Anecdotal evidence suggests that incidents like the recall of the exploding Samsung Galaxy 7 phones drive owners of other (competing) brands to experience and express feelings of joy when a rival brand fails (e.g., “the hottest phone in the streets!”). Although consumers sometimes experience brand-related schadenfreude—that is, joy out of other brand’s failure—, psychological processes driving schadenfreude are not clearly understood (Hickman & Ward, 2007; Van Dijk, Van Koningsbruggen, Ouwerkerk, & Wesseling, 2011). We propose that schadenfreude may be elicited by consumers’ tendencies to stand by their choices (Ye & Gawronski, 2016). We demonstrate that consumers show higher levels of schadenfreude if their choice is disconfirmed; for example, by a comparative product review that evaluates their chosen brand to be inferior to a rival non-chosen brand. Furthermore, this effect is moderated by the popularity of the chosen brand and mediated by feelings of self-threat. Moreover, we show that this effect is stronger for narcissists. We also find evidence that schadenfreude is a means for consumers to reaffirm their sense of self after they experience a self-threat induced by the disconfirmation of their choice.

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

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

When consumers are faced with various discounts, they are likely to find some easier to comprehend than others and this degree of difficulty will impact purchase decisions. This study explains complexity as a dimension of psychological distance using different types of discounts. Current research examines that easy-to-process discounts appear near and difficult-to-process discounts appear far. Applying construal level theory, this research investigates that the dollar discount leads to higher likeability of the attribute-appeal message and the percent discount lead to higher likeability of the benefit-appeal message. The dollar discount is low-level construal, as is an attribute message (i.e., how approach) whereas the percentage discount is high-level construal like a benefit message (i.e., why approach).

An increasing number of Internet users use hotel booking websites and online travel agencies to arrange trips and search for information related to their travels. This study investigates the impact of customer engagement on user perceptions of the quality and value of an online hotel-booking website, as well as whether such perceptions further influence user trust in online websites (eTrust) and result in behavioral intention of eLoyalty. The empirical results of structural equation modeling analysis of 400 questionnaire results collected in Taiwan reveal that customer engagement has a positive impact on perceived website quality (i.e., usability, ease of use, entertainment, and complementarity), which in turn influences perceived value. The results do not show a direct impact from customer engagement on perceived value. Finally, the results verify that eTrust mediates the relationship between consumers’ perceived website quality and behavioral intention of eLoyalty toward an online hotel-booking website; eTrust also mediates the relationship between consumers’ perceived value and behavioral intention of eLoyalty toward an online hotel-booking website. The findings provide both academic researchers and practitioners with a better understanding of customer engagement and facilitate development of more effective customer engagement strategies for online booking platforms.

When consumers are faced with various discounts, they are likely to find some easier to comprehend than others and this degree of difficulty will impact purchase decisions. This study explains complexity as a dimension of psychological distance using different types of discounts. Current research examines that easy-to-process discounts appear near and difficult-to-process discounts appear far. Applying construal level theory, this research investigates that the dollar discount leads to higher likeability of the attribute-appeal message and the percent discount lead to higher likeability of the benefit-appeal message. The dollar discount is low-level construal, as is an attribute message (i.e., how approach) whereas the percentage discount is high-level construal like a benefit message (i.e., why approach).

The present research deals with the influence of managers’ construal level and anticipatory regret behavior on evaluations of customers’ and employees’ ideas in innovation contexts. While prior research focused on positive outcomes of open innovation, we provide theory and evidence to suggest that managers’ avoidance behavior in idea evaluation processes can result in negative side effects for the assessment of employees’ ideas. We conducted an experiment with 113 managers to reveal that top managers tend to higher creativity ratings of ideas from customers in comparison to identical ideas from employees. Lower level managers showed no difference in their creativity evaluations, but differentiated their feasibility rating in favor for customers’ ideas, whereas top managers did not. Our findings contribute to existing managerial decision making research and provide initial evidence on negative outcomes of open innovation for managers’ evaluation of employees’ ideas.

