Personalised nutrition can contribute significantly to the prevention of non-communicable dietary related diseases by providing dietary suggestions based on individual’s nutritional needs. Adoption of the concept of personalised nutrition by individuals is crucial for the success of personalised nutrition services. However, consumers’ adoption intention of personalised nutrition services is not only the result of cognitive deliberations of benefits and risks, but several studies in other contexts show that affective and contextual factors also play an important role in explaining consumers’ adoption intention. This study therefore examines whether affective factors (i.e., measured by means of ambivalent feelings) and contextual factors (i.e., eating context) increase the understanding of consumers' intentions to use personalized nutrition services. An online survey study was conducted among a total of 996 participants in the Netherlands. The results of a number of estimated fully latent structural regression models show that the intention to use personalized nutrition is not only positively driven by a weighing of benefits and risks (i.e., privacy calculus), which is also established in previous studies, but also negatively by ambivalent feelings. In turn, the results show that ambivalence towards personalized nutrition is predicted by privacy risk and the extent to which someone perceives the eating context as a barrier for personalized nutrition. Taken together, the current study implies that to stimulate the adoption of personalized nutrition services not only benefits and risks of personalized nutrition should be addressed, but also consumers’ ambivalent feelings regarding the concept and contextual factors that may prohibit adoption.

Introduction A private label (PL) is defined as a brand owned, sold and distinguished by retailers (Lincoln & Thomassen, 2009). Therefore, most PLs display only their brand name on their product labels or packages. However, in the Japanese consumer goods market, an increasing number of manufacturers’ names are now being displayed on PL product packages. For example, the “Seven Premium” PL, by Seven & I Holdings, displays the manufacturer’s name on its product labels using the phrase “This product is a joint development product with manufacturer X.” This indicates that retailers are utilizing the brand of the national brand (NB). This type of branding strategy can be classified as co-branding or a brand alliance. In Japan, expansion of PL co-branding may have improved consumers’ attitudes toward PLs and contributed to their development. Theoretical Background Most prior research on co-branding has focused on brand alliances between two NBs. Therefore, studies on alliances between PLs and NBs are very limited. Vaidyanathan and Aggarwal (2000) focused on ingredient branding, which merged elements of PLs with NB ingredients. Based on the combination theory (Park, Jun, & Shocker 1996), attitude accessibility theory (Fazio, 1986), and attribution theory (Heider, 1958; Kelly, 1973), they found that the association of brand name ingredients with private brand products could positively impact consumers’ evaluations of unfamiliar products. Also, the use of a brand name ingredient in a PL did not negatively affect consumers’ evaluations of this product. Arnett, Laverie, and Wilcox (2010) focused on brand alliances of retailers and manufacturers in the clothing category. Based on the attitude accessibility theory and the information integration theory (Anderson, 1971; Smith, 1993), they found that consumers’ attitudes toward alliances can influence retailer equity, manufacturer brand equity, and shopping intentions. They also found that pre-alliance retailer equity significantly affects attitudes toward alliances. Except for post-alliance retailer equity, perceived fit moderates all relationships between consumers’ attitudes toward the outcome of an alliance. Prior research on co-branding indicates that the attitudes and attributes of co-brands are influenced by the attitudes and attributes of constituent brands. In addition, a constituent brand’s familiarity moderates the effect (Park et al., 1996; Simonin & Ruth, 1998). As another notable finding, attitudes about co-brands influence constituent brand attitudes, with the effect being moderated by brand familiarity (Simonin & Ruth, 1998). Based on prior findings, this study examines whether co-branded PLs are influenced by their constituent NBs and by the familiarity of constituent brands in the case of Japanese co-branded PLs. This study also examines whether a spillover effect exists for constituent brands. Methodology An Internet survey of 798 women living in the Greater Tokyo area was conducted in August 2017. Subjects were assigned to one of four groups, grouped by PL and NB brand familiarity (Figure 1). The familiar “salad dressing” category was selected. While this category includes several large and popular manufacturers, many small, unknown manufacturers also exist within it, a fact that is relevant to the purpose of this study. High-familiarity PLs and NBs were selected based on their market shares in the category. However, Seven Premium, the most popular PL in Japan, was not selected as it had already adopted a co-branding strategy. Aeon’s Topvalu was chosen as a high-familiarity PL. While Topvalu is one of the most popular PLs in Japan, it has not yet taken a co-branding strategy. All measures were assessed through a seven-point, semantic, differential scale. Attitudes toward constituent brands (PLs and NBs), co-brands, perceived quality of constituent brands, and brand familiarity of constituent brands were measured. Using covariance structure analysis, we examined factors influencing attitudes about co-branding and the spillover to constituent brands after considering co-branded formations. Regarding familiarity, a multi-group analysis was conducted. Results Attitudes toward constituent brands (PLs and NBs) positively influenced attitude toward co-branded PLs. In addition, the influence on the co-branded PLs was greater for PLs (Table 1). From the multi-group analysis, the influence of familiarity on the attitude toward co-branded PLs can be found in some cases (Table 2). In the case of high-familiarity PLs with high-familiarity NBs (Group 1), the attitudes about co-branding by NBs were not significant. On the other hand, a positive co-branding attitude by NB was found in other cases. In cases of low-familiarity PLs with low-familiarity NBs (Group 4), the co-brand’s influence was greater for NBs. Moreover, since the attitude toward co-branding positively influenced differences of attitude between post-alliance and pre-alliance toward PLs and NBs, the spillover effect is confirmed (Table 3). Discussion Our results, which suggest that co-branding with NBs can be an effective strategy if PLs have low familiarity, are consistent with prior research. PLs in Japan, which have a lower penetration ratio than those in Europe and the United States, are still in a developmental stage (Kumar & Steenkamp, 2007). Since PLs in Japan are less familiar than leading NBs, co-branding with an NB can be an effective strategy for a PL. On the other hand, when a PL is already established as a brand and has high familiarity, co-branding with a NB might have little effect. In this case, it might be necessary to devise a different strategy, such as changing a PL’s brand name. Seven Premium, the most popular PL in Japan, was introduced in 2007. From the beginning, when its brand had low familiarity, it opted for a co-branding strategy, and our findings suggest that this decision significantly improved overall attitudes toward PLs.

