Customer management based on Customer lifetime value has emerged as the most effective way of doing business due to the ability to foster profitable CRM (Verhoef & Lemon, 2013; Villanueva & Hanssens, 2007). Although there has been much conceptual evidence of the positive link between customer equity and firm’s performance(Blattberg, Malthouse, and Neslin 2009), comparison of relationships between two competing firms based on customer equity and firm profitability is limited. Therefore, this research examines the role of customer equity on the firm profitability by comparing the company type such as leader and follower in customer equity setting. The result shows that the effect of newly acquired Customer equity of the second tier company is stronger than that of the top tier company while the effect of retained customer equity of the top company is stronger than that of the second tier company. Overall, the results provide strategic implications for firms to use a different customer equity strategy in a competitive market structure.

This study examined discrepancies in the brand image of a Japanese frozen food company perceived by the company’s employees and its consumers. Using a hypothesized model leading to brand loyalty, structural differences between the company’s employees’ (internal) and consumers’ (external) brand images were revealed: the two images did not structurally match.

The practice of relationship marketing strategies is the core of the success of marketing for any kind of organizations. The study develops relevant research issues and propositions for empirical investigation based on the strategies of relationship marketing offered by Berry (1983) such as core service strategy, customization strategy, augmentation strategy, relationship pricing strategy, and internal marketing strategy. Relating to relationship marketing theory, agencies and clients are aware of in providing and taking core services, Agencies customize the relationship and augment the services to satisfy and retain their clients. Considering the account size and length of relationship agencies offer relationship pricing. All agencies maintain strong interaction among the employees and different departments as a part of their internal marketing practice.

Scholars, policymakers, and cultural organizations have studied cultural tourism destinations (e.g., historical, artistic, or lifestyle/heritage offerings) from different perspectives since the late 1990s. However, the current tourism literature contains gaps can be further narrowed by studying cultural tourism destinations from tourists’ perspectives. To narrow the gaps in the literature, this study adapted the M-R model to examine the influence of experimental value variables (i.e., service staff excellence, aesthetic, playfulness, and consumer return on investment) on tourists’ satisfaction. Additionally, it investigates how on-site activity involvement moderates the relationship between tourists’ satisfaction and their sense of belonging. Drawing on a survey of over 500 Taiwanese tourists, our findings reveal that service staff excellence, aesthetics, and playfulness influence tourist’ satisfaction, which in turn, can affect their sense of belonging. Furthermore, sense of belong can positively affect tourists’ behavioral intentions, which is measured by their intentions to revisited and recommend. As for the moderating effect of on-site activity involvement, this research find it can positively moderate the relationship between satisfaction and sense of belonging. Several implications of the study are identified, and avenues for future research are suggested.

The current study develops a pair model considering the intensity of negative emotions and strategic combinations of recovery means and timing under hotel service failure scenarios. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the performances of these different combinations through customer satisfaction, repurchase intention, and fitting curves between the two under Chinese hotel service scenarios. Previous studies have found that service failures cause economic losses as well as negative emotional responses from customers (Grönroos, 1984; McColl Kennedy and Sparks, 2003). However, customers might display higher satisfaction and purchase intentions when proper service recovery actions are taken instead of when no service failures occur (Smith et al., 1999; McCollough et al., 2000). Concerning the means of service recovery during a service failure, customers in a negative emotional state require specific recovery solutions from the service provider; concerning the timing of service recovery, immediate recovery appears to be an effective way to address customer complaints (Kelley et al., 1993). While, previous research has partially shown that for extremely angry customers, the performance of “as soon as possible” recovery is unsatisfying and may even cause the service recovery to fail (Mattila and Ro, 2008). A 2 (recovery timing: immediate/delayed) × 2 (recovery means: psychological/economic) × 3 (type of service failure: failure in a delivery system/failure in responding to customer needs/improper employee behavior) between-subject experimental design was employed with 456 part-time MBA students in China to examine the relationship between customer satisfaction and repurchase intention under different levels of negative emotion after experienced a service failure. The results suggest that immediate and economic recovery effectively raises the service recovery evaluations from customers with low-intensity negative emotions, whereas delayed and psychological recovery helps customers with high-intensity negative emotions to give higher evaluations. This study sheds light on the role that negative emotions play in the process of service recovery and provides implications for service industry managers, that is the decisions to use economic recovery or psychological recovery are necessitate consider the intensity characteristic of negative emotions, for customers in low-intensity negative emotional states, the immediate and economic recovery strategy is effective, whereas for customers in high-intensity negative emotional states, the delayed and psychological recovery strategy may lead to better outcomes. According to these findings, it is important for managers to train front-line staff to adopt proper recovery strategies to manage service failure when facing consumers with different intensity of negative emotion.