Facing competition in a context of saturated markets characterized by rapid technological transformations presumes more than ever the need for creativity (Runco 2004), i.e. the production of new and useful (or adapted) ideas (Amabile 1996). In this paper, we focus on individual creativity, which is a subject of growing interest in research in psychology, management, and education. Beyond supernatural or genetic views of individual creativity, researchers generally agree on a multi-variant approach to creativity, which would result from cognitive factors (i.e. intellectual capacities, domain or creativity expertise, cognitive style), personality traits, and individual motivation to complete the task as well as environmental factors (Amabile 1996). If some of these factors are intrinsically personal, thus stable in the short run, environmental factors could be organized in an “architecture” likely to foster individual creativity, stressing the non-negligible role of physical elements, such as forms, space or colors (Meusberger et al. 2009). In this perspective, our objective is twofold: first to explore whether the environment color – and more specifically a blue environment – can foster individual creativity, and second to interrogate the underlying emotional mechanisms likely to explain it. Using an experiment, we show that 1/ putting individuals in a blue (vs. white) environment has a direct positive influence on the volume of ideas, but not on the quality of ideas, and that 2/ emotions mediate the influence of the color blue (vs. white) on individual creativity. Specifically, the color blue enhances pleasantness, which enhances individual creativity (both in quantity and quality), especially when individuals also experience arousal. These findings both replicate and extend the literature on the influence of colors and mood on individual creativity, and call to further research on the mediating routes likely to explain the influence of colors on individual creativity.

In the current online advertising ecosystem, described by users’ adaptation to ad clutter, an arousal stimulus might not be a sufficient condition to maintain viewers’ attention on advertising. This research contributes to the online advertising literature by investigating whether different arousal designs (one vs. two arousal peaks) should be used to enhance the effectiveness of online video ads (attitude toward the ad, ad recall, purchase intentions, and recommendations) depending on the kind of audience (active or captive). By means of three studies, this research tests a moderation effect proposing that using one arousal stimulus is more effective in non-skippable advertising, whereas introducing two arousal stimuli is more effective in skippable ads. First, a consumer neuroscience study was conducted to detect the arousal stimuli and design the different conditions. Second, an experimental study in a lab setting was carried out to test the hypotheses of our framework. Third, to extend the validity of the experimental study, a field study using Google AdWords was conducted. Our results indicate that the two arousal peaks design increases ad effectiveness in skippable contexts whereas the one arousal peak commercial is more effective in a non-skippable context. These findings agree with previous research which found that continuous consumer activation during the ad improves decoding in memory for active audiences compared to captive audiences (Belanche, Flavián, & Pérez Rueda 2017). In addition, an ad with two arousal peaks is more effective among millennials; whereas the one arousal peak ad is more effective among older users (nonmillennials). Our research contributes to better understand how to satisfy the different demands of different advertising audiences (Ha, 2017). Specifically, our findings suggest that advertising campaigns should not be used across formats and users carelessly, but ad design needs to be adapted to the different ad formats and kind of audiences.

This study focuses on analyzing the variables that moderate the effectiveness of the advertising flyers, one of the most used tools in retailing, to improve product sales. In previous literature, studies analyzed and confirmed the effectiveness of flyers to increase the traffic store, the general store sales or the synergistic effect of them to highlight and improve the effectiveness of promotions. Despite their confirmed effectiveness on these issues and their large use by retailers and manufacturers, it is missed studies that analyze the variables that may moderate their effectiveness on the sales of the products displayed on it. In fact, only Zhang et al. (2009) tried to analyze if the location in which the product is displayed have an influence on its effectiveness. According to them, they obtained inconclusive results due to their sample size. This study, considering the consumer’s cognitive process, analyzes how the presentation and the position of the product in flyers have an effect on their effectiveness to increase the displayed product’s sales. The results show that (i) the special signage on a displayed product in flyers increases their effectiveness to increase displayed product’s sales, and (ii) not only being highlighted increases the effect of the flyer, but that the product positioning affects decisively. For example, some locations -such as the cover, the top of the pages and areas on the left-, increase the visibility of the product and are more effective than other positions to increase displayed product’s sales. These results are in line with previous studies that indicate the importance of the directionality of reading to capture the customer’s attention in other environments. In sum, as happens inside the store or in the shelf, depending on if the product is displayed with a special signage or in an area where the customers pay more attention due to the standard cognitive process, the effectiveness of the flyers increase. Thus, retailers and manufacturers must consider how and where to be in the flyer, not just being.

