This study empirically verified the endorsement effect of a restaurant platform as a reliable third-party organization on changes in customers’ attitudes toward restaurants by measuring big data-based consumption values using customers’ reviews and applying difference-in-differences. The results indicated that endorsement effects are effective when specific cues are provided and under unusual circumstances such as the pandemic.

With the increasing popularity and attention towards virtual stores, the present study examines how consumers' perception of spatial and human crowdedness affects consumers' behavioral and attitudinal intention to shop at the virtual store through positive emotional arousals. Using two between-subject experiments (crowdedness: low spatial x high; low human x high), 171 participants were randomly assigned to each condition. The results demonstrated highly crowded virtual space with more merchandise creates a consumer’s positive emotional arousal, which leads to a positive attitude and satisfaction. Further, consumers perceive positive social crowdedness (i.e., when other shoppers are present) develops excitement among consumers who may entice positive attitude and satisfaction. Findings suggest that retailers should develop stimulating virtual stores.

We investigate the incremental predictive power of three consumer dispositions – xenocentrism, cosmopolitanism and ethnocentrism – on domestic and foreign product purchase intentions, after taking the impact of consumer demographics and product category-specific variables into account. Using data from an online survey of 201 Turkish consumers, hierarchical regression analysis reveals that widely used demographic variables (namely, age, gender and education) do not significantly influence consumer intentions to buy either domestic or foreign clothing products. Of the consumer dispositions, xenocentrism exerts a significant negative effect on domestic product purchase intentions, cosmopolitanism has a positive effect on foreign product purchase intentions, while ethnocentrism shows no effect on either domestic or foreign product purchase intentions. Implications of the findings are considered and future research directions identified.

For the many companies that operate internationally, the challenge of translating brand typography into different writing systems is a crucial and complex one. To address this issue, specialized type designers developed "bilingual typography": localized brand typography meant to preserve the original visual identity. They assume that by mimicking the appearance of the original typography, the newly created non-Latin typography will maintain brand consistency. However, no research investigated whether such approach is efficient.

Consumer studies on millennials have focused on shopper behavioural differences with their old baby boomer generation. A significant distinction between these two groups have been their relationship and interaction with technology across all facets of life, including shopping. Millennials are generally regarded as early adopters of digital technology and its use in daily activities, hence their reference to digital natives. Compared to the baby boomers, who are late adopters and are called digital immigrants. Africa's millennials constitute at least 30% of Africa's population, making them a key attraction for marketers, yet their interests are often treated as a homogenous segment similar to global millennials from advanced economies.

Firms are increasingly using social media influencers to promote their products. We develop a two-period model to investigate a firm’s strategy for introducing a product via an influencer, where there is uncertainty in the influencer-product match. In the second period, the influencer exerts an effort to promote the product to her followers, who can spread the product information to non-followers via word-of-mouth (WOM). In the second period, the firm sells to the non-followers. We show that the firm’s pricing, production, and commission contract decisions depend on the influencer’s incentive-independent excess payoff from the promotion and on the difference between the WOM effect of followers who do or do not make a purchase rather than the WOM effect of each group. As the influencer’s incentive-independent payoff increase, the firm will increase (decrease) commissison rate and commission rate when the followers’ sensitivity to product price is relatively low (high) compared with that to the influencer’s effort. As the marginal WOM benefit of the first-period sales increases, the firm tends to reduce his unit net profit from sales. The influencer with a medium-sized follower base receives the highest commission rate and exerts the largest promotion effort. While the followers of influencers with a medium-sized follower base may pay the highest price. We also show that (i) there exists a threshold for the probability of match, above which the firm faces zero demand in the first period if an influencer-product mismatch occurs; and (ii) the firm may charge followers a lower price than non-followers, even though followers are less sensitive to price than non-followers. Finally, regarding influencer selection, we find that the firm may not be better off employing an influencer with a larger follower base.

