Recently, the studios in Hollywood introduces mobile games based on the storyline of movies for promotional purpose. With wide exposure of such games, managers could expect raised market awareness and purchase intention toward movies set to be released. Among the movie-themed mobile games, at the same time, not a few games have made financial success as the box office scores of the original movie increases. Thus, managers should deal with the promotional mobile app and the target product simultaneously on the belief of reciprocal relationship between them. If the dynamic relation is true then, finding deterministic factors of mobile game performance has practical significance to make positive consequences for both products. Branded entertainment is defined as “the integration of advertising into entertainment content, whereby brands are embedded into storylines of a film, television program, or other entertainment medium” (Hudson and Hudson 2006). Wise et. al. (2008) states that the advergame, a videogame designed around a brand, is one form of branded entertainment. Additionally, Sood and Drèze (2006) examined film sequels as brand extension of experiential goods based on the reality that Hollywood brands movies. In this vein, movie-themed mobile games can be contemplated as a new practice of branded entertainment. To test the research hypotheses, we collected 43 pairs of a movie and a movie-themed mobile game. Among 300 movies in the annual top 100 U.S. domestic box office chart from 2012 to the end of October 2014, films having more than one promotional mobile game were selected. The data on mobile game were limited to the Apple’s App Store for consistency. For data collection, we utilized multiple archival sources such as boxofficemojo.com, metacritic.com, imdb.com, and appannie.com. The objective of this research is to investigate the impact of movie-themed mobile games on the performance of original movies and the characteristics leading mobile game success. We developed a simultaneous equation system to discover the interdependent relationship between mobile game ranking and movie sales. This study is one of the first empirical investigation demonstrating reciprocal relationship between promotional game app and its target product. The results show that mobile games perform profit generating function as well as promotional function, thus suggesting managers to deal with mobile game more strategic way.