Lengthy surveys take more time and induce the use of undesired response styles. Response styles generate biases in responses, particularly in lengthy surveys (Baumgartner & Steenkamp, 2001). Response style is defined as tendency to systematically respond to questionnaire items regardless of item content (Baumgartner & Steenkamp, 2001). In practice, market research agencies prefer to use split questionnaires where questionnaires split into parts and each subset is administered to a randomly selected group of respondents (Raghunathan & Grizzle 1995). So far, split questionnaire design literature has been mainly investigated estimation and inference (Lord, 1962; Shoemaker, 1973; Merkouris, 2014; Chipperfield, Barr, & Steel, 2017), data imputation (Raghunathan & Grizzle, 1995; Rässler et al. 2002), and optimal designs (Thomas et al. 2006; Adıgüzel & Wedel 2008; Gonzalez & Eltinge, 2008; Chipperfield & Steel, 2009; Chipperfield & Steel, 2011). Despite split questionnaire is recommended to reduce undesired response styles, its relationship with response styles remains unclear. Two methods of optimal split questionnaire designs were proposed (Adıgüzel & Wedel, 2008): 1) Between-block design: To select entire blocks of questions, 2) Within-block design: To select sets of questions in each block. In this paper, we examine empirically how split designs lessen different type of response styles. Our findings indicate that split questionnaires reduce acquiescence balance, and disacquiescence relative to full questionnaires. The within-block split surveys reduce disacquiescence, acquiescence and balance, whereas the between-block ones did not. Stylistic responding is also influenced by questionnaire satisfaction, attitude, length and mood. Disacquiescence is negatively correlated to mood, questionnaire length and attitude. Midpoint is positively correlated to length, but negatively to questionnaire satisfaction, while acquiescence is opposite for both.

