This study explores the role of the digital communication in determining customers’ e-service agent use behavior and examines whether perceived communicator authority interacts with communication style toward strengthening or weakening future e-service agent use intention. The results of this study provide pioneering evidence on the effects of digital service communication strategies. This study contributes to digital service research by exploring the communication strategies of e-service agents. Results also provide implications for practitioners on how to achieve most out of deploying digital communications in the digital customer service platform.

The rise of the sharing economy is transforming the tourism and hospitality industry (So, Oh, and Min, 2018; Zhu, So, and Hudson, 2017). The growing popularity of Airbnb has led a number of recent studies to investigate consumer value derived from such innovative consumption model. In the context of Airbnb, research shows that perceived value motivated travelers to choose Airbnb (Mao & Lyu, 2017). However, the theoretical construct of consumer value includes multiple dimensions, such as emotional value, social value, price value, and quality value, and how each dimension contributes to consumer attitudes and behavioral intentions toward Airbnb is unexplored. Therefore, this study sets forth a national field investigation to provide a holistic understanding of consumer evaluation of various value dimensions with respect to Airbnb experiences. To empirically test the proposed model, a quantitative, national online survey was conducted using Qualtrics Online Sample. After checking the performance of the measurement model, we evaluated the results of the structural model. The results show that emotional value and quality value significantly explain overall attitude toward Airbnb, whereas, price value and social value were not significant in predicting attitude. However, price value and social value, together with overall attitude, significantly explain consumer’s purchase intention. The results show that the t values from bootstrapping were greater than 1.96, and the R2 values for endogenous variables well exceeded .26. All exogenous constructs producing effect sizes ranging from small to large. In addition, the Q2 for the endogenous latent constructs were well above the threshold, with .421 for overall attitude and .472 for behavioral intentions, thereby substantiating the structural soundness of the proposed model.

Even though luxury brands embraced social media (Godey et al., 2016; Kim & Ko, 2012), research on the use of social media for luxury brand marketing is limited. Given the increasing popularity of social media, it is imperative to examine social media-based communication strategies for luxury brands to achieve desirable consumer evaluations of brands and advertising. This research explored the role of brand anthropomorphism strategies in social media in enhancing consumers’ advertising and brand evaluations. Specifically, this research investigated (1) the effects of verbal-based brand anthropomorphism in the luxury goods brand context (Study 1), (2) the effects of verbalbased brand anthropomorphism in the luxury service brand context (Study 2), and (3) the effects of verbal-based brand anthropomorphism cues (Study 3) on consumers’ luxury brand and advertising evaluations. Studies 1 and 2 both collectively examined the role of self-focused anthropomorphized brand effects in two different contexts. Consumers easily connect themselves with an anthropomorphized advertising, compared to an objectified advertising for luxury brands. Study 3 identified the fit between luxury brand type and an anthropomorphized brand cue to explore the effectiveness of brand anthropomorphism. Depending on the type of luxury brands, consumers processed anthropomorphized brand cues differently. Consumers favorably perceived the fit between luxury good brands and partner cues; on the other hand, consumers favorably perceived the fit between luxury service brands and servant cues. Results of this research contribute to the social media advertising and luxury brand marketing literature by clarifying the role of brand anthropomorphism in consumer-brand relationships as well as in brand-advertising relationships. Results also provide industry suggestions for delivering personified brand messages to have desirable consumer brand and advertising evaluations.

Research efforts to explain the buyer-seller transaction have evolved from economic utilitarian approaches to ones incorporating social and psychological approaches. Earlier research, for example, relied on transaction cost analysis to help and explain the firm’s engagement in business relationships with a focus on minimizing the direct and opportunity costs of exchange (Lambe, Wittmann, & Speckman, 2001; Rindfleisch & Heide, 1997). Transaction cost analysis, however, is limited in explaining many relationship-based exchanges, of longer terms in particular, that have become more recent business goals and strategies across industries. Such limitations motivated researchers to adopt social and psychological perspectives that could enrich explanations of the exchange relationship. Social exchange theory (hereafter, SET) is one such approach that has resulted in widespread applications in more recent marketing research (Lambe et al., 2001). In addition to economic outcomes of an exchange, SET allows marketers to model non-economic, social and psychological outcomes in understanding and predicting whether the exchange relationship will continue or not.