Introduction Many extant studies in the strategic management literature show that a firm’s network influences its innovation outcomes (Ahuja, Lampert, & Tandon, 2008). Networks are characterized by strong and weak ties in terms of the combination of the amount of time, intensity, intimacy, and reciprocal services (Granovetter, 1973). There is, however, a continuing debate about the relative advantages of strong and weak ties. These equivocal findings suggest that the relationship between tie strength and a firm’s innovation outcome is complex, and call for a more detailed examination of this relationship. The implications of networks for a firm’s innovation outcomes are quite significant. Nevertheless, the majority of research studies still examine networks using simple dyadic relationships (e.g., Capaldo, 2007). In reality, a firm’s networks are composed of more than a single dyadic relationship and are much more complex. Thus, dyadic approaches are limited in providing understanding of networks on a firm’s innovation performance. As such, we will take the perspective of a focal firm in a triad network. While still relatively simple, the triad network approach allows us to identify key relationships previously unexplored in network tie configuration, and to shed light on the equivocal results in the extant literature. Specifically, we will examine the position of the strong or weak ties among the firms, and also whether the strong or weak ties are adjacent or non-adjacent to the focal firm. Breakthrough innovation is defined as the basic invention, which leads to the evolution of many subsequent technological developments (Ahuja & Lambert, 2001). This definition suggests that novel and unique knowledge is required to create breakthrough innovation. Indeed, recent research shows that firms need novel knowledge created by network partners to create breakthrough innovation (e.g., Srivastava & Gnyawali, 2011). As such, we investigate how different levels of novel and diverse knowledge arising from the position of network ties impact a focal firm’s breakthrough innovation. Nevertheless, obtaining diverse and novel knowledge from networks does not guarantee the creation of successful breakthrough innovation. A firm needs a capability to learn, absorb and integrate the new knowledge into its works, which is its absorptive capacity. Thus, we examine the moderating role of a firm’s absorptive capacity on the relationship between the impact of the configurations arising from the position of strong/weak ties and a firm’s breakthrough innovation in a triad network relationship. Conceptual Framework We posit six different types of network configurations based on tie strength and position of strong/weak ties that are adjacent or non-adjacent to the focal firm in a triad (Figure 1). For example, Configuration 1 has three strong ties and Configuration 6 has three weak ties. Configuration 2 has two strong ties that are adjacent to a focal firm and one weak tie that is non-adjacent to a focal firm in a triad. Importantly, we use two theories (i.e., network theor and relational theory) to elaborate the impact of six configurations on a firm’s breakthrough innovation, considering the tie strength, the position of strong/weak ties, and whether the strong or weak ties are adjacent or non-adjacent to the focal firm. The first of these is network theory. Network theory and relational theory assert different effects of strong versus weak ties on a firm’s breakthrough innovation. To resolve the ambiguities in the literature on this issue, we combine network theory and relational theory and investigate the implication of the position of the strong or weak ties. We argue that the position of strong/weak ties must be considered to explain the impact of tie strength on firm breakthrough innovation in a triad context. For example, Configuration 2 has two strong ties adjacent to focal firm and one weak tie non-adjacent to focal firm (Figure 1). The non-adjacent weak tie provides potential for diverse and novel knowledge and reduced knowledge redundancy. Also, adjacent two strong ties provide the benefits of commitment and trust, and rich information flow. Additionally, these adjacent strong ties facilitate the transfer of novel knowledge generated from the non-adjacent weak tie. Thus, we argue that Configuration 2 has a potentially positive influence on firm breakthrough innovation. Configuration 5 has two adjacent weak ties and one non-adjacent strong tie. The non-adjacent strong tie has high knowledge redundancy and high trust and commitment between the two actors B and C (Figure 1). The non-adjacent strong tie between B and C induces potential opportunistic tendencies toward focal firm and inhibits information sharing with the focal firm. This indicates that the two firms form an alliance to the detriment of the focal firm. Further, adjacent weak ties provide novel and diverse information while maintaining less commitment and trust with the focal firm. Importantly, diverse information from adjacent weak ties is degraded because of the knowledge redundancy generated by non-adjacent strong tie between B and C. Thus, we argue that Configuration 5 has potentially negative influence on firm breakthrough innovation. The above discussion suggests that one cannot determine which type of network ties will tend create a firm’s breakthrough innovation simply by counting the numbers of weak and strong ties in the configurations. One must also consider the position of the strong and weak ties within the network and the focal firm’s absorptive capacity. For example, though there is a high level of knowledge redundancy created by the non-adjacent strong tie in Configuration 5, if the focal firm has strong ability to learn, the focal firm can still capture and use the limited new knowledge, depending on its absorptive capacity. Next, we explain how firm’s absorptive capacity influences the relationship between six configurations and breakthrough innovation. Methods We will collect a full sample of data from three main data sources: alliance data from the Securities Data Company (SDC) on Joint and Alliances, patent data from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) U.S. Patent Citation 1997-2016, and financial data from COMPUSTAT. The initial sample will consist of all firms that announced a triad of strategic alliance firms across industries from 1997 to 2016 in the United States. Implications Our study makes two key contributions. First, we investigate the impact of various triad strong/weak tie network configurations on a firm’s breakthrough innovation. We test various effects accrued from the position of strong/weak ties that are adjacent or non-adjacent to a focal firm on the focal firm’s breakthrough innovation in the triad network. By examining these relationships, we uncover critical implications of the tie strength previously unexplored in the network literature. We provide conceptual advancement of Granovetter’s notion of the strength of weak ties, showing the importance of the position of strong or weak ties as a critical driver to influence a firm’s breakthrough innovation. Second, we investigate how a focal firm’s absorptive capacity moderates the impact of network configurations on a firm’s breakthrough innovation. This provides a more precise and fine-grained understanding of how a firm’s capability to absorb outside knowledge influences the relationship between network configurations and a focal firm’s breakthrough innovation. Combined, our two contributions help to resolve some of the equivocal results in the extant literature regarding the effects of strong or weak ties on breakthrough innovation.