Introduction In the context of online interactions, social media has becoming a crucial part of people‟s everyday lives, where they converge to exchange, debate, communicate and participate in any form of social interaction (Ryan & Jones, 2009). They post and share new content but also review and rate products/services and/or brands, share experiences and expertise and exchange opinions (Ryan & Jones, 2009). As a result, the growing popularity of social media, the competitors‟ presence on social networking sites and the cost reduction pressure derived from the financial crisis and consequent necessity to find cheaper solutions for brand promotion, motivated companies to use social media as part of their marketing and brand building activities (Tsimonis & Dimitriadis, 2014) and to create brand fan pages in different social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, among others. Due to this attractiveness, social media is becoming the media channel of choice across the world (Dong-Hun, 2010). However, traditional media still plays an important role for both consumers and marketers, being a central component of brands‟ communication strategies. Yet, several questions still remain unanswered regarding social media effectiveness and influence on consumer engagement. In the current study we intend that we intend to contribute to fulfil the second. Thus, the objective of the current study is to explore how brands create and maintain online relationships with consumers through their Websites, Facebook and Instagram brand pages . Theoretical development The concept of engagement was originally employed in different fields of study including psychology, sociology and organizational behaviour. Now is attracting marketers‟ attention especially in the field of relationship marketing (e.g., Brodie et al., 2011; Hollebeek, 2011). Accordingly, two central concepts consumer engagement and online brand engagement need to be defined. First, consumer engagement, refers to the intensity of a person‟s participation and connection with company‟s offerings and activities that can be initiated by the consumer or the organization (Vivek, Beatty, & Morgan, 2012). Online brand engagement, on the other hand, can be defined as a consumer‟s cognitive and affective commitment to partake in an active relationship with a brand on a website or other computer-mediated platform designed to communicate brand value (Mollen & Wilson, 2010). Online brand engagement measures how much and how frequently users interact with a firm‟s page and its social media content. When consumers make the effort to like, favourite or comment a brand‟s post, they are vigorously engaging with that content. Engagement metrics display audience action, an important feature for social media health and growth (Dunham, 2014). As social media provides numerous ways for users to get involved with organizations (Waters, Burnett, Lamm, & Lucas, 2009), marketers must find rightful strategies to nurture relationships with the public. Dialogue has been one of the topics under research by several scholars. Including this two-way form of communication is crucial to “understand how organizations can build relationships that serve both organizational and public interests” (Kent & Taylor, 2002: 21), thus several studies use dialogic communication to investigate the influence of online strategies for relationship building (Loureiro & Gomes, 2016). Three crucial strategies have been used in numerous studies (Waters et al., 2009; Loureiro & Gomes, 2016; Men & Tsai, 2012) to build and maintain relationships online: disclosure or openness, information dissemination, and interactivity and involvement. First, disclosure or openness refers to the companies‟ willingness to be transparent in their online communication activities. Waters et al. (2009) suggest that companies must provide information such as company‟s full description, its history and mission. Organizations should use hyperlinks connected to their websites and use logos and visual cues to enhance brand recognition. Information dissemination concerns posting photos and videos, announcements about products, as well as answering questions to address stakeholders‟ needs, concerns and interests (Men & Tsai, 2012; Loureiro & Gomes, 2016). Posting links to external news content related to the company and its business and including press releases and campaign summaries can maximize the impact of a company‟s online presence (Waters et al., 2009). Finally, interactivity and involvement can be seen as the most important strategy, out of the three, since it is essential to foster relationships with the public and represents one of the main advantages of using different social media platforms (Haigh, 2014). This strategy is often analysed as a whole, with no distinction between the two terms (Men & Tsai, 2012; Loureiro & Gomes, 2016) however, interactivity can be analysed separately from involvement according to research done by Haigh (2014). Involvement regards connecting with consumers. Providing information such as organizational contacts, giving users the ability to stay in touch with the company is one way to involve them. Interactivity, on the other hand, is often defined as “the extent to which users can participate in modifying the form and content of the mediated environment in real time.” (Steuer, 1992: 84). When considering computer-mediated environments, Liu (2003) also studied interactivity, developing a scale to measure interactivity on websites. According to the study, interactivity should be 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: 54) and three dimensions should be included when discussing this topic: active control, two-way communication and synchronicity. Active control regards users‟ capacity to voluntarily participate and usefully influence communications. Two-way communication concerns the bifacial flow of information. Synchronicity evaluates the speed of the interaction. This led to the definition of interactive communication: “communication that offers individuals active control and allows them to communicate both reciprocally and synchronously” (Liu, 2003: 208). Finally, human-to-content interactivity refers to the ability to contribute to the organizational online content by commenting on organizational posts and to reply to other users‟ posts. (Loureiro & Gomes, 2016; Men & Tsai, 2012). Thus, considering the above-mentioned, the following research question is proposed: RQ1: What strategies are Portuguese companies incorporating to create and maintain relationships with publics on their Websites, Facebook and Instagram pages? Research design We conducted an exploratory content analysis to investigate online relationship cultivation strategies by Portuguese brands (RQ1). Following Loureiro and Gomes (2016), first we retrieve a list of the 50 most valuable Portuguese brands of 2016 provided by Brand Finance, “…the world’s leading independent branded business valuation…” (The Brand Finance Group, 2016). This list is made with regards to the brand value (USD $ millions) and the brand rating in the year under analysis, therefore raking the top 50 Portuguese brands. Afterwards, from this initial sample of 50 companies, brands are analysed in terms of their presence in social media by verifying if they have an official website and brand fan Pages on Facebook Instagram. After examining their social media presence, the sample included 47 companies with a website, 28 companies with a Facebook page and 19 with an Instagram account. Pages without information or not maintained by the organisation were not considered. Coding categories used in this analysis are adapted from previous research (Waters et al., 2009; Men & Tsai, 2012; Haigh, 2014; Loureiro & Gomes, 2016). The categories coded are the same for Website, Facebook and Instagram pages. Based on Waters et al.