In the era of digital retailing, consumer-empowering technologies greatly facilitate the dissemination of complaint messages. Consumer audiences, who view consumer complaints and the subsequent responses made by retailers, consider these messages as critical information sources for decision-making (Weitzl & Hutzinger, 2017). We argue that retailers can use two types of response strategies (warmth- vs. competence-related response) to regulate the information distributed online, and that these strategies may influence consumer audiences’ perceptions and subsequent attitudes and behaviors differently based on their different levels of power (Rucker, Galinsky, & Dubois, 2012). Two experimental studies using a 2 (retailer response: warmth vs. competence) X 2 (audience power: low vs. high) between-subjects design were conducted. Study 1 (N = 240) revealed an interactive effect of power and retailer response on perceived diagnosticity and perceived fairness; and Study 2 (N = 233) showed that the significant moderated mediation for audiences’ perceptions on the relationship between retailer response X audience power and outcome variables. Theoretically, this study enriches the consumer complaint management literature from the perspective of consumer audience. It also sheds light on the power theory by validating its notion in the context of service failure and recovery. Practically, results demonstrate how retailers can effectively respond to negative consumer reviews to maintain customer relationship management with consumer audiences in digital age.

Marketing becomes more and more data driven and hence enables machine learning to empower instruments to foster the interaction between firms and consumers to a new level of customization. Replacement and redirection of workforce through machine learning powered devices is not anymore a mere myth (Huang and Rust 2018). Adaption of machine learning has remained low in the recent years even though disposability was given. Nevertheless the acceptance and the implementation of machine learning based marketing efforts experience currently an exponential increase (Syam and Sharma 2018). In this article, the authors aim to develop a stronger understanding of machine learning in the context of marketing as well as to provide an overview about already established usage and implementation of machine learning in the interactions between firms and customers. To achieve this objective, the authors discuss and study machine learning in marketing from both the management and the consumer perspective. This is supported by survey data retrieved from managers out of varies industries as well as consumers, which reveal great variety in usage of machine learning not only among different marketing activities but also among industries. The authors examine the roots of machine learning in marketing and evaluate inferential state-of-the-art instruments. Predictions of what can and will evolve in the marketing context with the help of machine learning in the near future are also connected with concerns and safety issues related to the increasingly transparent consumer-firm-relationship. To conclude, the article the authors present a summary of state-of-the-art mechanisms in machine learning in marketing and propose a research agenda for upcoming research.

