Two studies of luxury product placement in a movie examine whether luxury placements increase movie viewers’ purchase intentions when backgrounds are congruent with the product’s luxury image (a message factor) and when the audience’s luxury associations are activated at the moment (an audience factor). In Study 1, participants’ luxury associations are implicitly activated by priming them with perceptions that they are members of high or low social classes. In Study 2, to explicitly activate their luxury associations, some participants read a news article that describes the placed luxury product as a genuine high-end product; others read an article that describes the placed luxury product as a discount brand. Both studies demonstrate the effects of product–environment congruence and luxury associations on consumer purchase intention.

This research examines the effect of luxury brand's logo on disparity between explicit and implicit attitudes. Using implicit association test, the results show that there is no correlation between implicit attitude and explicit attitude towrd a luxury product when luxury brand's logo is present (i.e., Prada). In contrast, implicit attitude and explicit attitude are negatively correlated when luxury logo is absent (i.e., Bottega Veneta).

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.

This article investigates how failure severity and attribution influence the level of satisfaction in men and women. In an experimental study, we find women’s satisfaction declines more than men’s satisfaction as failure severity increases, but only for consumer-caused failure not for company-caused failure. We also suggest the process underlying these differences by testing the mediation effect. The mediation analysis suggests that women have lower satisfaction than men when the service failure is caused by consumers because as outcome severity increases women have a higher tendency than men to avoid self-blame out of a defensive motivation.

The authors of this article compare American and Korean reactions to the persuasiveness of environmental advertising campaigns that include pledges. Findings indicate that environmental advertising effectiveness depends on how much effort recipients put into making environmental pledges prior to viewing the advertisements. Study 1 demonstrates that when environmental pledges requesting more effort precede ad messages, Americans are more persuaded but Koreans are less persuaded. Study 2 extends the findings and rules out an alternative explanation—mere-effort effect—by showing that the results are replicated only with an issue-relevant pledge, but not with an issue-irrelevant pledge.

We compare American and Korean reactions to the persuasiveness of environmental advertising campaigns. Findings indicate that the effectiveness of the message assertiveness varies depending on recipients’ cultural backgrounds. Study 1 demonstrates that among Americans an assertive recycling message that contains imperatives such as should, must and ought is less effective than a non-assertive message that contains terms such as could, might and worth, yet among Koreans such reactance-driven boomerang effect is not observed. Study 2 extends the findings by conceptually replicating this finding in a different context—energy saving campaign—and further shows that perceived threat to freedom mediates the effects