‟s (2009) method for coding online relationship cultivation strategies, the website and social media pages are examined to identify the presence of items representing organizations‟ strategies of disclosure, information dissemination and involvement. The units of analysis are the website corporate profile page on Facebook and Instagram page. We evaluate whether each strategy and item occurred, hence categories are coded with „yes‟ or „no‟ depending if the information was present (Haigh, 2014). On websites, the first step is to go to the homepage and see if the website provided a site map to easily find the items belonging to each strategy. When site maps are not available, each tab inside the website would be inspected to look for the information needed for each strategy. Since websites are more complex, with information spread across them instead of reunited in one single page as in Facebook and Instagram the following analyses were simpler. On Facebook the first page of each corporate profile is studied. This is the page that users see after signing in and where they have access to all the main elements, including the photo album and the message board. The details examined on each page are items that are readily observable (Men & Tsai, 2012). On Instagram, the analysis is similar to Facebook. Here, most of the page is visually-based (photos and videos) with the exception of to the brief description below the profile picture or logo (where usually companies also insert the URL to the Website). Thus, we look to photos‟ descriptions to get more insights about the content shared and the cultivation strategies implemented. Users‟ comments are also considered to evaluate, whether or not companies reply to them and initiate conversations with consumers. Intercoder reliability was tested using Perreault & Leigh‟s (1989) formula. Main results and conclusions Websites perform better in the first two strategies (disclosure and information dissemination) by frequently displaying a brief description about the business as well as brand history, logo and visual cues, news links and information about achievements and awards. However, in what concerns the last strategy, interactivity and involvement, websites lack interactive features that allow firms to engage with consumers such as commenting and sharing opportunity. Generally, actions to foment online participation are not implemented. This could be explained by the fact that Websites‟ main purpose is, according to Keller (2009), to express ambitions, history, products as well as the firms‟ vision therefore they act more as sources of information than as sources of interaction. However they still have to be attractive enough to encourage repeated visits (Keller, 2009). By contract, brand fan pages on Facebook and Instagram disclose and disseminate less information about firms and their activities (more evident on Instagram) and perform better in the interactivity and involvement strategy. In accordance with (Jahn & Kunz, 2012), brand fan pages main goal is to promote a communicative and interactive channel that creates a bond between the user and the brand, therefore it is expected that the main strategy used to nurture relationships on these social networks is the one that enables interaction and encourages involvement. Finally, comparing the three SNS‟s, Facebook seems to be the more consistent channel to combine and implement the three strategies altogether, since it displays a better overall performance. However, each social networking site has its own role, therefore companies should consider which network works best for each strategy and for each type of consumer and build an overall plan that maximizes the potential to connect with consumers, remembering that the image they build online should present an accurate representation of the brand and should align with other marketing efforts to present consistent messages to customers. Regarding consumer engagement, brands should focus on creating interesting and captivating content instead of posting too regularly just to have an active online presence. Posting more often does not necessarily lead to online brand engagement. Moreover, having more followers is not necessarily good on its own. Fans need to feel connected to the brand and its content and usually, smaller audiences are more engaged with brands. Therefore, brands should work on strategies that allow them to grow their audience while keeping the perks of interacting with smaller audiences. Also, audience growth rate is a helpful measure to evaluate performance on each network, identify which one is generating the highest rates and investigate how to gain more followers on all networks. Additionally, it may be useful in tracking specific campaigns‟ success.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship among the service quality, professional competence and loyalty of China tourists visiting Taiwan. A crosssectional survey was used to collect usable data from the China tourists who participate in group tourism to Taiwan. The result indicate that the China tourists felt the service quality of “meal” in Taiwan is the best and good feeling in “professional knowledge” of tour guide. In addition, this study found that the professional competence of tour guide has an intermediary effect between the quality of tourist services and tourist loyalty. The quality of tourism service can positively influence the loyalty of China tourists to Taiwan, meanwhile, the quality of tourism service can positively affect the professional competence of tour guide and the professional competence of tour guide can positively affect the loyalty of China tourists travel to Taiwan. According to the results, the study found that travel agencies should focus on the training of tour guide, which help travel agencies to raise the value of travels product and attract more tourist.