This study is to examine how different timing of free gifts (pre-informed vs. surprise) under different consumption occasions (ordinary vs. special) independently and/or together affect consumers’ affective (overall utility) and attitudinal (satisfaction) evaluations of dining service experiences. According to utility theory (Kahneman, Wakker & Sarin, 1997), an individual’s final choice is determined by his/her evaluation of utility which refers to the experience of feelings and emotions in response to a service. Anticipated utility occurs before a purchase or an actual event; experienced utility occurs during the event. In examining the customers’ dining experiences in conjunction with free gift timing and a consumption occasion, this study focuses on anticipated and experienced utility. Two hypotheses are proposed: H1. Consumption occasions moderate the effect of timing of free gift offer on overall utility and satisfaction with the service experience in a restaurant dining environment. Specifically, on a special (vs. ordinary) consumption occasion, surprise (vs. pre-informed) free gifts increase consumer’s overall utility about and satisfaction with restaurant service experience. H2. Overall utility mediates the interactive effects of free gifts and consumption occasions on satisfaction with restaurant service. Data were gathered using a web-based experiment with a 2(free gift: surprise vs. pre-informed) x 2 (consumption occasion: special vs. ordinary) between-subject design. As a result, both H1 and H2 are supported. Participants dining at a restaurant for a special occasion had higher overall utility about their restaurant service experience when they received free gifts as a surprise as opposed to pre-informed gifts. On the other hand, participants who dined on ordinary occasions perceived an overall utility of the restaurant service to a greater extent when they received pre-informed free gifts than surprising gifts. The results indicated that it is important to consider the strategic timing of complimentary gifts to enhance customer experiences. Moreover, this study found that overall utility mediates the effect of free gifts on satisfaction only under special consumption occasions. In special occasions, participants who receive free gifts elicit affective emotions and then, they are satisfied with the restaurant service, but participants under ordinary occasions are directly satisfied with the service through free gifts.

Despite the increasing attention to customer engagement (CE) by practitioners and academics, extant studies have largely been restricted to conceptualized relationships without empirical testing (So, King, & Sparks, 2014). Drawing on social identity theory and social exchange theory, this study develops a research model delineating the relationship between customer identification (CI), CE and customer purchasing behaviors in virtual communities. The model was tested with structural equation modeling and survey data from 513 members of two virtual tourism communities. Results indicate that both customer-community identification and customer-customer identification (constituting two classifications of CI) have directly positive effect on customer engagement attitude, on which the duration of membership in a community has a moderating effect. Additionally, customer-customer identification influences customer engagement behavior directly and positively, of which customer engagement attitude is the psychological foundation. Finally, customer engagement attitude and customer engagement behavior will promote customers’ purchasing behaviors. The contribution of this paper is that CE has been empirically validated to compose of customer engagement attitude and customer engagement behavior these two separate variables, and CI is testified to be an antecedent rather than a dimension of CE, in line with the standpoints proposed by Algesheimer, Dholakia, and Herrmann (2005).Through the current investigation, empirical studies into the concept connotation and formation mechanism of CE are enriched, and the insight into customer behavior management and CE marketing is intensified.

Since the late 1980s, information communication and technology (ICT) have reshaped the landscape of the tourism industry (Buhalis & Law, 2008). Thanks to the Web 2.0 technology, tourism practitioners have never been this close to their customers over social media platforms. According to Kaplan and Haenlein (2010), social media refers to “a group of Internet-based applications which build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0 and that allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content” (p. 61). In line with this definition, electronic social networks, user-generated content aggregators, as well as location-based applications are all typical social media platforms, across which enable customers to create, edit, and share content. The increasingly growing social media platforms have greatly facilitated implementations of customer engagement strategies for organizations. As a psychological state, customer engagement is featured by interactive customer experiences with an organization, which encourage psychological, emotional, and physical investment a customer has in the organization (Harrigan, Evers, Miles, & Daly, 2017). In the tourism and hospitality context, customer engagement strategies are as critical in strengthening customer loyalty, trust, and brand evaluations (So, King, & Sparks, 2016). Useful insights have been gained relating to conceptualization and measurement scale of customer engagement, organizational and cultural obstacles to consumer engagement within hotel organizations (Chathoth et al., 2014), customer engagement in a social media context alongside the process of recognition (Cabiddu et al., 2014). Underlying the practical and theoretical significance of customer engagement lies the subjective nature of views on the social media platforms. Goh, Heng, and Lin (2014) recognized that engagement in social media brand communities positively lead to enhanced purchase expenditures through embedded information and persuasion. Quantitively, the persuasive effect of user generated information is at least 22 times more than that of marketer’s in terms of marginal effect. Although previous research has examined consequences of consumer engagement, there has been less attention paid to its causes. Meanwhile, as far as Brodie et al. (2011) were concerned, the persistency of consumer-brand engagement is contingent on an assessment of tangible and intangible costs against possible benefits such as product news and offers. Therefore, identification of these benefits can offer supplementary insights into current literature of consumer engagement. The current study utilizes the self-determination theory to uncover how engagement in social media activities is facilitated by consumers’ intrinsic motivators and what psychological benefits can consumer obtain from such engagement, as either psychological state or process (Brodie et al., 2011). Research subjects in this study are Chinese social media users. According to eMarketer’s (2017) estimated that more than 80 percent of Internet users in China (i.e., around 626 million people) accessed social networks regularly in 2017. The importance of tapping this massive market can never be overestimated.

Festival branding is undergoing a revolution based on the consolidation of new communicative behaviours in virtual brand communities (VBC), above all channelled through social media platforms (Hudson & Hudson, 2013; MacKay, Barbe, Van Winkle, & Halpenny, 2017). Although generic literature (Dessart, Veloutsou, & Morgan-Thomas, 2015) has highlighted the role of user engagement in VBC, there are no in-depth analyses of how users modulate engagement attributes and behaviours and how they are related to festival branding, as well as other possible and sometimes interrelated drivers (social capital creation, place making). Thus, this paper aims to characterise these elements in festivals’ VBC to cover these shortcomings. This proposal performs a multi-platform, multi-period, multi-user and mixed-method analysis of nearly 2,150 references in the Twitter and Facebook VBC of one of the most prominent music festivals in Europe, Sónar (Barcelona). Results show the benefits for organisers (and other relevant users) of jointly understanding these elements (and their mutual relationships) with the aim of retaining various positive economic and social impacts.