When choosing, people often anticipate how they might feel about future outcomes, and use those feelings as guides to choices. Although the impact of emotions on decision-making is well-documented, both theoretically and empirically, relatively limited efforts have been made to quantitatively incorporate such anticipated emotions, specifically regret, into the discrete choice model, which is a workhorse for investigating various consumer choices in marketing. Regret theory suggests that the most relevant emotion in the context of decision-making is regret, which is the emotion that we experience when realizing or imagining that our current situation would have been better, if only we had decided differently. Consumers are known to be regret-averse and motivated to avoid regret. What is unique about regret is that it is directly linked to the choice or decision at hand, while other emotions relevant to decision-making may occur in the absence of a decision because these emotions are related to aspects of outcomes or uncertainty. In transportation science, a new econometric, multinomial, multi-attribute reference-dependent discrete choice model of random regret minimization (RRM) based on regret theory has recently been proposed. In this paradigm, individuals are assumed to make decisions so as to minimize the anticipated regret, which is experienced when a foregone alternative performs better than the chosen alternative at attribute-levels. However, there have been limited efforts to utilize the RRM to investigate consumers’ choices although marketing has long been interested in understanding consumers’ choices. Furthermore, despite the growing interest in the RRM in other disciplines, relatively little is known about the potential drivers for the decision rules of utility-maximization and regret-minimization. In this research, we attempt to shed light on a potential consumer-specific driver for decision rules between random utility maximization and random regret minimization in discrete choice modeling to gain a better understanding of consumers’ decision process, while introducing the RRM in the marketing domain. Specifically, we investigate what types of consumers are more likely to be regret-minimizers or utility-maximizers based on regulatory focus theory. We posit that chronically prevention-focused consumers are more likely to be regret-minimizers while chronically promotion-focused consumers are more likely to be utility-maximizers. We employ a latent class modeling framework to incorporate structural heterogeneity of decision rules to test the hypotheses using a discrete choice experiment on US residents. Notably, while the hypotheses are supported, a portion of prevention-focused consumers are in fact more likely to be utility-maximizers rather than regret-minimizers, indicating that the consumers’ regulatory focus is not entirely mapped with the decision rules on a one-to-one basis. The empirical finding further suggests that consumer-specific variables other than consumers’ chronic regulatory focus may be useful for identifying a regret-minimizing segment.

The purpose of this study was to identify the relationship between perceived value, ethnic identity and purchase intention of ethnic apparel. This study examines how Hanfu (traditional costume of the Han Ethnic Group of China) customers perceive certain types of values (emotional value, social value, uniqueness value, conditional value and perceived value). Then this study determined how customers’ perceptions of these values and ethnic identity were correlated with perceived value, and intention to buy Hanfu. Findings from this study indicated that perceived value and ethnic identity were generally associated with purchase intention of ethnic apparel. Hence, ethnic identity moderated the relationship between perceived value and purchase intention. Finally, compared to emotional value, social value, and uniqueness value, conditional value showed the most influential impact on the perceived value. The findings provide an insight in recognizing factors which play an important role in wearing ethnic apparel. More specifically this research provides insight for traditional apparel marketers to design apparel products and reposition the existing products.

Since the liberalization of gaming industry in 2002, Macau has become the leading destination for gaming, leisure and entertainment in Asia. Recently, few large-scaled integrated resorts (IRs) have been established and opened to public, bringing more diversified destinations for visitors in Macau. These include casino, hotel, food and beverage, retail, entertainment, etc. With this, there is no doubt that IR operators have to understand how consumers behave and respond to value added products in the IRs. Differentiating one IR from another raises the significance of innovating resort products to retain existing consumers and attract new ones. This research has investigated the impact of potential non-gaming value added products at Venetian Macao Resort on consumers’ patronage and has identified what key subitems can be added to stimulate consumers’ feedback and make them revisit the resort, recommend it to others or be interested in visiting it someday. Questionnaire was designed according to the structural equation modeling (SEM). Results proved the importance of potential value added products at Venetian Macao Resort in influencing consumers’ intention. Based on the findings, suggestions were offered to the management group of Venetian Macao Resort for its future implementation of value added products. Moreover, the results will encourage other IRs in Macau to improve further towards the goal of shaping Macau in becoming a world class tourist destination. First time visitors are more likely to consume in the areas of hotel, retail and casino, while multi-time visitors would prefer to spend on hotel, retail and F&B. To some extent, implies that casino does not seem to be the key activity to make the previous guests return. In addition, spending in hotel, retail and F&B are ranked high on visitors’ preferences, indicating that visitors at Venetian Macao Resort are willing to have diversified consumptions in the non-gaming areas. Moreover, the ways of value adding in terms of promotional pricing, new technology application, upgrading of products, customization and rewarding system can be used frequently as references for the future product improvement at the resort.