Introduction Recent years have witnessed a rapid growth in sharing service businesses. In B2C sharing-service businesses such as Zipcar, customers share goods and services provided by a service firm with other customers and perform the roles played by service employees in traditional service businesses. Consequently, how well one customer carries out expected tasks influences the quality of service provided to other customers. Extant studies have emphasized the importance of a governance system to prevent such a social dilemma as the personal interest of an individual being pursued at the sacrifice of the interest of the community. However, few studies have empirically examined the effect of different design of a governance system. To fill this gap in the research, this study examines the framing effect of customer messages on customer intention to cooperate by complying with the request by the firm. Theoretical development For customers to be willing to cooperate with a firm, they have to be first motivated to do so. The framing effect of on customer motivation has been well demonstrated (Ganzach & Karsahi, 1995) in diverse service contexts such as healthcare (Christensen, Heckerling, Mackesy, Bernstein, & Elstein, 1991), education (Fryer Jr, Levitt, List, & Sadoff, 2012), and consumer behaviors (Ganzach & Karsahi, 1995; White, MacDonnell, & Dahl, 2011) In the context of service consumption, motivation is defined as the inner driver that triggers an individual to cooperate with the service providers (Tsai, Wu, & Huang, 2017). Whether messages were framed as a gain versus a loss exerted a significant impact on consumer motivation. In the consumer behavior contexts, consumer reactions to frames were mixed (Ganzach & Karsahi, 1995). In this study, we will examine the framing effect in the context of sharing service consumption. H1: In the B2C sharing service context, the framing of customer message (gain vs. loss) will affect customer motivation to comply with the request of the service firm. Customers tend to behave different depending on the value they pursue through consumption (Hwang & Griffiths, 2017). Even in the same consumption context, values of customer pursuit can vary widely. Hence, we intend to examine the moderating effect of customer value perception of sharing service on the effect of message framing on motivation. Studies showed that customers pursuing utilitarian values consider monetary savings and convenience as important, while customers pursuing symbolic value consider status and self-esteem as important and those pursing hedonic values consider entertainment and exploration as important (Rintamäki, Kanto, Kuusela, & Spence, 2006). The framing effect was shown to differ by the emphasized value of the product in the context of advertisement. A gain frame was more effective than a loss frame when the ad highlighting the hedonic attributes of a product while a loss frame was more effective when the ad stressing the utilitarian attributes of the product (Lin, 2007). Taken together, we conjecture that customers pursing different values will react differently to the same frame of messages and the level of motivation triggered by the same message frame will also differ. H2: Customer value perception of sharing service will moderate the framing effect of customer messages (gain vs. loss) on motivation. Specifically, customers pursuing utilitarian values will react more strongly to the messages framed as a loss (H2a), while customers pursuing hedonic or symbolic values will react more strongly to messages framed as a gain (H2b). The effect of motivation on customer behaviors and behavioral intentions have been well demonstrated (Ganzach & Karsahi, 1995). In the service context, customer cooperation behaviors induced by motivation significantly influence the efficiency of service operations (Mills & Morris, 1986). We propose that the motivation enhanced by customer messaged influence customer willingness to cooperate. H3: In the B2C sharing service context, motivation affects customer willingness to cooperate. Methodology Data will be collected from American consumers who have used a car sharing service at least once in the past one year through an online scenario-based survey using a 2 (message frames: gain vs. loss) x 3 (values of sharing service: utilitarian vs. hedonic vs. symbolic) between-subject experimental design. Hypotheses will be tested by an analysis of variance and a regression analysis. Implication The findings of this study will help P2P service firms better design customer messages in inducing customer cooperation and how to customize the design by customers’ value perceptions of sharing service.

