This study examines the impact of price transparency—specifically the disclosure of cost breakdown—on brand attitudes and purchase intentions. The findings suggest that pricing transparency generally has a positive effect on attitudes and purchase intentions. However, pricing transparency might backfire, and thus reverse the effect, for luxury products originating from a high equity country (e.g., a fashion brand from Italy), but not for luxury and non-luxury products originating from a low equity country (e.g., a fashion brand from China). Luxury retailers in a high equity country should take extra caution before adopting price transparency

Understanding consumers’ prioritization of corporate social responsibility initiatives within the global marketplace is a crucial concern for marketers. Focusing on the ethical fashion industry, which supports artisans and utilizes environmentally sustainable resources within its supply chain, the study uncovers that consumers possessing a global (local) identity exhibit more favorable responses to global (local) CSR initiatives, and the matching effect is amplified when presented with high (low) construal level messages.

This research intends to examine whether these types of data – behavioral versus social networking data – affect consumer response to personalized ads. With the advancement in technology, marketers have access to various types of personal data, including their online/offline behaviors and social networking activities, and use those data to retarget consumers. Moreover, this research examines the moderating role of SNS privacy concerns on consumer response to different types of retargeted ads. The findings of this research may offer theoretical and practical implications to understand consumers' responses to retargeted ads that use social networking information.

The humor appeal is extensively used in advertising, but its impact is not clearly understood in the context of luxury brand advertising. This research therefore examines the role humor appeal in luxury advertising plays in customers’ evaluation of the brand, advertisement, and purchase behaviors toward the firm. Specifically, this study proposes that the use of a humor appeal in luxury advertising has a favorable influence on perceived luxuriousness of the brand, attitude toward the advertisement, and purchase intention through coolness perception of the luxury brand. Furthermore, this study explores the moderating roles of brand positioning appeal (top-dog vs. underdog) and desire for distinction. This study is one of the few to examine the influence of humor appeal in luxury brand advertising, providing evidence for the applicability of humor appeal in luxury advertising. The study findings will help luxury brand managers make informed decisions about when and how to use humor in advertising to achieve desirable advertising outcomes.

When consumers are faced with various discounts, they are likely to find some easier to comprehend than others and this degree of difficulty will impact purchase decisions. This study explains complexity as a dimension of psychological distance using different types of discounts. Current research examines that easy-to-process discounts appear near and difficult-to-process discounts appear far. Applying construal level theory, this research investigates that the dollar discount leads to higher likeability of the attribute-appeal message and the percent discount lead to higher likeability of the benefit-appeal message. The dollar discount is low-level construal, as is an attribute message (i.e., how approach) whereas the percentage discount is high-level construal like a benefit message (i.e., why approach).

When consumers are faced with various discounts, they are likely to find some easier to comprehend than others and this degree of difficulty will impact purchase decisions. This study explains complexity as a dimension of psychological distance using different types of discounts. Current research examines that easy-to-process discounts appear near and difficult-to-process discounts appear far. Applying construal level theory, this research investigates that the dollar discount leads to higher likeability of the attribute-appeal message and the percent discount lead to higher likeability of the benefit-appeal message. The dollar discount is low-level construal, as is an attribute message (i.e., how approach) whereas the percentage discount is high-level construal like a benefit message (i.e., why approach).

This research examined whether the (in)congruence between the geographical distance between the viewer and the destination, and the dynamic distance experienced via zoomin and zoom-out affects the recommendation likelihood of the travel destination. Specifically, when the viewer’s motivation is utilitarian (e.g., travelling for work), we expect the congruence effect (H1): a higher recommendation likelihood when the geographic distance is congruent with the dynamic distance; that is, the viewer is more likely to recommend the travel destination when the destination is geographically far away from (close to) with a zoom-out (zoom-in) view. By contrast, when the viewer’s motivation is hedonic (e.g., travelling for fun), we expect the incongruence effect (H2): a higher recommendation likelihood when the geographic distance is incongruent with the dynamic distance; that is, the viewer is more likely to recommend the travel destination when the destination is geographically far away from (close to) with a zoom-in (zoomout) view. We test these ideas in an experimental study.

