In the last decade, labels have been multiplying on food products (e.g., organic labels, Nutri- Score) to foster nutritious and sustainable food purchases, as such raising the question of the effect of multi-labelling. In this article, we use the prism of information processing and specifically address the question of multi-labelling when the labels have simultaneously positive and negative valences. Such a situation could confuse consumers and therefore, harm multi-labelling ability to empower consumers. An experiment shows that 1/ adding a good Eco- Score to a good Nutri-Score enhances warm glow among the most ecology-sensitive consumers, though it does not significantly increase purchase intentions, 2/ adding a bad Eco- Score to a good Nutri-Score increases consumer confusion (i.e., a discomfort due to ambiguous stimuli that requires mental efforts to cope with) but does not decrease purchase intentions. Recommendations to food managers and public policy makers result from these results.

Considering meat consumption's massive impact on climate change, environmental NGOs are increasingly campaigning to encourage consumers to reduce unsustainable meat consumption, i.e., to eat less and/or better meat. They usually use messages based on environmental appeals to do so. Yet, the effectiveness of such appeals in international campaigns may depend on countries as cultural beliefs influence food consumption behaviors. Therefore, in this research, we explore the effectiveness of such campaigns across 5 European countries, controlling for individual cultural orientations. Considering an environmental degradation appeal, we first show that countries have no influence on the campaign’s effectiveness, unlike specific individual cultural orientations, including masculinity and uncertainty avoidance. We replicate these results in the same 5 countries considering an alternative appeal, i.e., animal welfare. Recommendations to international NGOs managers result from these results.

In this research, we investigate the influence of Chinese consumers’ generation on the perception of “Made in China” luxury. This issue is of utmost importance for the Chinese government as Chinese consumers have now become the first luxury consumers in the world while China remains a non-legitimate dwarf in luxury manufacturing. To bridge this gap, we carried a quantitative survey involving 300 Chinese luxury consumers and tested the effect of consumers’ age on Chinese luxury products perceived luxury. Potential mediators are considered in our analyses, including consumers’ ethnocentrism and innovativeness, materialism, and cultural orientations (i.e., preference for individualism and tradition). The data are currently being collected. Our results will be discussed at the 2023 Global Marketing Conference in Seoul if this research is selected for presentation. They should help position current and future “Made in China” luxury brands and target Chinese luxury consumers.

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.

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.

This research investigates the influence of age in luxury counterfeit consumption in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. More specifically, a pilot quantitative survey conducted in the United Arab Emirates demonstrates that GCC consumers’ age has a positive influence on counterfeit luxury consumption, which runs counter the general consensus observed in the counterfeiting literature. Based on 25 in-depth interviews, a follow-up qualitative study explores this unexpected result using the functional theory of attitudes. It shows that the experience of the region’s major socio-economic changes in the last 40 years may explain the shift on how consumers understand the value of things, and therefore the existence of a positive correlation between age and counterfeit consumption in the GCC countries. This article contributes to the field of luxury counterfeit research and expands theoretical understanding on consumer responses of different age groups to counterfeit consumption. Our analyses corroborate the relevance of the functional theories of attitudes in explaining both luxury and counterfeit consumptions. Social-adjustive function is dominant for young people, however, the attitudes, which serve the social-adjustive function, are less likely to drive counterfeit consumption. Further, the research refines the existing model, suggesting that the value-expressive function served by different attitudes was relevant on both age groups, but depending on the values which are expressed, it influences the counterfeit consumption. The findings are of significant interest for public policy makers, luxury brand managers fighting counterfeiting, and more generally to any managers dealing with GCC nationals.

In this paper, we study the effectiveness of social labeling as a technique to promote pro-environmental behaviors in children, and examine more specifically the potential moderating effect of children’s age. We run an experiment on a sample of 115 3rd to 6th grade children and show that 1/ children exposed to a social labeling actually declare more pro-environmental behaviors and that 2/ children at an intermediate age (between 9 years and a half and 11 years and a half) are the most responsive to the technique, underlying an inverted-U relationship between social labeling effectiveness and children's age. These results contribute to a better theoretical understanding of social labeling mechanisms and suggest implications for public policy makers.