This research analyzes the influence of children on their parents’ personal purchases. Prior research focuses on children’s influence on family purchases and products consumed by children themselves. There is a knowledge gap in whether and how children influence personal purchases of their parents. Building on reciprocal theory, this research proposes that children have influence on their parents’ personal item purchases because of attitude exchange. This reciprocal influence and attitude exchange should be derived from co-shopping frequency. That is, the greater the interaction between the two parties – especially at the point of purchase, which is co-shopping – the greater the reciprocity. Additionally, this influence increases as parents age. In order to test the research questions, mothers were chosen as respondents because they are the primary caregivers for children, and as a result, there should be high reciprocal influence between mothers and their children. A sample of 304 mothers with a mean age of 46.6 years participated in this study. The results support the first hypothesis that the co-shopping frequency between parents and children positively influences parents’ personal purchases. The results also support the second hypotheses that the parents’ age positively influences the children’s influence on parents’ personal purchases. This is in line with prior research which determined that children become more influential as they grow older. To my knowledge, this paper is the first to extend the knowledge of children’s influence on family-decision making – beyond selecting products for the children and products for the family – to the influence on personal purchases of parents.

How do consumed objects move through the journey from possession to dispossession? Where do consumers find happiness in this process? Prior research seems to focus on the two extreme ends: on one end, happiness can be found in consumption; on the other end, mindful consumer behaviour such as conscious dispossession has also proven to influence consumer happiness. However, little is known about how the consumed items moving through different stages from ‘possession’ to ‘dispossession,’ and how happiness is generated and influences the decisions during the practices. More importantly, consumption patterns are often heavily influenced by cultural contexts. Focusing on a decluttering approach, KonMari Method, this research aims to yield insights on object-subject relationships beyond what is currently available in the literature via the lens of multicultural comparison. The analysis of 10 English and 10 Mandarin blog narratives reveal that it is an interactive process to redefine the place of an object in one’s heart and one’s house. In line with the prior study, our results suggest that the classifying method and the object-subject relations seem to be an essential element in defining consumer happiness. However, while the KonMari steps are linear with a rigid procedure, depending on participants’ symbolic classification and how flexible it can be, they may experience a different level of challenges; hedonic, eudaimonic and spiritual well-being are differently activated during the decluttering process. Contrary to the previous belief that organizing can be daunting and tedious, the setup of the KonMari method creates an extraordinary experience that often results in a high level of happiness activated differently in the Eastern and Western cultures. In particular, Western English speaking consumers mostly experience a feeling of excitement. For Eastern Mandarin speaking consumers, the peacefulness of the experience is underlined.

In a virtual world, firms and individuals are connected through multiple devices and channels, whereby both act as content creators. The relevance of customer co-creation for brand-building in digital environments requires further research (Ramaswamy and Ozcan, 2016). From a growing body of research, a stream suggests that technology is changing the way consumers and firms interact, whereby consumers perceive brand image to be the sum of all brand online and offline information. Another stream assumes that consumers perceive brands as having personality characteristics, which are used to differentiate them from competitors. For this latter approach, Aaker’s (1997) model is widely used to analyse brand personality (BPS). However, no evidences has been found regarding to what extent firms and customers communicate the same brand values. We accomplish this by analysing the brand personality dimensions communicated online by two international hotel chains (Pestana & FourSeasons) and their clients, using two different digital channels, namely: 12 websites and 600 TripAdvisor comments. A content analysis was carried out using the BPS dictionary of WordStat software, created by Opoku et al. (2006), which contains 833 words, divided into the five BPS categories. The results show that most of the content was created by clients (89% of messages). FourSeasons hotels communicate Excitement and Sophistication, whereas Pestana hotels communicate Sincerity and Sophistication. Sincerity is the highest tagged dimension of the BPS references, both for FourSeasons and for Pestana, which suggests that clients tend to perceive both brands as being reputable. In summary, although clients and hotels converge with regards to hotel brand personality traits, distinctive brand personalities emerge.