We are living in a world that is increasingly digital and undergoing dramatic changes as a result. In particular for luxury fashion, growing numbers of online customers as well as fast changing business environment, luxury retailers face the challenge of differentiating themselves by offering a better online customer experience (Chen et al. 2021). By doing so, luxury fashion retailers are increasingly deploying chatbots in their service encounters to enhance customer experience (Roy & Naidoo, 2021). Chatbots are powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) (Hoyer et al. 2020) and are an example of AI robot that can provide human-computer interactions on a retail website (Lee et al. 2017). Intended to enhance the online customer experience, chatbots have the potential to provide a better understanding of the product performance, enable efficient use of customer time, and help build crucial customer relationships (Rese et al. 2020; Wilson-Nash et al. 2020; Xu et al. 2022). Therefore, chatbots’ potential has been highly valued by fashion retail industry and academia (Jiang et al. 2022).

Previous studies offered inconsistent empirical results for the influence of customer participation on service satisfaction. One possible explanation for this inconsistency is that existing conceptualizations of customer participation do not clearly differentiate the distinct roles of customer participation in service. To address this gap, Dong and Sivakumar (2015) have proposed an updated classification for customer participation based on “output specificity,” which refers to the degree to that the nature of the output is influenced by the person who provides the resource. The output of the customer participation can either be “specific” or “generic”. The “specific output” is defined as the expected service outcome can be idiosyncratic depending on whether the service is provided by the customer or the employee. In contrast, “generic output” refers to expected service outcome is well defined regardless of whether it is delivered by the service provider or the customer. How output specificity of customer participation influences service satisfaction still lacks of empirical examination.

The Corona crisis has led to serious changes in teaching in MBA programs in recent years. Within a very short time, teaching at business schools was changed from face-to-face to online. While younger undergraduate students have sometimes had problems with this form of teaching, it has been very well received by typical MBA-students, , which are older, some of whom are working and often have families. This paper shows how the MBA market in Germany is developing and how Darmstadt Business School is positioning itself for the future in this challenging market environment.

Frontline employees (hereinafter FLEs) act as boundary spanners, primary representatives, and intermediaries between consumers and service organizations. They are often directly responsible for service delivery and are the customers’ first impression of service organizations. Therefore, maximizing FLE performance is vital for service organizations. Leaders have been argued to play a critical role in fostering FLE performance for a variety of reasons, one of which is to achieve goal-related results. To achieve those results, they often feel a pressing need to discipline their subordinates’ actions. Consequently, leaders may take corrective measures that display controlling behaviors to press subordinates’ best performance. This type of leadership style is known as Authoritarian Leadership (hereinafter AL), which refers to leaders with paternal attributes who utilize absolute authority and control over their subordinates with the expectation of unquestionable obedience. The literature, however, has reported mixed findings of the performance benefits of AL.

The backbone of any customer experience management is the ability to understand customers’ needs, wants and lifestyles (Schmidt, 2003). In a post Covid era where consumer behaviours have changed forever, luxury brands need to step up to woe consumers back to their brick-and-mortar stores. For example, the Dior historical and global store at the Avenue Montaigne reopened after two years of renovations to offer a unique customer experience. This iconic store now offers not only the full range of products one can buy, but also an art gallery, a café, a 3-Michelin stars restaurant and an exclusive suite at the price of 25,000 Euros per night. The centrepiece of this new store is the huge glass staircase overlooked by a wall of mannequins dressed in various Dior dresses. It is meant to be “instagramable” for those who need to show off their visit to their virtual followers. The key question one may ask is whether all these innovations and investments in building an exceptional flagship store provide a better customer experience?

Insurance and unit trust (also known as mutual funds) are high-involvement financial products that require investors to hold for long term to gain desired returns. These financial products are also considered unsought products, which require salespeople’s personal touch with their potential customers to make sales. Therefore, the relationship between salespeople and their potential or existing customers becomes crucial in the sales of insurance and unit trust. In theoretical terms, this relationship represents business ties. A strong business ties between the salespeople and the customers enable them to exchange resources and knowledge, and co-create values in their business relationships. Such exchange and co-creation of values are desirable in a business network. Weak ties are irregular and infrequent exchanges, creating structural holes that bring about an opportunity for bridging but have not yet been capitalized.

