NFTs are touted as revolutionary to market and monetize digital assets. However, critics have questioned NFT value, labeling it as fraudulent. Despite mixed reviews, various firms are leveraging NFTs as a value proposition for customers. In this study, using service-dominant (S-D) logic, we explore how NFTs can help firms in value co-creation and service exchange. We propose and test a conceptual framework using a multi-method approach -1) we investigate NFTs popularity using historical news articles spanning ten years, 2) we use a case study to examine business NFT use in value co-creation and service exchange, subsequently, proposing a conceptual framework illustrating such value exchange, 3) we test our conceptual framework by analyzing data from multiple sources, including surveys, online forums, social media, and transactions. Results from our study, provide business valuable insight into using NFTs as value co-creation and service exchange tool.

The Metaverse is a digital space that utilizes the internet and augmented reality to blend real-life and virtual experiences. This emerging environment offers opportunities for individuals to purchase goods and services, enjoy entertainment, and participate in virtual events. By utilizing Direct-to-Avatar (D2A) and Metahuman (D2M) approaches, brands can create more seamless and immersive customer experiences, representing a progression in omnichannel evolution. Despite this growing interest in the Metaverse, there is limited research on how it impacts consumer perceptions. To address this gap, a qualitative study was conducted involving semi-structured interviews with C-level executives in the fashion industry, alongside two experimental studies that examined hypotheses related to the Metaverse experience. The results revealed that customer experiences in the Metaverse enhance perceived seamlessness and customer engagement. These findings can assist managers in identifying innovative ways to improve customer experiences, including developing new paradigms for the phygital world, combining elements of both physical and digital reality, and creating distinctive brand-customer interactions.

Entomophagy (or insects eating) is seen as a new, sustainable, and promising protein alternative for consumers in Western countries. Although eating insects is not new for many cultures (e.g., Asian culture), it represents a novel and unconventional eating practice in the Western world (e.g., United States and Europe), often characterized by food taboos and by a negative advertising in the media.

This study explores internal and external factors that influence consumers’ novel food technology acceptance (NFTA). Findings suggest that the primary driver of the purchase intention of NFTA is hedonic motivation. Also, the level of trust in the food regulatory organizations can play a vital role in driving consumers’ NFTA.

Livestreaming commerce is a form of e-commerce that embedded real-time video presentation and social interaction. It provides immersive shopping experience reinforced by high levels of interactivity and instant bidirectional communication. China, as one of the biggest livestreaming markets, has reached 2.3 trillion (CNY) livestreaming commerce market value in 2022. In a 2020 survey, two-thirds of Chinese consumers experienced livestreaming shopping in the previous year. Accordingly, luxury brands, such as Chanel and Louis Vuitton have started to implement livestreaming commerce in China. However, for years, luxury brands have struggled with online commerce as it may impact upon perceptions of exclusivity and dilute brand value. Research on the efficacy of live commerce emerged in recent years and mostly focused on non-luxury brands. However, luxury brands cannot simply copy digital marketing strategies that proved to be effective for non-luxury brands. To date, limited academic attention has been devoted to the luxury commerce in a livestreaming context.

The wellness travel industry faces a curious challenge: it experiences high consumer demand for indigenous experiences while also facing growing accusations of cultural appropriation of authentic practices. According to the Global Wellness Summit (2023), “hyper-indigenous” wellness travel is a global trend for 2023, as travelers seek the source of ancient healing knowledge. However, many of these cultural practices have already spread across national borders like the turmeric latte served in Western retreats or yoga that is practiced globally, leading to an established yoga tourism market (Market Research, 2022). How can these conflicting realities, rooted in the concept of authenticity, be reconciled? This study aims to explore this research question by analyzing two wellness narratives: one that commodifies ingenious practices outside their original borders and another that safeguards them within national and cultural boundaries.

Based on the Stereotype Content Model and the credibility and persuasion literature, this study examines the influence of COO on advertising claim credibility and purchase intentions. A set of hypotheses were developed and tested with an experimental design on a British sample of consumers.

The wide application of digital media technology in fashion shows has become the epitome of the development and innovation of today's fashion industry, enabling designers to break through the constraints of time and space, changing the performance of today's fashion shows, and making them present unprecedented new features. With the development of information technology, the integration of emerging digital technology and the fashion industry is accelerating. So far, separate studies have been carried out in various academic fields on the combination of Metaverse and NFT, but the current status and nature of relevant research are still incomplete. Furthermore, the current research on virtual fashion shows and NFT in China's apparel industry is limited. The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of digital fashion marketing stimulation on consumer brand attitudes using the stimulation-organ-response (SOR) framework model. By analyzing 77 cases of virtual fashion shows in China, this study obtained antecedent variables and designed a research model. An online sample of 300 Chinese Gen Z consumers was collected and analyzed using SPSS and FSQCA. This research hopes to provide valuable information for the sustainable development of China's fashion industry, and to help Chinese fashion brands confirm the future market development direction of Metaverse and NFT.

