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.

This study examines how brand-influencer, influencer-users, and user-brand congruences affect perceived fantasy about the influencer and closeness toward the brand when an Instagram ad is endorsed by celebrity (vs. non-celebrity) influencers. The study employed a between-subject online experiment by manipulating an advertisement endorsed by a celebrity and a non-celebrity influencer. The results suggest that congruence between brand-influencer matters in building effective relationships.

Sustainability issue has received growing attention from various stakeholders. To engage more people to participate in sustainable actions, the United Nations has promoted #actnow campaign since 2019. Among various sustainability initiatives and approaches, the UN’s #actnow campaign focuses on food and fashion sustainability since these two industries encompass various sustainability issues from production and post-consumption. By analyzing Twitter's big data, the study findings demonstrate that negative sentiment messages are powerful in driving the public’s engagement in social media message dissemination. The findings suggest that practitioners may use assertive and strong voice messages to lead consumers’ participation in sustainable message dissemination.

This study aims to assess the effectiveness of backstage storytelling in luxury brands’ social media communication and examine a psychological mechanism that elucidates how luxury brands’ backstage storytelling influences consumers’ attitudinal and relational outcomes. The theory of narrative transportation (Escalas, 2004) was employed as a theoretical lens. Focusing on the effects of visual storytelling in a social media platform, this study proposed that photos of a luxury brand’s backstage images offer a greater level of narrativity than staged images of products and models. Additionally, this study proposed VIP emotions and perceived intimacy as mediators between transportation to photo narrative and attitudes toward the brand, brand evaluation and self-brand connection. In addition, the effectiveness of social media for luxury brands’ visual storytelling was tested by testing the role of telepresence in viewers’ information processing. This study selects Instagram, a visual-oriented social media platform, as the study context; Chanel, a luxury fashion brand, was selected to develop the study stimuli. Two Instagram accounts for Chanel were created as study stimuli through a pre-test: one account with frontstage brand photos and one account with backstage brand photos. Students from two universities in the Southeast and Midwest were recruited and randomly assigned to one of the two experimental conditions, frontstage (n=118) or backstage (n=134) Chanel Instagram account. Manipulation checks confirmed that respondents perceived the experimental conditions as intended. Our results revealed that viewers in the backstage condition experienced higher levels of transportation than those in the frontstage condition; VIP emotions and perceived intimacy mediate the relationship between transportation and attitudes towards a brand’s Instagram, brand evaluations, and self-brand connection. Additionally, ANCOVA results confirmed the interaction effects of telepresence on transportation is significant only in the backstage condition. Findings from this study shed light on the effectiveness of luxury fashion brands’ visual storytelling in social media communication.