This study explores the impact of social capital on private club members’ engagement of social media. Researchers selected private club members across the U.S. Participants (559 at a 20% response rate). Results indicate that social capital is a significant factor influencing the club members’ perceptions of engaging with social media.

A company’s collaborative competence to seamlessly engage with its customers within the service industry becomes one of the primary sources of competitive advantage. Increasingly more customers expect more personalized and contextualized services to maximize the value they can obtain from each transaction, and companies are actively seeking opportunities to listen and learn from customers to enhance their value proposition. Scholars in the service marketing literature suggest that service recovery encounter represent one of the situations where a company can effectively leverage its collaborative competence to restore the company-customer relationship damaged due to an initial service failure. One of the important benefits customers can obtain from actively engaging in recovery is enhanced control. However, they are required to put additional personal resources which count as an increased cost for customers. Also, depending on the nature of a collaborative outcome (positive vs. negative), customers tend to ascribe responsibility differently (more credit to oneself for a positive result and less blame for an adverse result). This study attempts to 1) investigate the role of enhanced control and increased self-effort in customers’ equity perception toward a service recovery encounter and 2) examine how attributional bias intervene in the process. A 2 x 2 web-based experiment with a service recovery scenario was designed and administered to collect the data. The results indicate that when the resulting outcome is not desirable, the increased self-effort from customers counteracts the positive effect of enhanced control. When the recovery outcome is positive, on the other hand, customers with a low level of involvement in recovery process tend to overestimate their self-effort. However, such effect does not exist for customers with a high level of engagement. This study contributes to the extant literature by contemplating adverse impacts of effort and positive impacts of empowering customers with more control. It also provides valuable insight into the usefulness of customer engagement as a pre-emptive recovery strategy.

With the rapid development of network economy and information technology, customers through the internet platform to participate in product development and innovation, dominant the spread of value proposition engagement spread, etc., has become an important part of the creation of customer assets, as well as a profound change in brand management. This paper constructs a model of how the brand experience affects customer assets in the virtual branding community under the perspective of value co-creation, analysis the impact of value co-creation of customer participation (sponsored value co-creation and autonomous value co-creation), the motivation of value co-creation on brand experience, and then on customer assets. This paper also explores the regulatory effect of value proposition engagement in brand experience and customer asset. This study will use the involvement theory and the theory of stimulus-response for empirical research, and through the questionnaire survey of consumers, using SPSS20.0 and AMOS20.0 statistical software on the relevance of relevant variables to grasp, and carries on the analysis using structural equation model. The research of this paper will enrich the exposition and explanation of building a brand experience better through value co-creation in virtual brand community, and provide theoretical support and practical advice for the implementation and management of customer assets.

Recently, as the development of media contents accelerated, auditory-based contents, especially ASMR, has been taking center stage in its field than visual-based contents. They are meaningful in a way that they are alternative contents that suggest a new space and possibility through aural stimulation, getting out from the boundary of excessive visual stimulation of existing media. According to Jang, Park, & Lyou (2016), ASMR is originally the abbreviation of a medical term, ‘Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response’. However in 2010, Jennifer Allen for the first time presented the definition that ‘ASMR is a specific sound that gives pleasure', and recently it is used as a coined word among young people rather than medical terminology (Jang, Park,& Lyou, 2016). Consumers listen to ASMR for stress relief, psychological stabilization, and relaxation through repeated, constant sound triggers (Zhang, 2015). The triggers used in ASMR marketing draw a stronger commitment within the consumers, by accompanying visual stimuli consistent with auditory stimuli (Sim, 2014). As reported by Hong (2017), commitment is a state of sensorial arousal when a person is totally lost in something and among all affective commitment relieves stress and enhances enjoyment; therefore raises quality of life and helps to live a rich life (Hong, 2017). This shows that there is a close relationship between satisfaction and enjoyment about experiences of ASMR content that leads to commitment, and such phenomenon creates a state of immersion that collapses the distinction between consumers’ past, present and future. Throughout the process, consumers meet the chance to recall the familiar sound that they have experienced in the past, and therefore remind of nostalgia on it (Zhang, 2015). Belk (1990), within the view of marketing, referred to the conceptual definition of nostalgia as a kind of longing atmosphere promoted by sensory stimuli such as scene, smell, and music. Zhang (2015) says that one of the important factors that cause nostalgia is sound, and one calls of the past through a specific sound which is an external stimulus – ASMR is included in it. Consumers can acquire prior knowledge of the brand while enjoying ASMR contents, and they can even have indirect experiences without having direct experiences of actually purchasing or wearing products. This helps to inspire the expertise of the product, and also plays a role in shaping positive consumption emotion such as pleasure and sensibility (Yang, 2016). Fashion products, especially, are more sensible than general consumer goods and due to excessive diversity of products, rational and deliberate purchasing rarely happen. Thus, consumers can build positive brand equity through ASMR marketing by learning specialized knowledge about products that could not be obtained from other marketing. In this study, we propose the new compound word ‘ASMR marketing,’ which combines marketing with the definition of ASMR of the coined term. Electronic word of mouth(EWOM) by ASMR marketing is a process in which the consumers communicate about product information and usage in the online community without the intervention of the seller. Through the characteristics of electronic word of mouth and ASMR, it is easy to infiltrate into daily life of the consumers and easily imprint the individuality of the brand to them (Wang, 2015). Although ASMR appears in ads of HeatTech and AIRism of UNIQLO, a fashion brand, ASMR triggers are not used as a background music and narration. In fashion industry, the use of sounds from the production process of fashion products, or the sounds that occur when wearing them, highlights professionalism and stimulates nostalgia by attracting consumers' emotional commitment. In addition, when ASMR marketing is applied to a luxury brand rather than SPA brand, expertise can be emphasized more effectively. ASMR has been spreading like a fashion in recent years, and marketing of ASMR in fashion brands has not yet been researched actively. The purposes of this study are: first, to analyze significant meaning and value of ASMR in auditory sense field in modern days; second, to identify the characteristics of ASMR marketing through emotional commitment and nostalgia; third, to investigate the effect of ASMR marketing on consumers. Although ASMR, therefore, is used only as a mitigation tool in medical field, this study combines media and marketing with ASMR, suggests it as a tool to enhance the profitability and brand equity of fashion brand. This study would help shape the trend of new culture by collaborating ASMR marketing with fashion brand. Furthermore, a cornerstone of related research can be established by presenting a causal relationship that emotional commitment affects nostalgia and brand equity. This study will be able to offer fashion companies diverse ways to establish ASMR marketing strategy.