Existing literature provides strong evidence to suggest that e-commerce adoption is subject to the effect of culture. In this stream, researchers adopting Hofstede’s framework (1980) conceptualise culture at the aggregate level, and thus they assume country’s cultural homogeneity. Yet, the argument emerges that this view does not seem to be appropriate anymore, as every country having its unique mix of ethnic groups portrays cultural diversity (Cleveland and Laroche, 2007). Research exploring the adoption of e-commerce by ethnic minority consumers however, is scarce (Lacka and Yip, 2018). Considering growing migration levels, and particularly intra-European migration as well as the increase of ethnic consumers internet use (Kizgin et al, 2018), the investigation of migrants’ attitudes and behavioural intentions toward adopting e-commerce, as well as factors affecting adoption decision are important research topics for researchers, practitioners and policy makers. Although technology adoption has been extensively researched, previous studies on e-commerce adoption suffer from two limitations, which this study aims to address. First, most research on e-commerce adoption considers consumers to be a homogeneous group. However, within group differences exist, and they have an impact on the e-commerce adoption decision. So far however, only a handful of studies have explored the role of consumers’ individual characteristics on behavioural intentions to adopt e-commerce (e.g. Hasan 2010). Second, although the effect of culture on e-commerce adoption has been extensively studied, the simultaneous impact of various cultural influences that migrants are subject to has not been examined. To address these research gaps, the aim of this research is to assess the role of individual characteristics in e-commence adoption, and to reveal the impact of contact with heritage and host cultures on ethnic minority consumers’ attitudes towards behavioural intentions to adopt e-commerce.

We investigate the construct of privacy concern and its dimensions, together with its expected counterbalance, trust in the information collector, on willingness to disclose different information types to a digital seller in a multicountry study. This issue is critical, given the evolution of technologies that now allow for the collection and analysis of a huge amount of data. We conceptualise consumers’ privacy concerns as the extent to which a consumer is concerned about (Milberg, et al., 2000; Rose, 2006): (1) the general collection of personal information (data collection), (2) unauthorised secondary use (data secondary usage), (3) improper access (data access) and (4) errors (data accuracy). The first contribution of our research is that we will verify the validity of the four dimensions of information privacy concern in a multiple-country study. We then develop a model by testing the impacts of privacy concern and trust on the willingness to disclose sensitive and non-sensitive information. First, our results validate the privacy concern scale based on the four dimensions (data collection, data secondary usage, data access and data accuracy) in eight countries and show that information disclosure can contain an inner trap based on customer training to disclose information that may transform information disclosure in an habit that increases willingness to share that may overcome the effects of privacy concern and trust on customers’ intended behaviours, opening possibilities of potential harmful behaviours on the part of companies to get data from their prospects that should be carefully monitored and managed.

Although the majority of prior literature has suggested the key reasons for consumer complaining in service failures are to vent negative emotions (e.g. anger, dissatisfaction) and to seek redress (Blodgett, Hill, & Tax 1997; Nyer 1997), some research has also pointed out that customers will give constructive suggestions to firms through complaining (Groth, 2005; Liu & Mattila, 2015). In this regard, consumer complaining can be classified into two types, namely, positive complaint (i.e., with constructive suggestion) and negative complaint (i.e., without constructive suggestion). Understanding what situations would dissatisfied consumers choose to give constructive suggestions in service failures would be of utmost important to firms. We suggest that a firm’s brand image may affect consumers’ intention to choose what types of complaint in service failures. In general, consumers may perceive a brand as having a competence image (e.g., professional and efficient) or having a warmth image (e.g., friendly and approachable) (Kervyn, Fiske and Malone, 2012). Comparatively speaking, a warmth image is associated with friendship and caring, whereas a competence image is associated with expertise. Therefore, it is possible that consumers would have a higher empathy and intention to help a firm with a warmth (vs. competent) image, and be more likely to choose positive complaint when a failure happens to this firm. An experimental study confirmed this prediction. In addition, we found that although a firm’s competence (vs. warmth) image does not affect the likelihood to give constructive suggestions in service failures, it leads to a higher level of return intention. Implications and future research directions will be discussed.