China is leading the global fashion market value in 2023 with consumers experiencing an integration of traditional consumption and production approaches to innovative ones triggered by the internet of things (IoT). This high speed ‘inspire and sell’ consumer conversion approach (ibid) is both enabling fashion consumption and introducing alternative approaches to end of life items. This finds Chinese consumers on the top of the global fashion consumption ranks raising even more the importance of sustainable practices. On an industry level, the shortened fashion cycles, the changes in item longevity, the low prices and the fast-moving consumer trends have attributed to an increasing waste generation as consumers discard clothes more frequently. Increasingly, studies alert to the availability of alternative end of life fashion practices, such as, swapping, renting selling etc offering more choices in terms of reducing fashion waste. Yet research related to these efforts seem to have a national or regional perspective and approach and most of the studies are located and focused on western societies.

Consumer brand engagement (CBE) signals propensity for brand purchase. A scale proposes three dimensions of CBE (i.e., cognitive, affective and activation dimensions) but the dimensions prominent and driving brand purchase intentions in an Instagram cosmetic purchase context need examination. In this context, this study tests Hollebeek, Glynn and Brodie’s (2014) 10-items/3 dimensions scale and examines an outcome of cosmetics brand purchase intention on Instagram. Data was quantitatively collected from 203 consumers who were students and non-students using convenience and snowballing non- probability sampling method. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling were used to analyse the data. The results revealed that although the three CBE dimensions were identified in a Cosmetic Instagram purchase context, it was the affective and activation dimensions that positively predicted consumers’ intentions to purchase cosmetic brands after engaging with the brand on Instagram. Theoretical and practical implications are provided.

Anthropomorphism is a prevalent marketing practice that fosters consumer perceptions of a brand as humanlike. In today’s hyperconnected marketplace, firms are increasingly imbuing their brands with human features with the hope that the favorable perceptions of humanlike attributes in nonhuman objects could lead to consumers’ positive evaluation of humanized products. For example, Amazon has imbued Echo, a voice-activated Bluetooth speaker, with the human name Alexa, a female voiced virtual assistant that employs familiar human speech pattern, and some advanced personality traits. Similarly, Hormel Foods has used Mr. Peanut, the advertising logo and mascot of Planters that embodies the brands’ selling points. Mr. Peanut is depicted as a humanized peanut with arms, legs, top hat, and monocle and became a vessel of brand meaning and personality, taking on the product quality that the brand aims to communicate. Prior studies that use brand anthropomorphism as a foundation have investigated the impact of brand anthropomorphism on various outcomes such as product evaluations, emotional responses, and intentions to replace a product. However, what is missing from prior work is an understanding of the impact of brand anthropomorphism on the purchase intentions for clearance products which are sold under a retailer’s promotional strategy as an inventory management tool. The lure of cheapened goods may expand the range of consumers who can afford to buy merchandise from the company or may provide existing customers with an appealing purchasing option. In light of this, clearance sales are known to be effective not only for increasing store traffic by alluring price-conscious consumers but also for reducing excess inventory in a retail location or a chain of product fulfillment. The strategic importance of clearance sales has increased since the breakdown of COVID-19 which forced retailers to close their stores and caused demand for many product categories to plunge in early 2020. After the initial shock of the pandemic, consumer spending recovered fairly quickly, giving rise to record levels later in the same year. This surprising recovery continued into the next year as consumer sentiment and spending levels surged together, resulting in consumer demand that surpassed retailers’ stock levels. However, due to inflation and amounting fears of recession, consumer spending started to slow down again in 2022, resulting in the opposite of what happened in the previous year. Such a reversal caused many retailers to face high inventory levels and declining profitability, forcing them to cut prices to move excess inventory out of stores, which increases the importance of conducting clearance sales effectively. Clearance sales are prevalent in retail markets, where considerable discounts are typically offered for leftover items (Zhang & Cooper, 2008). Retailers widely use clearance sales to liquidate their unsold products at the end of a selling season (Nocke & Peitz, 2007). They have strong incentives to get rid of the remaining items in order to make room for the new products (Sällström, 2001). Previous research suggests that anthropomorphism leads consumers to apply human schema to a product, which in turn affects their attitude toward the product (Aggarwal & McGill, 2007, 2012). In this research, we aim to identify the negative effect of anthropomorphism on consumers’ attitude toward clearance products.