Introduction Social media communication has become a popular way for firms to engage with customers. Research shows that firms/brands engagement with fans or customers on social media is effective to improve brand equity (Kim & Ko, 2012), drive sales (eMarketer, 2015), and enhance both transactional and relational customer behaviour (Kumar, Bezawada, Rishika, Janakiraman, & Kannan, 2016). Given the influences of social media communication, how brands effectively engage with fans or followers on social media is an important question for marketers. Most research on this topic is from the applied psychology and consumer behaviour literature, whose theories and content are dominantly tested in laboratory setting. Very few research (e.g., Lee, Hosanagar, & Nair, 2017) applied real behaviour data of field settings to study this issue. Additionally, existent research primarily focuses on social media like Facebook and Twitter in developed counties. To our knowledge, no research examines global brands social media communications in developing country, like China. Due to the policy constraints, people in mainland China have no access to foreign social media platforms. There is a local social media platform in China, named Weibo. Weibo is a NASDAQ-listed company and has nearly 100 million active users monthly. Many brands, both global and local ones, have created Weibo accounts and keep engaging with their fans. For example, there are 1,452 luxury brands and 3,707 beverage brands or firms on Weibo (Weibo Data Centre, 2017). This paper focuses on global brands’ communication practices on Weibo. The purpose of this paper is to analyse how brand posts that global brands put on their social media page are correlated with fan engagement. By using real data form Weibo, we answer the following questions: (1) what attributes of brand posts on Weibo do affect fan engagement with global brands? (2) how do these attributes affect fans engagement behaviour (i.e. liking, sharing, and commenting) differently? Conceptual Framework We decompose the attributes of global brand social media posts into five aspects, which are proposed to affect fans engagement. The first two aspects, interactivity and vividness, are derived from computer-mediated-communication research (Frotin & Dholakia, 2005; Hoffman & Novak, 1996). The next two, informative and emotional attributes, are developed from the literature of advertising (Hong, Muderrisoglu, & Zinkhan, 1987; Geuens, Pelsmacker, & Faseur, 2011). The last one is localization-related attributes, which is from global marketing communication literature (Kanso & Nelson, 2002) to capture the special characteristics of global brand posts on a local social media platform. We argue that all these five aspects of global brand posts affect fans engagement on brand page. Fans engagement is conceptualized as fans behavioural response to brand posts, which will influence attitude and behaviour of other fans. There are three kinds of fans responses on brands social media page, i.e., liking, sharing and commenting. We do control the time and date of post issued, the text length of post, whether having celebrity in post, whether related to a remarkable event, the number of followers of brand on Weibo, and product category. Interactivity Interactivity is defined as “the degree to which two or more communication parties can act on each other, on the communication medium, and on the messages and the degree to which such influences are synchronized” (Liu & Shrum 2002, p.54). Interactivity requires two-way interaction between not only customers and companies, but customers themselves (Hoffman & Novak, 1996). Brand posts on Weibo differ in the degree of interactivity. Some posts only have text, picture, or video to deliver messages of brands, which has no possibility to interact with fans. Some posts include a link that fans can click to get more information, which enhances the interactivity of communication. Other posts have questions, which stimulate interaction with fans and followers. There are posts inviting people to indicate their like or comment on social media, which are considered as high interactivity as well. Advertising research has found the positive correlation between interactivity of ads and consumers’ attitude (Coyle & Thorson, 2001). De Vries, Gensler and Leeflang (2012) found interactivity of brand post on brand fan pages partially positively related to brand popularity (measured by number of likes and comments). Empirical research (Lee et al., 2017) using Facebook data showed that having links negatively associated with customer engagement, and having questions increased comments but reduced likings. For the inconsistent findings in the literature, we re-examine this relationship by focusing on global brands on a not well-examined Chinese social media, Weibo. Vividness Vividness refers to the format richness of the message (Daft & Lengel, 1986; Fortin & Dholakia, 2005). As for brand posts, vividness is reflected by the number of sensory dimensions and senses presented (text, colours, pictures, and videos, etc.). The degree of vividness influences what and how multiple senses are stimulated (Coyle & Thorson, 2001). For example, a picture post will activate more senses than a text post because the former has colour that stimulates sight more vividly than the later. Vividness is related to but differs from interactivity. Interactivity focuses on the characteristic of two-way interaction of the communication, while vividness stands for the multiple senses stimulated by the communication. Some advertising research found that a vivid web advertisement results in higher attention and more clicks (Lohtia, Donthu, & Hershberger, 2003). As a result, we differentiate vividness of each post and predict that more vivid post associated with higher customer engagement. A vivid post attracts more likes, shares and comments. Localization-related attributes Localization-related attributes are symbols that posts have reflecting the characteristics of local culture and people. The debate of globalization (standardization) versus localization has lasted several decades. Even though a global standardized marketing strategy saves money and gains scale economy, the localization approach (Keegan, 1969) is supported by the reality that each market has unique tastes. In the international advertising literature, some scholars found that many multinational firms “plan globally and act locally” (Blackwell, Ajami, & Stephan, 1991). “Global-local dilemma” exists when global luxury brands internationalize into the Chinese market (Liu et al., 2016). The marketing communication research found that it is not advised for global brands to use the same appeals and symbols in advertising across different countries (Kanso & Nelson, 2002). In other words, the combination of global advertising theme and local communication expertise can result in enhanced effectiveness. We propose, on Weibo, people are more actively engaged to like, share, or comment global brand posts when Chinese elements, such as Chinse handwriting, Chinese festivals, and Chinese celebrity spokespeople, are present. Informative attributes Besides interactivity and vividness, which capture the format characteristics of global