People prefer a certain gain over an uncertain one (e.g., Kahneman and Tversky 1979; Gneezy, List, and Wu 2006), and uncertainty threatens the perception of personal control (e.g., Simonsohn 2009; Sonsino 2008; Gaucher, Hafer, Kay, & Davidenko, 2010). Nevertheless, research has also showed that under certain circumstances people love uncertainties as “surprises” can add unexpected pleasures to our life (Goldsmith and Amir 2010; Shen, Fishbach, and Hsee 2015). In this research, we examine consumers’ preference for surprise in the subscription services. A typical subscription business offers a “surprise-me” option, where customers receive the package without knowing what items are included, in addition to (or instead of) customers making their own selections (referred to as the “self-selection” option hereafter). Despite the surging popularity of this business model, little is known whether consumers prefer making their own selections or are willingly let providers surprise them. Theoretically, it offers an opportunity to examine consumers’ willingness to relent their control in choice when there are risks involved. Managerially, answers to these questions can help service providers better design the surprise-me option for both operational efficiencies and customer satisfactions. Our key hypothesis is that a sense of personal control is an important condition for consumers’ preference of the surprise-me option in subscription services. Feeling of control serves as a safeguard and thus allows consumers to attend to the pleasures of uncertainty. This also means that in situations where consumers do not feel in control, their preference for the surprise-me option decreases (relative to the in-control condition). This is because, the compensatory control theory (Whitson & Galinsky, 2008; Kay et al., 2008; 2009) suggests that when consumers feel not in control, they tend to compensate by trying to take things into their own hands (e.g., self-select) to regain control rather than relenting control to others (e.g., to be surprised). However, when it is difficult to regain control through self-selection due to choice difficulty (e.g., lack of topical knowledge), they may again prefer surprise as a way to simply delegate the choice (Aggarwal and Mazumdar 2008; Steffel and Williams 2017). Thus, we expect feeling of control to play an important role in preference of a surprise-me option. We conducted three studies to test this prediction. Overall, the set of studies supported the expected important role of feeling of control. The surprise option is valued only when consumers do not lack the sense of control hence do not need to regain it through choice or the chance of regaining control through choice is low due to choice difficulty (expertise or product assortment characteristics). Our research provides important theoretical contributions.

Attitudes toward advertising as an institution remain an important research topic in developing countries. Even in the West, the issue is currently being revisited to update for various online media contexts. This paper examines attitudes toward advertising among college students in Egypt. There was little difference in attitudes depending on whether they were thinking of traditional TV advertising or advertising on social media, although they use SM much more frequently. Generally the respondents agreed with a range of issues related to the beneficial aspects of advertising, and only slightly agreed or were roughly neutral on most issues related to detrimental effects. There is strong support for laws about ‘truth-in-advertising’ and legal responsibility for claims, but only weak support for direct government control of advertising.