Introduction Recently, the popularization of mobile devices has been changing the pattern of customers’ life. In the online market, the distribution market has been also expanding from PC-based online to mobile shopping using smart phones. As the shopping market using mobile has grown rapidly in the developing smart age, the interest of home shopping is moving toward mobile media. Through the home shopping company's web site and mobile application, live broadcasting, real-time communication service, and other customers’ review are performed at the same time. Home shopping customers who have questions or inquiries about products are meeting salespeople through home shopping mobile application and real-time communication service. The significance of this study is to present effective strategies for connecting live home shopping and real-time communication of mobile application, thereby enabling customers to make smart consumption. Through this service, home shopping company can perceive customers’ needs as well as form cocreation value with customers. In addition, home shopping company aims to provide a more useful and effective method in the process of providing real-time communication service by checking the form of customers participating in real-time communication service. Theoretical Development Although there are many prior researches on adaptive selling on salespeople in offline, research on effective sales strategies of live home shopping and real-time communication using application has not yet been conducted. Nowadays, many customers' purchasing methods are moving from offline to online. Therefore, by referring to similarities between virtual world and actual society in Internet space studied in many previous studies, we would like to find out whether the offline advantage of "adaptive selling tactics" in the sales field can be applied to on-line. Adaptive selling means changing sales behavior throughout the interaction or interaction with the customer based on perceived information about the sales situation. Salespeople need to change their sales behavior in order to meet each sales situation or individual customer's desires. Adaptive selling can be said to modify the communication style and content according to the customer's desire (Weitz, Sujan & Sujan, 1986; Spiro & Weitz, 1990). The main reason for the co-creation value activities of companies and customers is that the marketing paradigm is shifting from good-dominant logic to service-dominant logic (Lusch & Vargo, 2006). This means that new value creation areas of new product development are expanding as customers participate in various decision-making related to the companies (Payne, Storbacka & Frow, 2008). To realize the value proposition, a firm must co-create value with its customers by means of direct interaction (Grönroos & Voima, 2013). Research Design The contents of this study are as follows. First, we divide the adaptive selling strategies of salespeople in real life into live home shopping and mobile application roles, and then examine whether live home shopping and mobile application affect customer trust. In previous study, Frazier and Summers (1984) proposed six tactics – information exchange, recommendation, request, threats, promises, and legalistic pleas, and Richard et al. (2006) proposed another six tactics. Anderson and Weitz (1989) define trust as one party’s belief that its needs will be fulfilled in the future by actions undertaken by the other party. Second, we investigate the effect of customer trust on home shopping commitment relationship. Ganesan (1994) defined relationship commitment as the desire to develop stability of relationship, the belief that the relationship is sustainable, and the willingness to make short-term sacrifices to maintain the relationship. Through this process, we are able to confirm the possibility of replacing actual meeting with tool called online real - time communication. Third, we want to find out the effect of home shopping commitment relationship on brand commitment relationship. Even if the same brand product, we can know the effect of commitment relationship depending on home shopping company. Finally, we are going to find out how to create co-creation values with customers by real-time communication service to solve the questions and problems of customers immediately. The creation of co-creation values between customers and companies can increase the success rate of new product development that reflects the core needs of customers and reduce resources such as corporate marketing and R & D, which can ultimately serve as a driving force for creating sustainable competitive advantage (Vernette & Hamdi-kidar, 2013).

Across two experiments, this study provides support for the concept that money and time are marked by psychologically distinct constructs. As temporal distance increases, preferences are more likely to be based on the value associated with a high-level construal of options than the value associated with a low-level construal of options. That is, as potential contributors are asked to donate later, high-level featured resources (i.e., time) take focal precedent over low-level ones (i.e., money) in judging preference for donation methods. This study also found that the match effect between temporal distance and construal-level holds only when the level of attitude toward NPO is relatively favorable. However, donation intention is enhanced under mismatch conditions when the level of attitude is less favorable. That is, when potential contributors hold relatively less favorable attitudes toward the NPO, those who are requested to make an expediting decision of donation are more likely to have higher intention to donate with a high-level construal resource. This study attributed the finding to the shift of people’s focal resource through their level of attitude toward the NPO. Unlike the previous research, which focused mainly on how temporal distance influences individuals’ construal levels to result in different donation behaviors, this study investigates the relationship between donation resources and temporal distance. The results from the research provide empirical evidence that temporal distance can have impact on individuals’ preference of the types of donation resources. Given that the features of donation resources can be related temporal distance, this research can shed light on how temporal construal theory can be used in charitable-giving contexts. Additionally, while considerable number of temporal construal studies have investigated the impact of the match effect on the attitude toward a brand, this study explores the role of attitude toward the organization on the interaction effect of temporal distance and construal levels. The findings from this study can provide an opportunity for better understanding of temporal construal theory.