A new type of food created in laboratories – lab grown meat (LGM) is an alternative to traditional animal farming and attracting attention of media, industry experts and consumers. Why is this new product so controversial? It is claimed that cell-based meat production is more environmentally friendly, ethical and sustainable than traditional methods that involve animals. Hence, being less harmful and potentially slowing down environmental degradation that leads to climate change. However, consumers have concerns regarding product quality, sourcing of cells used for production and use of growth serums. So many differing views are present, even before LGM is introduced as a marketable product. This paper examines what drives public discourse regarding how this new industry can be regulated, technology and how social media posts, fake news and publicly available rhetoric address consumer concerns and consumer acceptance regarding this new food category.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is one of the bridges to the globalization of trade. The BRI will achieve all its goals and help each participant nation's economy flourish. Expanding international commerce and reducing inequality among participating nations are indicators of stronger economic growth. This study intends to investigate how the Belt and Road Initiative affects global trade and equality among its participants and elaborate the people perception on BRI in Indonesia and Malaysia. This study uses secondary data to compare the BRI members, while the original data was collected using a survey approach. The four factors evaluated in secondary data are globalization, international trade, equality, and business environment. K-mean cluster, One-way ANOVA, and Partial Least Squares were used for data analysis. The survey is conducted in English on two platforms (online and offline), they are analyzed by Homogeneity of Variances test. The findings indicated foreign debt, political stability, level of corruption, education index, and life expectancy are the differences in the business environments that account for this. If the member nations in the Belt and Road Initiative have favorable conditions in terms of political stability, education, and life expectancy, they will succeed in terms of globalization, international trade, and equality. In addition, the nation should have little foreign debt and less corruption. The last, both Malaysia and Indonesia have positive perception on the BRI and support the country to participate on it.

The concept of Social Marketing has existed in literature for a long time and is a widely discussed topic. Many scholars have discussed the importance of health related social marketing to bring about positive lifestyle changes and improve health of populations. Marketing efforts and their effectiveness in creating positive changes is quite complex to assess.Social marketing for HIV/AIDS aims to generate awareness, teach people about the disease and influence people’s behavior towards a healthier and better lifestyle. To evaluate how aware people are, what they’ve learnt and how their behavior is influenced by social marketing communications, the authors use a modified version of Kirkpatrick model. This paper aims to ascertain the perceptions and knowledge about HIV/AIDS information disseminated by social marketers using traditional and new media such as Television, hoardings, pole kiosks, bus panels, information panels, radio, social media and celebrity endorsement. The study followed exploratory research design and Survey technique was used.

The luxury fashion industry is facing increasing scrutiny due to its negative environmental impact and unsustainable production methods. However, new business models in the form of second-hand commerce and renting are emerging as attractive options for consumers, reshaping the luxury fashion landscape. This paper examines the current state of second-hand luxury fashion and explores the business models adopted by companies in this sector. A review of existing literature reveals key themes pertaining to second-hand luxury, including consumer motivations and attitudes towards recycled luxury fashion, the evolving meanings and consumer identities associated with second-hand luxury, the impact on the traditional luxury fashion industry, the environmental benefits of recycled luxury fashion, and the business models and sustainability strategies of companies operating in this sector.

Central to retail therapy is the notion that stress can be eased by simple browsing, which produces immediate and positive psychological effects through shopping. In the Philippines, retailers are slowly adopting omnichannel strategies as a response to the fundamental shift to online retailing. However, during the pandemic, shoppers resorted to retail therapy to appease emotions and senses. This might explain how the Filipino deserve ko ‘to (I deserve this) mindset can be a form of self-gifting that may relate to retail therapy.