A side effect of green advertising has emerged in the form of ‘greenwashing’, which designates “the act of misleading consumers regarding the environmental practices of a company or the environmental benefits of a product or service” (Terrachoice, 2010). Till now, research has focused on ‘claim greenwashing’, the use of textual arguments in the ad that create a misleading environmental claim and ignored the potential ‘executional greenwashing’ effect, whereby nature-evoking elements (e.g., pictures symbolizing endangered animals or renewable sources of energy, backgrounds representing natural landscapes) in the ad execution may induce false perceptions of a brand’s greenness, whether intentionally or not on the part of the advertiser. This research addresses this gap by documenting the ‘executional greenwashing’ effect and identifying moderating factors (i.e., consumers’ knowledge about environmental issues in the product category, the display of environmental performance information) that may reduce or even remove its impact on consumers. Research on green advertising has largely drawn from the ELM framework (Petty & Cacioppo, 1981) to assess the impact of green cues on consumers’ brand attitudes (Hartmann & Apaolaza-Ibáñez, 2009). However a sole focus on the content of the advertising message may not be sufficient to understand consumers’ responses to it. There may be important variables that moderate the effects on the brand’s ecological image. One important individual moderator, in the tradition of the ELM, is consumer topic knowledge, i.e. knowledge related to the topic of the message, which influences the ability to process the message and the outcome of persuasive attempts (e.g. Alba & Hutchinson, 1991). In the context of ‘executional greenwashing’, the persuasive power of advertising executional elements representing nature may therefore differ depending on consumers’ topic knowledge of environmental issues in the product category. Consumers with such topic knowledge, referred to as “expert” consumers, are less likely to rely on and be influenced by the use of advertising executional elements representing nature, whereas “non-expert” consumers may be influenced through the peripheral route to persuasion, resulting in greater perception of the brand’s ecological image. Stated formally: H1. Advertising executional elements evoking nature have a positive influence on the brand’s ecological image for non-expert consumers, but not for expert consumers. One important contextual moderator is the type of relevant information provided in the advertisement. In this paper, we examine whether the display of environmental performance information, which was in fact selected by the European Community, can correct a potential ‘executional greenwashing’ effect. The Directive 1999/94/EC requires that car manufacturers selling within European countries provide information regarding new cars’ carbon emission to direct consumers’ choices towards greener cars. A potential additional benefit of environmental performance information is that this kind of objective information may also prevent greenwashing by helping consumers form an accurate perception of a brand’s image, regardless of the executional advertising setting. A central premise of the ELM is that consumers’ response to information differs depending on their level of knowledge about the issue at hand. Expert consumers should be more able to treat the environmental information provided, therefore following a central route of persuasion (Alba & Hutchinson, 1991). Their brand evaluation should be formed based on the objective environmental performance provided, which are strong arguments, and not from the visual and sound executional elements manipulated in the ad (conversely for non-expert consumers). H2a. For non-expert consumers, advertising executional elements evoking nature enhance the brand’s ecological image, whereas the level of the environmental performance indicator (EPI) does not influence it. H2b. For expert consumers, the level of the EPI damages the brand’s ecological image, whereas advertising executional elements evoking nature do not influence it. Considering the relative efficiency of specific formats to display environmental performance information, we tested the traffic-light type of label, inspired by the energy appliance label program compulsory in Europe. The label format is crucial, especially if it can reduce the perceived costs of searching and processing this information and offer a comparison baseline. In the context of the EPI display, a traffic-light representation of the raw information about emission rates showing value ranges associated to color codes should may help expert and non-expert consumers calibrate environmental performance information, therefore counterbalancing the ‘executional greenwashing’ effect. H3. For experts and non-experts, the presence of a traffic-light label removes the effect of advertising executional elements evoking nature on the brand’s ecological image.