Racism has changed its form over the decades and has become more subtle and indirect than the blatant forms in the past (Gaertner & Dovidio, 2005; Sue et al., 2007; Sue, 2010; Tropp & Molina, 2012). As a result, it is becoming more difficult for minority groups to identify and call them out (Sue et al., 2007). Subtle racism can be detrimental to minority groups in that they can deteriorate performances and when accumulated, they can have negative consequences such as mental and physical health problems (Sue et al., 2007; Sue, 2010; Ong et al., 2013). Recognizing the issues regarding subtle racism, the research questions were the following: (1) Are there differences in the experience of indirect discrimination in a retail context between racial minorities and majorities?; (2) Do minorities use different strategies to solve these situations and why?; and (3) What are the consequences of subtle discrimination in the retail environment? To test the research questions, a total of 599 participants were recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk. Participants were randomly assigned to read either a racial microaggression scenario or a control scenario (a scanner unable to read a discount coupon) and they were asked to select why the incident happened to them. Further, they were asked to answer how they felt after reading the scenario and then respond to the outcome variables repatronage intention, word of mouth, and complaint intention. The findings of the study showed that Asians tend to attribute their racial identity as to why retail employees maltreated them. While Caucasians would simply state that an employee was busy or would not put much thought as to why a service failure occurred, Asians were more burdened by the thought that their race was an issue. After an employee showed subtle discriminations, Asians experienced less positive emotions than Caucasians, which resulted in them deciding to avoid the retail store. This may be due to their belief that they have less control over the situation and would rather not confront the employee or a manager on the issue. Implications and future research directions are discussed.

The frequent accidents of workplace in Korea make workers consider their more than before. This research aims to investigate the effect of safety climate on safety behavio rs and job satisfaction based on the mediational model to drive proactive and complia nce safety behaviors. The conceptual model of safety behaviors focuses on company’s safety behaviors perceived by workers. The model explains how organizational safety climate affect safety outcomes, compliance safety behaviors and proactive safety behaviors, through the mechanism of situational related factors and personal related factors. In this study, it is proposed that safety knowledge of workers and communication styles moderate the effect of safety climate on compliance safety behaviors and proactive safety behaviors. The data were collected by Korean workers using survey and analyzed by AMOS 22.0.

Mobile shopping motivations affects the interaction between mobile shoppers and mobile retailers. This study examines how mobile shopping motivations affect value co-creation, customer equity drivers, and customer lifetime value through a structural equation model. Mobile shopping motivations as mobile shoppers’ needs are time saving, right purchase and money saving. To meet mobile shoppers’ needs, mobile shoppers, mobile retailers, and other customers are willing to collaborate. Value co-creation that Yi and Gong (2013) scaled includes customer participation behaviour such as information seeking, information sharing, responsible behaviour, and personal interaction, and customer citizenship behaviour such as feedback, helping, advocacy, and tolerance. The results indicate that mobile shopping motivations are significant determinants of value co-creation behaviours, implying that mobile shopping motivations are driving factors of value co-creation. Customer participation behaviour has significant effects on value equity and brand equity while customer citizenship behaviour shows positive effects on brand equity and relationship. As for customer lifetime value, relationship equity has significant positive effect, while value and brand equity had no significant influence. This study also shows that mobile shopping motivations affect both value equity and relationship equity of mobile shopping apps by improving information sharing, responsible behaviour, and personal interaction, feedback, helping, and advocacy. Value equity and relationship equity also have significant effects on customer lifetime value. The authors discuss the theoretical and managerial implications for their findings.

The purpose of the current study was to deduct the factors for e-sports and to develop measurement scale of each images of those factors so as to establish the concept of esports. In order to achieve the aforementioned purpose, the study was conducted through three steps: (1) deduction of the elementary/principal factors which were based on the literature investigation and in-depth interview of experts and general public, (2) conducting first survey and exploratory factor analysis, and (3) conducting secondary survey followed by confirmatory factor analysis. In the first step, in order to develop and identify measurement scales, images concerning e-sports, game and sports perceived by consumers and related items used in the extant literature were investigated. Additionally, in order to verify the face and content validity of deducted items, in-depth interview of experts, professional gamers, professors of Sports Science, doctoral students, people in charge, general public and etc was conducted. And in the second step, the survey with those confirmed items scales were conducted and with the results derived from the survey, the exploratory factor analysis for measuring images consisting e-sports were also conducted. Finally, in the third step, secondary survey based on the results derived from the exploratory factor analysis were conducted and in order to test uni-dimensionality of the measurement tool with the results emanated from the secondary survey, confirmatory factor analysis were conducted. Through aforementioned three steps, the current study confirmed the image factors consisting e-sports which are comprised of six positive factors (i.e., sociality, entertainingness, aestheticness, leisureness, education, and stress relief) and five negative factors (i.e., addictiveness, violence, commercial viability/marketability, and closedness).