brand posts, content-related attributes are associated with customer engagement as well. Informative content is an important side of content attributes. One important function of brand posts is to deliver messages to customers. Research shows that on social networks people tend to have positive attitudes towards informative ads (Taylor, Lewin, & Strutton, 2011). Global brand posts with specific information should result in higher customer engagement than less informative posts. Additionally, global brand posts on social media may have different types of marketing information, such as product, price, promotion and placerelated ones respectively. The posts with varying degree of informative content may change customer engagement as well. Emotional attributes Emotional attributes are another side of the content characteristics of brand posts besides informative ones. Advertising research shows that using emotion appeal in ads is an effective way to gain people attention and generate actions (Holbrook & Batra, 1987). Emotional connections between customers and brands are considered more stable than cognitive association (Heath, Brandt, & Nairn, 2006). Some scholars find that emotional appeal on banner advertising result in positive effects on click-through rates in both B2B and B2C contexts (Lohtia et al., 2003). Empirical research (Lee et al., 2017) on Facebook shows that perceived emotion in brand posts strongly boost users’ likes and comments. Similarly, we propose that emotional attributes of global brand posts on Weibo are correlated with fans engagement. We conceptualize emotional attributes with three elements, emotional tone, emotional icon and emotional core. Emotional core reflects the type of emotions, such as humour, happiness, and love, etc. Emotional tone stands for the strength of emotion, i.e. the emotion is weak or strong. Emotional icon refers to whether the content of posts has emotional symbols, which can take form of icons or net slangs. Research Design Operationalization Dependent variables Customer engagement is operationalized as three variables, the number of likes, the number of shares, and the number of comments of each global brand post. Independent variables Vividness. Vividness is operationalized as four categories standing for different vividness degree, text only, (text and) static picture, (text, static and) animated picture, (text, picture and) video. Interactivity. Interactivity is operationalized as five 0-1 variables, having link, having question, having invitation/incentive to like, having invitation/incentive to share, having invitation/incentive to comment. Localization-related attributes. This part is operationalized as four 0-1 variables, having Chinese culture image, having Chinese culture colour, having Chinese festival, and having Chinese celebrity spokespeople (we include celebrity as a control variable). Informative attributes. This part is operationalized as seven 0-1 variables, whether a post having information of (1) brand name, (2) promotion/trial, (3) price, (4) segmentation, (5) product lunch time, (6) purchase distribution, and (7) public relation event. Emotional attributes. This part is operationalized as three variables, (1) emotional icon, a 0- 1 variable, having emotional symbols or not, (2) emotional core, a categorical variable, different type of emotions identified by surveyed respondents, and (3) emotion tone, a scalerating variable from 1 to 3, standing for none, weak and strong emotion. Control Variables. There are five control variables, (1) time of posts, including date and hour; (2) length of posts, i.e., the number of Chinese characters; (3) celebrity, whether there is a celebrity in a post; (4) event, whether a post is related to a remarkable event; (5) the number of fans of brand, and (6) product category (3 dummy variables to differentiate four categories). Data We chose 6 global brands across five product categories, specifically, beverage (Coca-cola and Starbucks), cosmetics (Olay and L’Oréal), and sports (Nike and Adidas). All these global brands created Weibo account before 2012 and have cumulated a large number of followers. We select the posts from Sept. 1, 2016 to Feb. 28, 2017, within 6 months. This time duration is long enough to get analytical data. This period covers main Chinese traditional festivals, such as Mid-Autumn Festival, National Day, and Chinse New Year, which results in more variances in localization-related variables. Data were collected through two stages. The first stage was to download raw data from Weibo’s brand pages with Internet worm program directly. Each brand has its page which contains all posts it issued and the number of people’s likes, shares, and comments for each post. The second stage is to code content and get the final dataset. Most of 0-1 variables, such as interactivity, localization-related attributes, and informative attributes were coded by two research assistants. Variables of vividness were also coded by them. Variables of emotional attributes were coded by a survey to ask 500 Weibo users. This survey-based coded method is well applied in published research (e.g., Kumar et al., 2016; Lee et al., 2017). Model The three dependent variables, the numbers of likes (y1), shares (y2), and comments (y3), are count data with a Poisson distribution. As a result, the basic model is as following: 𝑦ij = 𝛼 + 𝑒𝑥𝑝(Σ3p=1 𝛽1p 𝑣𝑖𝑣𝑖𝑑pj + Σ5q=1 𝛽2q 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟qj + Σ4r=1 𝛽lr 𝑙𝑜𝑐𝑎𝑙rj + Σ7s=1 𝛽4s 𝑖𝑛𝑓𝑜sj + Σ3p=1 𝛽5t 𝑒𝑚𝑜𝑡tj + 𝛽6 𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑒j + 𝛽7 ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑟j + 𝛽8 𝑙𝑒𝑛j + 𝛽9 𝑐𝑒𝑙𝑒j + 𝛽10 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑛𝑡j + 𝛽11 #𝑓𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑜𝑤j + Σ4u=1 𝛽12u 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑐𝑎𝑡uj) + 𝜀ij (1) Expected Results This research is among the first initiative to examine social media communication in China. We are still working on the data analysis so far. We intend to identify the influence of global posts on fans engagement, which are from not only the content of posts (informative and emotional attributes), but also the design of posts (vividness and interactivity), and especially the localization considerations. We expect to find that the content foci differ fans engagement. Posts of sales promotion should be more effective to enhance fans engagement than those of product demonstration. We can identify what form of posts stimulates fans participation more effectively. We will know whether a video post is more effective than a picture post. Most interestingly, we will know how the posts combined with Chinese cultural elements on social media are responded. For example, we could compare the difference between posts having foreign and local celebrity people. We will know how different customer engagement behaviour influence by the same characteristic of posts. We can identify the most influential factors to each of three customer responses (liking, sharing, and commenting). Comparing with the research using data from Facebook or other social media outlets, we can obtain implications guiding global brands to implement social media strategy across countries.