This research examines the impact of closing versus opening eyes on consumers’ decision making as to whether the decision context is driven by utilitarian versus hedonic motivation. The findings from three studies show that consumers processing advertising messages with their eyes closed are likely to use high-level, abstract processing, and thus more positively evaluate the utilitarian products (vs. the hedonic products). On the contrary, consumers with their eyes open are likely to use low-level, concrete processing, and thus more positively evaluate the hedonic products (vs. the utilitarian products). Implications for consumers and marketers are discussed.

This study is intended to provide marketing practitioners with an overview of web analytics to explore the issue of how to define and measure the effectiveness of social media through analyzing the various activities of current/potential consumers as well as provide a comprehensive analysis of the effectiveness of digital content marketing using social media. These analytics answer broad questions about which types of social media metrics are best at referring traffic, about conversations at the organization’s website, and about comparing different social media channels, such as Facebook and Twitter in this study. The major goal of this study is to demonstrate the value of businesses’ efforts and to optimize their digital/social marketing strategy using web analytics. Based on this goal three research questions were identified: (1) can the model identify social media performance variables that are related to audience response which can be represented by website traffic?; (2) which social media sties are driving traffic to a firm’s website, specifically in B2B environment?; and (3) can the model provide insight into the importance of those variables? These analytics employ time series analysis to specifically address activities in SNSs that effectively drive traffic to a website and accomplish business goals. This study is one of the first empirical investigations in the marketing communication field related to measuring social media’s effectiveness.

Construal Level Theory (CLT) has been explored and researched in many different contexts. In an academic setting, the areas of CLT in time (temporal distance), physical space (spatial distance), and interpersonal/social distance are frequently revisited for the implications they may and often do have. High-level construals are associated with abstract thinking, while low-level construals are associated with more concrete thinking (Trope & Liberman, 2010). In today’s media-saturated world, it is important to understand how the branded messages the world receives affect the cognition of society as a whole. This project aims to explore what role, if any, branding and/or product placement has in the cognitive and performance abilities for various tasks. This will be tested by utilizing branded products in a task-completion challenge and measuring through both task performance and collected survey data from participants. This project will focus on the construal levels of individuals and how the use of and/or the engagement with a socially proximal branded item will affect perceived spatial distance. A study from Van Kerckhove, Geuend, & Vermeir (2014) found that construal levels impact behaviors. The results of their 2014 published study showed that individuals with a high construal (i.e. they thought more abstractly) were linked to a strong inclination to look up, whereas when individuals had lower-level construals (i.e. thinking more concretely) they were more likely to have a behavior of looking down. This ties into their paper’s title quite nicely – “the floor is nearer than the sky” – in that looking down at what is perceivable and spatially proximal is less likely to be viewed as ambiguous or abstract.

Viral video advertising as a branded entertainment has shown its potential to overcome consumer skepticism by spreading the brand message through individuals’ social connection. Although brand placement prominence and brand disclosure may be critical factors that influence forwarding intention in the viral video ad context, less research has examined these relationship. To fill these gaps, this study aims 1) to examine the psychological mechanisms through which the brand placement prominence influences consumers’ forwarding intention of viral video advertising, and 2) to investigate the potential moderating role of brand disclosure timing. This study shows that the level of brand prominence in a viral video ad is an important factor influencing viewers’ forwarding intention sequentially mediated by persuasion knowledge, critical processing and enjoyment. The moderating role of brand disclosure timing investigated in the current study suggests that when the branded viral video has a high level of brand prominence, post brand disclosure leads to a higher forwarding intention compared to the prior brand disclosure.

The authors of this research show that gender plays a role in whether public star ratings of branded content films (e.g., ratings on Rotten Tomatoes) and increased awareness of surroundings differentially affect movie viewers’ willingness to spread word-of-mouth about films. For men, no matter whether they have high or low awareness of surroundings, a higher versus lower star rating uniformly enhances the likelihood they will recommend the film to others. In contrast, for women, momentarily heightened awareness of their surroundings enhances (diminishes) the likelihood of recommending the higher (lower) star-rated film. If women have low awareness of their surroundings, however, the differences do not emerge.