Today, hundreds of millions of people spectate eSports. eSports fans are spending their time watching live internet broadcasts, referred to as streams, on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. With the high levels of interaction and the live-broadcasting nature, eSports streaming consumption lead to a significant effect on eSports industry (Sjöblom & Hamari, 2017). As a result, eSport has been growing definitely as a viable spectator sport (Bornemark, 2013). In the line with it, drone racing is gaining popularity as a sport type where players control drones, typically radio-controlled aircrafts equipped with cameras, by wearing head-mounted displays (HMD) showing the live stream camera feed of first person view point from the drones. Recently, drone racing has been recognized as a new type of eSports since it involves digital communication technology, specifically virtual reality (VR) technology, and cutting edge computing and control engineering to produce aircrafts that are capable of speeds in excess of 150 Kilometer per hour and acceleration as fast as F1 cars. In essence, drone racing combines VR gaming with real world action to create a new genre, Mixed Reality Sports. The uniqueness of drone racing comes from the first person perspective. Due to first person view display glasses, pilots immerse into their drones; they experience the feeling of sitting on the nose of the drone. Furthermore, the immersive experience can be shared with the spectators through the first person view video that the pilots see. Drone racing provides its spectators this type of unique immersive experience, but the problem is that spectators of first person view drone racing can easily get motion sickness/VR sickness. Moreover, spectators can easily miss out on what is happening and thus need some structure to the experience (Hemb, 2017). A proper system is needed to provide unprecedented immersive experiences to them and VR technology can provide more optimal views for spectating drone race. However, there are only a few studies on what drone racing spectators want to see and how they enjoy VR content of drone racing. Therefore, the goal of this study is to assess and evaluate drone racing spectating. A series of spectating modes (mirroring, 3D and VR) is assessed in a series of experiments and user testing sessions to determine the preferred mode for spectating drone racing VR content and analyze the relationships between spectating modes and level of audience immersion and presence.

People want to watch a sports game which cannot anticipate the result until the end of the game. Sometimes, however, excessive tension of contest lowers the interest of audience. Vast amount of existing researches have focused on finding explanation about what makes a difference of the preference level of suspense among sports fans and where is the optimal level of suspense. We apply Expected Utility Theory and Prospect theory to illustrate the expected utility of sports spectators. According to our findings, if someone someone who is satisfied more when the cheering team wins, he or she may prefer lopsided match than close match. And fans who support winning team, which means team which wins often, prefer lopsided match to close match because they forecast their team will win more than fans who support losing team, which means team which loses often. We manipulate the level of satisfaction when the cheering team wins (S) and subjective forecasted probability of win before the game (Q) of respondents and measure the utility of them toward difference game aspect (P) to verify our hypothesis. This study was carried out to investigate how the satisfaction of sports spectators will change according to the change of the game aspect. In particular, research model was set up using the Expected Utility Theory and Prospect Theory of economics. The use of economics models to explain sports consumer behavior is different from that of previous studies, and consumers' prior expectations can affect the current game viewing based on Prospect Theory is another contribution of this research.

As information technology advanced, customers’ service consumption process heavily shifted to the online environment, particularly social media and mobile. A new topic, customer engagement, has emerged along with the fast advancement of social media. Customer engagement refers to a type of customer behavior that is beyond purchase such as spreading word-of-mouth, providing recommendations to family and friends, interacting with fellow customers, and writing online reviews (Bijmolt et al., 2010; Verhoef, Reinartz, & Krafft, 2010). This study introduces the Flow theory, which is especially important to understand consumers’ online experiences, with the intention to shed light on how to better engage consumers in the hospitality industry (Bilgihan, Okumus, Nusair, & Bujisic, 2014; Hoffman & Novak, 2009). The purpose of this study is to examine the antecedents of flow and further investigate its influence on positive attitude and continuance intention among restaurant social media users. This study specifically examines restaurant customers who use social media through their smart phones in searching information and sharing experiences with others. A self-administered questionnaire was developed and a Structure equational modeling (SEM) was employed to test the proposed hypotheses. Study results support the hypotheses, indicating the importance of creating flow to increase customer engagement. Academically, this study contributes to the limited body of literature on flow experience and customer engagement in the hospitality context. Additionally, it provides practical insights for hospitality marketers on how to gain competitive advantages by strategically managing customer engagement on social media marketing through flow.