This conceptual paper drew on the uses and gratifications theory to theorize about what drives consumers to engage in social media activation campaigns. This paper proposed that satisfying the needs for integration and social interaction, personal identity, information seeking, entertainment, and utilitarian reward through a social media activation campaign can enhance consumers‘ engagement with it. Finally the way in which cognitive, affective, and behavioral engagement with such campaigns affect brand image was explained theoretically. The developed conceptual framework can help marketing managers to create engaging social media activation campaigns, thereby improving the image of their brands.

Over the last decade, the sharing economy that covers systems of organised sharing, bartering, lending, trading, renting, gifting, and swapping among communities of peers on Internet platforms has emerged as a major disruptive pattern in capitalist economies (Botsman and Rogers, 2010). Prior research on the sharing economy has mainly concentrated on young, well-educated urban users and therefore particularly underlined “noble” motivations for participation, such as hedonic, environmental, and political reasons. This research looks beyond this “hipster” view of sharing entrepreneurs and focuses on French deprived mothers who use peer-to-peer (P2P) platforms to survive. Drawing on the literature on subsistence markets in developing countries (e.g., Viswanathan et al., 2014), it investigates Facebook buy-and-sell groups as a new form of subsistence markets in developed countries. Using a multi-method approach involving in-depth interviews, netnography, and participatory observation on Facebook buy-and-sell groups, it more particularly explores how Facebook specific digital features participate in these emerging markets. The findings indicate that subsistence markets’ emergence in developed countries on Facebook is founded on new digital features that (re)create structural, cognitive and relational forms of social capital. This research thus offers interesting contributions and implications for public policy makers engaged in the regulation of the sharing economy.

Reports indicate that in 2017, social commerce had become a 20 billion dollar industry. Given the developing world’s fatigue with social media, social commerce growth will likely be fueled by consumers from developing economies. While literature has investigated social commerce in the context of established brands in developed economies (e.g. Kim and Ko, 2012), it cannot yet explain consumers’ engagement with the uniqueness of social media commerce in developing economies. Social commerce in Southeast Asian economies are largely conducted amongst individuals or micro businesses. Since social media platforms largely do not provide commerce security nor support, consumers are more vulnerable to fraudulent practices. What factors motivate these purchases despite such risks? This study offers insights into how consumers’ motivated reasoning influences their willingness to purchase over social media. We focus on the social media store’s ease of use and perceived security as antecedents of trust. Specifically, we argue that perceiving a lack of ability to purchase from other channels would induce higher trust towards a social media store, despite low perceptions of ease and security of transaction. Data was collected from 224 Indonesian social media users who have been exposed to social media stores on Instagram. The findings suggest that when consumers perceive high control of how they could obtain desired goods, trust becomes a logical function of the perceived safety and ease of use of the shops. However, under low perceived control, consumers display high trust in social media shops despite not being convinced that they are safe nor easy to use. The findings extend our understanding about the antecedents of value creation in social commerce (Stephen and Toubia, 2010). Our results enrich prior literature by showing how motivated reasoning leads to biases in judgment to be in favor of desired goals (Blanton and Gerrard, 1997), and extends it in the novel context of social media commerce. Furthermore, by incorporating the literature on perceived behavioral control and motivated reasoning, the current study provides important empirical evidence for the presence of perceived control over alternate channels as a significant driver for trust towards social media shops. The current research also has a number of implications for social commerce providers in developing economies. This study shows that it is advantageous for managers to cultivate trust using interactivity and reliability to elicit a sense of security and ease of use. However, our findings also offers a caution for firms to not be lulled into a false sense of comfort by taking consumers’ trust at face value.