In recent years, compulsive social media use has become an increasingly serious issue in the society. On the one hand, such compulsive behavior could even be viewed as a psychiatric disorder, as it may cause negative psychosocial and professional consequences (Aladwani and Almarzouqand, 2016). On the other hand, excessive involvement in social media may have a positive side—customer engagement which refers to “a customer’s behavioral manifestations that have a brand or firm focus, beyond purchase, resulting from motivational drivers” (van Doorn et al., 2010, p. 254). Of particular interest, a behavioral dimension of engagement consists of vigor or “a customer’s level of energy and mental resilience in interacting with a focal engagement object”, and interaction or “the two-way communications between a focal engagement subject and object. The latter two dimensions” (Brodie et al., 2011, p. 257). In a computer-mediated context, this behavioral dimension of customer engagement implies continuous and repeated contact via social media. However, to our knowledge, little research has addressed the relationship between compulsive social media use and customer engagement. Against this background, this study first tests an explanatory model focusing on customer engagement, compulsive social media usage, and compulsive buying. Then, the study examines the moderating role of narcissism and vanity on the model. The data is collected from an online survey with general consumer sample in the UK. On this basis, we validate the model via structural equation model. In closing, we offer a discussion of the theoretical and managerial implications.

Introduction The social Web is becoming more and more visual. While Facebook remains the leading social networking site (SNS), visual-based platforms such as Instagram and Pinterest have showed a significant increase in the proportion of online users worldwide (Greenwood, Perrin, & Duggan, 2016; Statista, 2017; Pew Research Center, 2017). The trend toward visual communication on SNSs is influenced by the emergence of advanced mobile technologies and the shifting habits of how social media users consume content today. While images displayed on Instagram are past-oriented sharing of memories, or present-oriented displays of creativity, Pinterest presents opportunities for future-oriented inspiration to evolve (Jin, Lin, Gilbreath, & Lee, 2017; Phillips, Miller, & McQuarrie, 2014). Pinterest also serves as a searchable archive of visual content, allowing users to seek and include brand-relevant pins and boards into their own aspirations and inspirations, thus facilitating the sharing of branded content (Phillips et al., 2014). Extant industry reports also suggest that Pinterest users are more likely to image-search for products, interact with sponsored pins, and show favorable attitudes toward advertising, compared with Facebook or Twitter users (McMullen, 2015; Ruscillo, 2017; Williamson, 2015). Considering the benefits of social media for global marketing and the role that imagery plays for developing international brands (Mikhailitchenko, Javalgi, Mikhailitchenko, & Laroche, 2009), this research focuses on the visual aspects of consumer engagement with branded content on Pinterest and investigates how such engagement leads to consumer-brand relationship building and Pinterest-inspired purchase intention. Theoretical Frameworks The extant consumer research has documented the superiority effect of visual content on facilitating persuasion (Childers & Houston, 1984; Miniard, Bhatla, Lord, Dickson, & Rao, 1991). Recent research on social media marketing also suggests that branded content with visual elements help generate favorable consumer responses (De Vries, Gensler, & Leeflang, 2012; Trefzger, Baccarella, & Voigt, 2016). The presentation of branded posts is directly related to the flow construct and trust (Bart, Shankar, Sultan, & Urban, 2005; Hoffman & Novak, 1996). Along this logic, consumer engagement, the degree to which consumers consume, contribute, and create social media content in relation to brands (Schivinski, Christodoulides, & Dabrowski, 2016), is likely to be influenced by brand-related visual cues on Pinterest. While consumption refers to consumers’ acquisition of both brand-created and user-generated content (Muntinga, Moorman, & Smit, 2011), contribution refers to consumers’ inputs to content created by brands or by other consumers (Shao, 2009). Further, creation is the highest level of engagement, which refers to consumers’ generation of brand-related content that could stimulate further consumption and contribution (Muntinga et al., 2011). Therefore, the visually dominant and appealing presentation style, such as appearance, layout, and images, on Pinterest would provide users with high information content, and is likely to increase both active and passive consumer engagement with brands (Bart et al., 2005). Consumer engagement is then expected to encourage social media users’ willingness to actively promote and endorse brand-related content, including organic and sponsored pins. Such volunteer display of their preferred brand-related content is likely to help engender eWOM communication and make such content become more influential in the social Web (Chu & Kim, 2011). As a result, users’ brand-related Pinterest activities are likely to enhance their relationships with brands (Rapp, Beitelspacher, Grewal, & Hughes, 2013) and their intention to purchase from the brands featured