This research examines the impact of closing versus opening eyes on consumers’ decision making as to whether the decision context is driven by utilitarian versus hedonic motivation. The findings from three studies show that consumers processing advertising messages with their eyes closed are likely to use high-level, abstract processing, and thus more positively evaluate the utilitarian products (vs. the hedonic products). On the contrary, consumers with their eyes open are likely to use low-level, concrete processing, and thus more positively evaluate the hedonic products (vs. the utilitarian products). Implications for consumers and marketers are discussed.

This study attempts to investigate consumers’ perceptual process of influencer advertising and its impact on brand attitude formation on social media. Perceived congruence between the influencer and the product and sponsorship disclosure are manipulated as key independent variables. In so doing, this study examines whether consumers can infer two types of motives (affective vs. calculative) from different levels of perceived congruence (high vs. low) and sponsorship disclosure (present vs. absent). The impact of multiple motive inference on brand attitude is also examined in this study. The result indicates that perceived congruence of influencer and posting has a significant effect on the affective motive inference. When the posting is perceived to be relevant to and expected from the influencer, the participants infer the affective motive of the influencer. However, the participants do not infer calculative motives from the incongruent posting of the influencer. As native advertising can obfuscate the boundary between editorial and commercial contents (Conill, 2016), perceived congruence is significant to successfully cover the posting as a natural posting by influencer and induce affective motive inference. In addition, the disclosure of sponsorship did not reveal any effect on the calculative and the affective motive inferences. Even though the disclosure of sponsorship can make viewers recognize an advertising intent (Boerman, Willemsen, & Van Der Aa, 2017), the message did not induce motives inference behind it. It is significant to investigate whether there are intervening variables that moderate the linkage between sponsorship disclosure and motive inference processing. Furthermore, affective motive inference impacted the attitude for the brand whereas calculative motive inference exerted no significant effect. These findings suggest that when the product promoted in influencer advertising is congruent with the influencer, consumers form positive attitude toward the brand through affective inference processing. To successfully implement influencer advertising, marketers should design a content congruent with the influencer’s original postings and encourage audience to engage in affective motive processing.

People face various situations that they have to decide whether to buy or not, before uncertainty is resolved. Under the uncertain conditions, it is most crucial part for consumers that they should consider the expected valuation derived from purchasing tickets or services. Thus, it is important to contemplate buyer uncertainty about future valuation. Xie and Shugan presented the relationship between spot price and advance price in a situation that involves uncertainty. Their findings provide the explicit advance pricing strategies that can create profit improvements (Xie & Shugan, 2001). Their findings lay a foundation of this problem, because buyers are almost always not sure about their future valuations for most services (Xie & Shugan, 2001). In addition to these findings, the researchers found that profits under option pricing strategy outperform those from advance pricing strategy (Preethika Sainam, 2010). They introduce the concept of consumer options and analytically prove that consumer options can make more profits and also can protect consumers from the pitfall derived from unwanted outcomes (Preethika Sainam, 2010). In this paper, we want to consider this problem under more complex and real circumstances. We include one more pricing strategy, discounted advance pricing, which is often called early bird pricing. Furthermore, we divide consumers in two types, risk-neutral consumers and risk-averse consumers. We present a simple analytical model in what conditions each pricing strategies can out-perform others based on consumer types and capacity types.

