more likely to trust socialized sharing platforms. The higher the consumer perceived utility uncertainty is, the higher (lower) trust of the consumer platform in the socialized (not socialized) sharing platform. For the second experiment results, in the context of sharing economy, the utilitarian information has a greater positive impact on the consumer trust than the hedonic information. In addition, the stronger the privacy protection of sharing platforms, the higher the trust of consumes.
This study makes several academic contributions. First, we extend the topic of socialization to sharing economy context. Second, we add the perceived utility uncertainty as a moderator, and supplement the role of perceived uncertainty. This research also provides several practical implications. First, sharing platform can promote their consumers’ trust by establishing their own social platform. This platform can be used as a differentiated competitive strategy for sharing platform. Second, sharing platform should guide consumers to share utilitarian information (i.e. weather for specific place or real time traffic) to improve consumer satisfaction. Third, sharing platform can access consumer preference information through this social platform for further product development and classification.
The relationship of parasocial Interaction is one of the important contents of marketing research in recent years. With the rise of internet economy in the world, more and more enterprises' marketing practices are involved in the marketing process of SNS based on social networks. The interaction between medium and audiences has broken through the non-face-to-face one-way communication mode and forms a twoway communication mode of the relationship of parasocial Interaction in the SNS environment. Based on the signaling theory and the social exchange theory, this dissertation clarifies the driving factors and mechanism between Fashion web celebrity and attributes and relationship of parasocial interaction through the literature review, In the South China, Middle and North China, there were N audiences who used SNS experience as survey target to conduct a survey. And analyzed these data with SEM software. The research found that between Fashion web Fashion web celebrity and attributes and SNS participation motivation show a positive correlation with relationship of parasocial interaction, and there is a positive correlation between relationship of parasocial interaction and identification, relationship of parasocial interaction and identification have positive correlation with customer equity. E-WOM on customer asset-driven process has a clear intermediary role in the relationship of parasocial Interaction. This not only enriches and develops the existing research results of relationship of parasocial Interaction, but also provides guidance for enterprises to manage relationship of parasocial interactions. In addition, it also provides valuable theoretical guidance for enterprises to promote SNS marketing management practices.
New product entails risk, causing resistance to adoption. The recommendation system may decrease the psychological risk by guiding decision making process to be more efficient (Häubl and Trifts, 2000). AI (Artificial Intelligence) has been getting smarter and smarter and widely applied to the recommendation system. Even while you are browsing on your Facebook, AI recommends you the products that you may like based on the customized analysis of your interest. However, do people always love to adopt the smart recommends from AI? Definitely no! Then when and why people reluctantly accept AI recommendation? We assume that the product or service where the sense and feeling is important, people might be reluctant to accept the recommendation from artificial intelligence. This is because people might feel threatened when the AI challenges against human uniqueness (Gray and Wegner, 2012). Thus, in this study we investigated how the recommendation system types (AI vs. Human) affect brand attitude depending on the brand image (Symbolic vs. Functional). We found consumers are reluctant to accept a recommendation from AI in symbolic brand where human sense and feel are considered to be critical factors (Study1). This effect was further explained by uncanny-feeling toward the AI recommendation system (Study2). This research is meaningful in that it is the first attempt to apply the artificial intelligence recommendation concept to the marketing strategy by incorporating the concept of brand image. We predicted and found AI based recommendation system is reluctantly accepted for symbolic brand. Furthermore, we discovered the underlying process for this phenomenon as uncanny feeling. People seemed to have uncomfortable feelings against AI recommendation when the brand image is related to sense and feel considered as nature of human uniqueness. Thus, marketers should be very cautious when utilizing the AI recommendation system not to threaten human uniqueness area.