Synced advertising (SA) has grown in popularity due to its ability to facilitate multitasking and personalize ads to the media content users consume. Research on the effects of SA has been limited, but it has been suggested that repetition and personalization with SA will lead to a stronger, lasting impression. However, there are concerns that SA could be perceived as intrusive and lead to privacy issues. This study seeks to explore how the consumer paradox between perceived relevance and privacy concerns may affect the outcome of the advertisements.

Influencers have become a critical component of marketing strategy to increase awareness, encourage consideration, and drive purchases. A new type of influencer, computer-generated and artificial intelligence-powered avatars, has emerged amid this boom. Despite the mixed marketing results virtual influencers deliver, they are generally thought to create similar engagement as human influencers. Consumers appear capable of developing complex psychological processes when engaging with virtual influencers. Even though the positive impact of influencers is evident, there is a growing concern about how they can affect consumers' well-being. The feeling of envy is a significant well-being concern in the social media world. Assuming virtual influencers can deliver similar emotional effects as human influencers, can we feel envy towards virtual influencers?

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.

Why are CEOs not active on social media? It is increasingly critical for CEOs to not only be physically present at work but also be virtually present in the digital sphere. However, many CEOs are still reluctant to adapt social media or struggle to find the efficient approach to incorporate the tools into their communication strategy. The study explores how CEOs orient themselves in the digital world and make sense of social media. In particular, based on the view of impression management and institutional work, the research examines how CEOs translate their understanding into communication and selfpresentation strategies and activities. The results from 31 in-depth interviews with Chinese and Dutch CEOs suggest that leadership communication on social media is still going through the process of legitimisation in both institutions. Despite the growing popularity of personal branding, most CEOs do not interpret social media as the outlet for their personal and private use or independent from the organisational identities. While most CEOs champion the necessity of digital transformation for their organisations, they do not see clearly how their personal digital habits could potentially influence the process, despite their leadership roles. They typically identify social media as the functional platforms for information circulation and network connection. Multiple narratives and orientations do, however, coexist and they dictate social media decisions simultaneously depending on the context. There is also a prominent difference between the narratives of social media in the Netherlands and in China. Most Dutch CEOs wish active engagement from the organisations but practice passive roles themselves, while most Chinese CEOs are active for both personal and organisational use pressured by the intuitional norms. The research highlights the significance of cultural context regarding leadership communication even on social media. Given most platforms are designed, and arranged to have an international audience, CEOs and companies should be aware of distinctive norms and beliefs they are operated in the different societal institutions.

According to industry reports, a CEO’s strong social presence has a tremendous impact on the company’s reputation and their own image. However, despite being considered as digital influencers, most C-suite leaders fail to establish their own personal brand online. This under-development leads to the following questions: What are CEOs currently doing with their social media and why are CEOs (not) using social media? Interviewing 16 Dutch CEOs, this study explores the impact of the leadership style (transactional or transformational) and leaders' perception of narcissism in online impression management on CEOs’ social media activities. By investigating these relationships, the research further clarifies CEOs’ leadership communication strategies on social media and establishes the drivers and barriers for social media engagement to pave the ways for interested social CEOs. The results suggest that leadership styles may detect the content strategies and motivations of social media usage. The activity level, however, is determined by the perceptions of self-image and degree of a narcissistic impression on using social media. With this finding, we propose CEO social media activities can be typified into four categories: thought leader, storyteller, professional networker and selective performer. Transformational leaders tend to emphasize on being accessible and transparent to their audience. When they are positive about being narcissistic on social media, they are more likely to be a storyteller where they strive for charismatic and authentic content building. Conversely, a more reserved transformational leader would be a selective performer where they only publicize their stories in front of a selected group of audience, mostly through internal platforms. On the other hand, transactional leaders tend to focus on professionalism and efficiency in using social media. The ones who see the benefits of social media and are confident in sharing their own ideas tend to be thought leaders among their professional networks. On the contrary, the reserved transactional leaders rather using social media to connect with their professional network to obtain information than broadcasting their own voices. The study provides insights in how CEOs formulate their leadership communication online; further research should continue exploring the impact of various strategies on corporate performance and stakeholder engagement.

Fashion bloggers and their personal brands have attracted significant attention in recent years, as prior research has indicated their importance in shaping the fashion industry. As fashion is cultural-specific social construct, to understand how bloggers’ personal brands are developed, it is critical to examine the practices of bloggers from two different cultures, namely, Taiwanese and American. The two cultures are chosen because fashionable persons in the U.S. are well established and can be considered as qualified brands that accumulate a significant amount of followers and fame. However, this institutional process is still under development in Taiwan where routine practices, norms and rules, and the structural features that serve to guide and constrain the behaviours of individuals have yet been established. To focus on the practices within the institution, the framework of practice theory is applied to analyze how individual bloggers negotiate their ways to become branded persons. Focusing on the best practices in the field, 20 most popular fashion blogs from the U.S. and Taiwan were selected in the sample. The verbal and visual texts visible in these blogs are analyzed. The results suggest that moving from amateur bloggers who take interests in fashion to establishing a well-connected fashionable persona in the fashion industry is a long process of celebrities in the making. The contrasts between the two countries indicate that cultural elements are important factors to consider in understanding the formation of persona-fied brands. It appears that the usual assumption of distinction between the public persona and the private persona does not always imply in persona-fied brands. When the external institutions have yet been established, the practices of such a distinction may prove to be challenging. While all the bloggers included in the sample are still unified persons that encompass both the creation and the execution of the personal brands. U.S. bloggers are slowly moving toward professional management of the brands where they see themselves as persona-fied brands and where other persons may execute the brandable qualities on their behalf. On the other hand, Taiwanese bloggers rarely make such a distinction. In fact, most of the bloggers have yet identified the two facets in their personas. They do not see themselves as micro-celebrities that stand in a higher level of the hierarchy than their fans. They regard themselves as part of a fashionable community where others appreciate their taste. This is evident by the practices of how they organize their communities and how they interact with their fan bases.