This paper examines the intersection between alternative social movements and corporate actors, focusing on the shared practices and potential overlap between these spheres. By analyzing the case of the Burning Man community and its globally recognized brand, this study explores three key research questions: the elements of a brand and its application in the context of counter-cultural social movements, the role of radical social movement members in brand co-creation, and how brand management can support co-creation within counter-culture social movements. Grounded in social movement literature and theories of brand management, this conceptual paper draws from the Burning Man Journal publications to investigate the relationship between branding and the Burning Man community. Burning Man, a participatory culture and annual event held in Black Rock City, Nevada, represents a unique case of a counter-cultural social movement. The paper challenges the notion that a brand is solely represented by a logo, highlighting the duality of brand identity and brand image. Burning Man's perspective on branding aligns with the concept of co-created brands, emphasizing the dynamic and iterative nature of brand identity.

In determining artwork prices, the identification of characteristics of the artist is crucial. While the impact of demographic profiles of artists has been examined in the literature on art pricing, the relationships among artists have been highly disregarded. In the current research, the authors focus on the measures of network centrality derived from group exhibitions in order to investigate their influence on artwork prices. The analysis results suggest that degree centrality and closeness centrality positively affect artwork prices, whereas betweenness centrality has an adverse effect. Moreover, network centrality values play a more important role in explaining artwork prices than historical reputation indexes such as gender, nationality, time elapsed after death, and main residencies of the artists. This study contributes to branding literature, while also providing art marketers with valuable insight into artist branding.

The economic harm and survival fear caused by environmental conflicts are most likely to become the psychological lever to drive individuals to adopt environmentally friendly behaviours. From the perspective of environmental conflict, this paper will explore the transmission mechanism of environmental conflict on individuals’ pro-environmental behaviour through three experiments.

Given the conundrum of moral washing in CSR communication, this research examines the effectiveness of narrative richness using storytelling in marketing. In the process, the moderating role of moral imagination is further explored. An online experiment with a 2 (Narrative Richness: High vs. Low) x 2 (Moral Imagination: High vs. Low) between-subjects factorial design was conducted with two well-known companies (Shell vs. Facebook) suffered from a reputation crisis as the target brands. The results (N = 287) showed that the effects of narrative richness on consumer responses, including positive emotion, negative emotion, and behavioral intention, were significant for Facebook whereas its effect on positive emotion was significant for Shell. Most importantly, the two-way interaction between narrative richness and moral imagination on attitude toward the brand was significant for Shell, indicating that the effect of narrative richness on attitude toward the brand was augmented by moral imagination. In other words, consumers with high moral imagination view narrative-rich messages with virtuous thoughts to figure out the conundrum of CSR communication for the company, and vice versa. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

Green product experience has become an important marketing strategy for corporations to tap potential green consumers. Based on the theory of planned behavior, this article explores the influence of attitude, subjective norm, and perceived behavioral control on consumers’ green purchasing intentions from the perspective of green product experience with consumers in China, Japan, and Korea as the research objects. Our findings suggest that green product experience of consumers in the three countries can directly affect consumers' green purchasing intentions. Green product experience has an indirect influence on consumers’ green purchasing intention through the mediating effect of attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control. The multiple group comparison shows the external validity of TPB through an examination of green purchasing behavior in different cultural settings, which will help enterprises implement effective experience marketing strategies.