in the pins and boards (King, Racherla, & Bush, 2014). All hypothesized relationships are therefore formulated and displayed in Figure 1. Methods To test the proposed conceptual model, an online survey was conducted with participants recruited from a consumer panel administrated by Qualtrics. A total of 467 Pinterest users (58.2% female, Mage = 28.9, SDage = 5.6) comprised the sample, including Caucasian (76%), African American (7.5%), Hispanic (7.4%), Asian (6.9%), multiracial (1.3%), and others (.9%). The participants spent an average of 9.5 hours on Pinterest per week. Smartphones (54.8%) emerged as the most dominant devices for their Pinterest usage, followed by computers (34.9%) and tablets (10.3%). They had an average of 33.7 boards (Range = 1,233), 1,384.1 Pins (Range = 69,000), 930.1 likes (Range = 100,000), 319.0 followers (Range = 44,231), 65.0 following topics (Range = 3,442), 173.0 following people (including brands, Range = 7,000), and 102.0 following boards (Range = 6,000). To note, 78.3% of the participants reported that they made Pinterest-inspired purchases frequently (including 24.8% always, 24.4% usually, and 29.1% often). In addition, the participants were asked to answer questions pertaining to their perceptions of visual cues related to a self-selected brand on Pinterest, engagement with brand-related content, brand endorsing behavior, consumer-brand relationships, and Pinterest-inspired purchase intention (see Table 1). Results To test the proposed hypotheses, a two-step modeling approach following Anderson and Gerbing’s (1988) procedures was employed. The results of confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) showed that the measurement model achieved acceptable fit for the data (χ2 = 1178.30, df = 393, χ2/df = 2.99, RMSEA = .065, SRMR = .054, CFI = .930, TLI = .922). The constructs had good composite reliability (>.70). Factor loadings of the construct indicators were all above .70 with significant t values, which indicated good convergent validity for each of the construct items (Nunnally & Bernstein, 1994). Following Fornell and Larcker’s (1981) criteria, the results achieved satisfactory discriminant validity because the average variance extracted (AVE) for each factor was above .50 and greater than the squared correlations between each pair of constructs. The factor scores were then used to perform a path analysis for hypothesis testing which showed satisfactory fit of the conceptual model (see Figure 2). The results indicated that visual cues positively influenced consumer engagement with brand-related content (β = .68, p < .001), which positively led to brand endorsing behavior (β = .86, p < .001). Consequently, brand endorsing behavior positively enhanced the development of consumer-brand relationships (β = .97, p < .001) and increased Pinterest-inspired purchase intention (β = .48, p < .001). In turn, all hypotheses were supported. Discussion and Conclusion In response to the thriving academic interests in understanding how social media users connect and interact with international brands across SNSs (Hennig-Thurau, et al., 2010), this research sheds light on factors that determine social media users’ active discovery, creation, and distribution of visual branded content and the effects of consumer engagement on social media marketing outcomes. By focusing on Pinterest, the research findings showed that users, both men and women, actively seek inspiration from Pinterest across brand-relevant categories. They are highly engaged, open to brand activities, and ready to take Pinterest-inspired actions in the real world. The visual presentation of branded content plays an important role in generating consumer engagement, which is likely to act as a form of perceived relationship investment and subsequently stimulates brand endorsing and advocacy behavior (Simon & Tossan, 2018). Engaged Pinterest users search and select brand-relevant visual content, including sponsored pins, as part of their self-presentation to others (Phillips et al., 2014). Through such interactions with brands and other like-minded users on the platform, their relationships with brands and purchasing behavior are likely to be further enhanced. This research integrates several important literature streams in the conceptual model and employs a representative adult sample to provide theory-driven and generalizable insights into how visually-focused social media marketing works. Marketing managers face opportunities and challenges that social media and the interconnected international business environment present. Therefore, it is crucial to understand how social media users interact with brands on different platforms in order to tailoring brand strategies accordingly for fostering consumer engagement. Specifically, as Pinterest’s popular visual discovery engine continues to attract myriads of global users, managers should harness the power of visual content marketing and engage current as well as potential consumers on the platform, which could have a significant impact on consumer-brand relationship building and business performance in domestic and foreign markets. Building on the findings of this research, future studies should further delve into the psychological underpinnings and motivations that drive consumer engagement with visual branded content on SNSs across cultures and discover how paid, owned and earned brand communication on visual-based SNSs can help strengthen consumer-brand relationships.