This study aims to demonstrate the effectiveness of social media marketing as a tool in communicating a “populist” (Scott, 2015) luxury fashion brand’s good intentions toward ordinary people; it also seeks to identify whether luxury fashion brands frequently perceived as exclusive and “envied” could become approachable and “admired” brands, simply by expressing “warm” intentions on their social media sites. Ultimately, we aim to investigate whether positive relational outcomes can be derived from the brand repositioning process, from envy to admiration. This study builds on the brands as intentional agents framework (Kervyn, Fiske, & Malone, 2012), which categorizes brands in terms of their “intentions” and “ability”: “able/ill-intentioned” luxury brands are categorized as “envied brands,” while “able/well-intentioned” brands elicit the general public’s admiration. Our pre-test results confirmed that consumers can sense a brand’s good intentions and ability via its social media site. We then conducted an online selfreported survey among 488 US women aged 18–49 years who were following or “liking” at least one luxury fashion brand’s official social media site. Using structural equation modeling, we found that intentions have a negative impact on consumer envy, and that they have a positive impact on consumer admiration. Ability was found to have a positive impact on consumer admiration of the brands, while it has a negative impact on consumer envy. Although we confirmed negative directions, consumer envy of the brands had nonsignificant impacts on both emotional brand attachment and brand forgiveness. However, consumer admiration of the brands had a positive impact on both kinds of brand responses. In conclusion, while most luxury fashion brands have stuck to exclusivity, the findings of this study imply that by continually showing good intentions towards ordinary people, luxury fashion brands could reposition themselves as admired brands, which would in turn enhance emotional brand attachment. In this way, these brands could cultivate affectionate and passionate consumer–brand relationships making consumers feel more connected to them. In doing so, luxury fashion brands can acquire through social media powerful consumer allies (Phan, Thomas, & Heine, 2011), who are willing to forgive their failures.

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.

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 was designed to deepen our understanding of contemporary luxury experience based on a systematic literature review. Based on the theoretical review, this study attempted to propose and elaborate two contrasting propositions (i.e., ephemeral vs. perpetuating values) reflecting the evolving luxury market. One key trend is that consumers pursue the value of hedonism providing immediate escapism and satisfaction in luxury consumption. The on-demand mindset of consumers looking for instant desire and gratification can be exemplified by the ‘See-Now, Buy-Now’ trend in the luxury market (Weinswig, 2017). While traditional luxury consumers pursued conspicuous value, consumers of new luxury pursue more self-centric and immersive experience. In line with this perspective, Yeoman (2011) noticed the trend of renting luxury products through online services. Another notable trend is that consumers seek inspirational resources in luxury consumption. For example, numerous luxury brands are showing various art exhibitions, and have their own art foundations, which Kapferer (2014) interpreted as the emergence of luxury brands exploiting artistic aura like art institutions. In addition, luxury brands have extended their products and services to encompass a whole set of lifestyle offerings when seeing the example of flagship store of Fendi, Palazzo Fendi (Waga, 2016). This review used a systematic approach for searching and assessing the existing scholarly evidence base to interpret two emerging trends in the luxury market. The further use of proposed framework and propositions in empirical research would help revealing how consumers subjectively perceive the contemporary luxury experience discussed in this study.

Social media have been proved as a tool for social branding, but not as a tool for return on investment (ROI) generation. The ultimate goal of any business activities is to generate ROI; therefore, businesses should know what social media practices actually increase their ROI. Researchers in the computer science and engineering areas have attempted to create a systematic model/statistical method to quantify data collected from social media to generate meaningful consumer and market trends and ROI (Zeng, Chen, Lusch, & Li. 2010). This process is called Social Media Intelligence (SMI) or Social Media Analytics (SMA). Researchers have not been yet successful in developing an effective analytical system for social media data to generate ROI. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore which social media practices would affect ROI based on SMA process with key techniques used to analyze the indicators in social media (i.e., Key Performance Indicators; KPIs) that show the effectiveness of a company in achieving its business objectives. This study is an exploratory research to determine the nature of a problem in the SMI, to gain further insight, and to show opportunities in the subject area. The result shows that using crawling, topic modeling and social network analysis techniques, businesses could collect and monitor right KPIs depending on their social media goals (e.g., number of followers for awareness, number of link clicks for engagement, number of lead magnets for conversion). After then, using the techniques to analyze the KPIs (e.g., opinion mining, sentiment analysis, etc. for the understand stage), businesses would be able to identify/predict consumer demands and market trends. Based on this prediction, businesses need to visualize the result to customers by executing right marketing strategies (e.g., effective viral marketing, personalized Call-To-Action, customized product/service, direct relationship establishment, frequent communication, establish long relationship, etc.). This study could contribute to the field by presenting the effective KPIs and techniques organized based on the SMA stages and social media goals and could provide the industry a right tool and a direction for their social media promotional practices.

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.