Few species on this planet partake in sex for recreational purposes and humans are one of them. What is noteworthy is that humans are the only species with the capability to develop advanced technologies to satiate the need for recreational sex. At present, there are massive advances in technologies in robotics that would suggest that it will not be long before sex work will be robotised. This large jump in technological capabilities brings up ethical, legal, and practical issues with regards to the commercialization of sex, something previously explored by some scholars (See, for example; Döring, Mohseni & Walter,2020; Mackenzie, 2016; Makenzie, 2018; Klein & Lin, 2018). There is a growing literature that deals with how sex robots will be incorporated into the tourism and hospitality industries (see, for example; Yeoman & Mars, 2012). As sex robots become increasingly sophisticated, the ethics, social debate, and practicalities of their incorporation into society will have to be thought through, especially as their impact will not be gender neutral. While the historical roots of the modern mechanization of sex were gynocentric, the current technological innovations are largely aimed at a male consumer. In this research, the authors discuss the state of the art in sex robots, the practical aspects of the incorporation of sex robots into the field of hospitality and tourism, and the impact that such a technological jump will have upon sex tourism and its contribution to the sustainable development of destinations with a transformation of sex tourism into a new paradigm. The authors will conclude explaining the ways in which this technological innovation will impact upon males and females and the interactions between the genders, transforming human connections and hospitality. This research will be the first to discuss how the digital aspects of the new generation of sex robots will impact upon the marketing of automated sex services, since the intimate nature of the supply of services will require marketing finesse unlike other more openly disseminated hospitality services.

Offering a good shopping experience on the web is key for fashion luxury brands. However, it is not a field much analyzed by researchers. This research presents a systematic analysis of the usability of the web and its content in more than 60 fashion luxury e-commerce.

This study focuses on resale behavior in online consumer-to-consumer market platforms and examines the factors that promote and hinder the resale behavior of sellers. The evidence from the experiment suggests the negative effect of emotional attachment on resale intention and the moderating effect of resale possibilities.

Consumers' online reviews have become more powerful in the Internet market. Consumers share reviews, post comments and constantly evaluate products online. In previous studies, the analysis of online reviews mainly focused on purchasing products based on consumers' own use experience, but in innovative products, it was difficult to find an analysis of product acceptor's response to product user reviews. In particular, there is no online review study of VR covered in this study. This study not only quantitatively analyzed online reviews of consumers who purchased VR products on Amazon, an online distribution site, but also qualitatively analyzed them through crawling. This study used Amazon's VR product user review, where purchases were confirmed, to select algorithms that are more likely to be matched by predicting a helpful review and presenting a predictive model. In addition, the online review extracted deep text associated with Helpful and conducted topical modeling. As a result, topics related to 1) experience in use, 2) post-product evaluation, 3) product composition and peripherals, 4) immersion, and 5) comfort were highly acceptable to potential inmates. To enhance the acceptability of innovative products through online reviews, it is not just highlighting the product advantages of VR, but also suggests that the link between smartphones and applications can bring in more potential users. Also, interworking with other peripheral devices (speakers or screens) can be predicted as a way to increase the acceptability of VR products. From a marketing perspective, this study has found targeted topics that help consumers in pioneering the VR market, which will help potential customers create the services they want.

Plastic pollution is one of the biggest environmental problems in the world. In modern society, the consumption of single-use plastics in the food service industry has increased along with the increase in food-away-from-home. The COVID-19 pandemic has attacked the consumption of single-use plastic in the restaurant industry. During the COVID-19 pandemic, especially the US has retracted the related laws and policies regarding using single-use plastic for fast food and carry-out food, and customers have increased their use of single-use plastic for fast food and carry-out food due to worries about hygiene. Even though sustainability has been a novel topic in hospitality literature, a majority of studies have focused on the consumers’ perception, attitude, or behavioral willingness toward sustainability. To fill this gap in research, finding an effective way to influence consumers’ behavioral change becomes important and necessary.

Consumers visiting platforms that host user-generated content (UGC) not only consume content but also generate content by investing time and effort. This paper seeks to examine a UGC platform's content provision strategy: how a UGC platform can motivate consumers to generate UGC and how it can manage the balance between UGC and platform's own content. As UGC and the platform's own content perform the same function, one may be inclined to think that the two types of content are substitutes. Our analysis shows that they could function as strategic complements. This is because increasing the platform's own content provision raises the quality of content on the platform, motivates more consumers to join the platform, and increases the total UGC provision on the platform. The fact that consumers dislike advertising could lead us to believe that consumers will be less motivated to generate UGC if ad space increases. On the contrary, we find that consumers may be motivated to increase UGC provision to make up for the loss in enjoyment and increase the overall quality of contents on the platform. The public good characteristics of UGC could prompt us to think that UGC provision on the platform will be less than the socially optimal level. Our analysis identifies conditions when the total provision of UGC can be more than the social optimum. One may wonder whether it is profitable for a UGC platform to completely dispense with its own content. We find that it is always profitable for the UGC platform to offer some of its own content. This is because when consumers spend more time consuming the content, the platform can monetize their attention and earn higher ad revenue.

This study addresses the problem caused by unhealthy = tasty intuition (UTI) when positioning innovative new categories of food products. Our research on Japanese consumers’ choice of soy meat hamburgers shows that UTI formed by the old category influences choices in the new product category.