With the development of social media, nowadays, people connect to each other more frequently and timely. In this article, we want to discuss this interactive communication in Chinese social media, i.e., WeChat, Weibo and Xianhongshu, between the Chinese immigrants in France (French Chinese) and Chinese in China. The intent of this article is to explore if there is a significant difference between high-acculturated and low-acculturated French Chinese in the use of word-of-mouth (WOM) in response to the purchase of product categories high in social signaling value. The article helps firms plan their international marketing strategy in terms of how they will benefit from WOM where French Chinese consumers comprise a significant part of the target market. Additionally, this research helps firms develop effective virtual interaction tools to build a strong long-term brand relationship with ethnic groups.

As the usage of smartphones increased rapidly due to the popularization of smart phones, it appears that the average daily usage time of Korean people was 3 hours and 39 minutes, and it was analyzed that the twenties uses 4 hours 41 minutes longer than the average (Jung, 2015). It, also, was found that users mainly use smartphones for receiving information retrieval, social network sites (SNS) activities, listening to music, watching games, and watching videos. In consequence, various contents suitable for smartphones are increasing rapidly. In particular, the number of users who are engaged in SNS activities through smartphones is rapidly increasing and its influence is gradually getting bigger. (Park & Lee, 2012). SNS activities provide content that gives entertainment in a short time and at the same time make consumption regardless of time and space like in subways or cafes, and also stimulate users through visual elements. The content that can be enjoyed in 10 to 15 minutes like snacks, which are easily eaten regardless of time and space, is called 'snack culture'. (Ko, 2015) According to Cheil Worldwide, 2000 media outlets for men and women aged between 13 and 59 living in major cities across the country, the phenomenon of easily consuming short videos, web cartoons, and web novels appeared noticeably. As a result of investigating the main purposes of smartphones, the use of relatively short contents such as SNS has increased (Bae, 2015). SNS provides users with simple contents similar to snacks, and users tend to use SNS as a leisure activity by using these services in 'leisure time' which is the time of their spare time. In this way, as the number of SNS steadily increased, SNS activity has also naturally increased. Consequently, as the SNS market has rocketed among various activities, the e-commerce using it is become popular. This type of consumption activity is called leisure spending (Cho & Do, 2010). Thus, it is necessary to analyze whether consumers view SNS activities as part of their leisure life. Although there are a lot of active consumption activities happening in consequence of using SNS after the spread of smartphones, there is very little research done on the relationship between SNS activity and the leisure life. This study, therefore, intends to conduct in-depth interviews on twenty women in their twenties and thirties who are actively engaged in consumption activities in the SNS market, on the issue of whether they acknowledge SNS activities and consumption behavior in the SNS market as recreational activities. The purposes of this study are as follows: first, to find out the meaning to SNS activities as a leisure activity to female consumers of the twenties and the thirties; second, to explore the approaching process and motivation of leisure life extending to leisure spending; third, to examine the relation between experience of commitment and leisure satisfaction through previous research and in-depth interview In addition, this study is the cornerstone of research on SNS market which is becoming an issue as one new consumption trend and which recognizes consumption activity that happens in the market as leisure consumption in reference to leisure. It is considered to be utilized variously when establishing marketing strategy of fashion companies, which will use image consumption based SNS later.

From the first inspiration of a desire until a product reaches hands, consumers go through complex and multi-faceted interactions with brands, involving myriads of channels and media. As such, it is important for marketers to understand this shopping “journey” since it is where brands can influence and persuade consumers most effectively and efficiently. In this study, we conduct an exploratory study to understand the patterns and correlates of pre-purchase behaviors and the relationship to actual purchases (made both online and offline) by analyzing survey data obtained in Korea and China. In particular, we examine three key drivers for pre-purchase behaviors: product category, market maturity, and consumer tendencies. To address category-level differences, we compare and contrast grocery and electronics. As for the market maturity, we study Korea and China in which e-commerce is at different stages of development. Finally, consumer tendencies are measured by general shopping tendencies, online activity patterns, and risk perception for e-commerce. Our empirical analyses provide the following findings. First, general shopping tendencies impact the pre-purchase behavior in grocery buying, but not electronics, for both Korea and China. Second, online activity patterns (entertainment and content-creating activities) have an impact on the shopping journey in both categories. Third, risk perceptions for ecommerce only affect pre-purchase behaviors of Chinese consumers. That is, in a developing market at an earlier stage of e-commerce development, consumers perceive online transactions more risky and uncertain, leading to greater pre-purchase behaviors. Lastly, we investigate the link from the information search to the final purchase stages. Consumers buying grocery present a positive and significant relationship between prepurchase and final purchase behaviors whereas electronics present no such relationship across the stages of the consumer shopping journey.

Do Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) activities really influence firm value, and if so, what is the mechanism that is at work? In this study, we especially focused on publicizing CSR (PCSR) and tried to examine the effect of PCSR on firm value. We merged the data from different archival sources and obtained balanced panel data consisting of 385 firmyear observation across 77 firms for 5 years. The data contained several variables such as Publicizing CSR, WOM, Tobin's q, Advertising intensity, Contribution to sales ratio, ROE, Sales increase, Asset, GDP, and other financial indicators. This study provides several implications for marketing theory and practice. First, it simultaneously reveals the preceding and following factors of word of mouth. Second, our evidence suggests that marketing managers could obtain benefits if they concentrate not only on finding good CSR activities but also on publicizing them well, and that PCSR could be a great help for companies that want to improve the public awareness and interest. The purpose of this study is to clarify the relationship between publicizing CSR (PCSR) and firm value, and the mechanism by which the influence is conveyed. Our findings are as below. First, the higher the PCSR, the greater the firm value even though the ratio of contribution to sales is added. Because the contribution is known as a representative proxy for corporate socially responsible investment, this result implies that PCSR is significant even though the effect of CSR itself is controlled. Second, WOM mediates the relationship between PCSR and firm value. This suggests that publicizing CSR could attract people's attention and then contribute positively to firm value. Finally, this study found that the effects of PCSR on firm value are mediated through positive WOM in the context of controlling negative WOM. This result implies that PCSR increases the amount of positive WOM, rather than negative WOM, which helps improve corporate value.