Introduction In order to solve the information asymmetry and make full use of resources (unused goods, spare capacity and so on), the sharing economy, which based on the application of mobile internet technology and focused on the consumption of the right to use, is developing rapidly. Lack of trust is considered to be one of the important problems hindering the development of sharing economy. Möhlmann (2015) said that trust is a fundamental determinant of sharing economy development and ensuring shared satisfaction. At present, sharing economy enterprises have established product evaluation system and docked a third party credit rating system (i.e. Zhima Credit) to promote consumers’ trust. However, with most enterprises are becoming more and more consistent in evaluation and credit rating system, there is a new problem emerged: how to further deepen consumers’ trust in order to promote consumers’ intention to participate continuously (Zucker, 1986; Lewis & Weigert, 1985). Granovetter (1985) mentioned that trust is the product of social relationships. Botsman and Rogers (2011) made it clear that social networks play an important role in building trust in sharing economy. And people are always more willing to accept the opinions of people who have social relations with them (Lu, Zhao, & Wang, 2010). Hence, with the feature of participant of everyone in sharing economy, it is necessary to further strengthen consumers’ trust through the social interaction among consumers and between consumers and sharing platforms. Theoretical Development Sharing economy is based on LBS and other new technologies to realize the matching of supply and demand information across time and space. And to a certain extent, it solves the problem of information asymmetry in the era of e-commerce. Yet consumer have new requirements for product information. For example, consumers are more concerned about whether the utility of products and services can meet their needs (i.e. some consumers are more concerned about when to reach their destination than the performance of the car). But it is difficult for company to understand each everyone of consumers’ utility preference and publish product utility information based on these preferences (Xie & Gerstner, 2007). Because this kind of utility preference has the characteristic of timeliness and personalization. Therefore, consumers’ perceived uncertainty about the utility of the product will also affect the consumers’ trust. In summary, we then address these research questions:(1) can the promotion of trust between consumers and sharing platforms be achieved through the socializing of sharing platforms and then affect consumers’ intention to participate continuously; (2) if so, which type of privacy protection method and social information can promote consumer trust; and (3) does the impact of sharing platform socialization on consumer trust vary according to consumers’ concerns about the perceived utility uncertainty of the product. Research Design We then address these issues using experiment data. The first experiment was a 2 (social media: have, not have) x 2 (individual trust propensity: trust, not trust) between-subject design on the intention to trust sharing platform and participant continuously. Perceived utility uncertainty was added to this design as a moderator. Moreover, the second experiment was a 2 (social information type: hedonic, utilitarian) x 2 (degree of privacy protection: week, strong) between-subject design on the intention to trust sharing platform. Our scales come from existing scales and optimize it according to the characteristics of sharing economy (Schneider, 1999; Dhar & Wertenbroch, 2000; McKnight, Choudhury, & Kacmar, 2002). Results and Conclusion The results of the first experiment show that whether or not the social platform has no significant impact on the consumer trust if the individual tends to trust others. And for individuals who tends to do not trust others, they are more likely to trust socialized sharing platforms. The higher the consumer perceived utility uncertainty is, the higher (lower) trust of the consumer platform in the socialized (not socialized) sharing platform. For the second experiment results, in the context of sharing economy, the utilitarian information has a greater positive impact on the consumer trust than the hedonic information. In addition, the stronger the privacy protection of sharing platforms, the higher the trust of consumes. This study makes several academic contributions. First, we extend the topic of socialization to sharing economy context. Second, we add the perceived utility uncertainty as a moderator, and supplement the role of perceived uncertainty. This research also provides several practical implications. First, sharing platform can promote their consumers’ trust by establishing their own social platform. This platform can be used as a differentiated competitive strategy for sharing platform. Second, sharing platform should guide consumers to share utilitarian information (i.e. weather for specific place or real time traffic) to improve consumer satisfaction. Third, sharing platform can access consumer preference information through this social platform for further product development and classification.

The purpose of this study was to identify the relationship between perceived value, ethnic identity and purchase intention of ethnic apparel. This study examines how Hanfu (traditional costume of the Han Ethnic Group of China) customers perceive certain types of values (emotional value, social value, uniqueness value, conditional value and perceived value). Then this study determined how customers’ perceptions of these values and ethnic identity were correlated with perceived value, and intention to buy Hanfu. Findings from this study indicated that perceived value and ethnic identity were generally associated with purchase intention of ethnic apparel. Hence, ethnic identity moderated the relationship between perceived value and purchase intention. Finally, compared to emotional value, social value, and uniqueness value, conditional value showed the most influential impact on the perceived value. The findings provide an insight in recognizing factors which play an important role in wearing ethnic apparel. More specifically this research provides insight for traditional apparel marketers to design apparel products and reposition the existing products.

This study investigates the effect of high-level customization experience delivered via information and communication technology (ICT) on consumers’ patronage behavior toward a brand. The results indicate that customization experience increases purchasing intention for it enhance the level of happiness about the product. The relationship between customization experience and happiness is found to be mediated by autonomy (i.e., feeling of being in charge of one’s own action), competence (i.e., feeling that one effectively utilize one’s skill and abilities) and the pride of authorship (i.e. feeling of pride when creating an artifact of one’s own). Introduction The advancement of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) has led the paradigm shift in managing a producer and consumer relationship in the fashion industry. In particular, it has blurred the boundaries between the role of a producer and the role of a consumer. For example, Adidas, one of the biggest sportswear companies in the world, has built SpeedFactory, which offers a special customization service for their users to build sneakers according to their own design specifications. There it takes only five hours for a customized design put together by its users to be produced in a real pair of sneakers and ready to be delivered to their home (Wiener, 2017). The term, prosumer (i.e., producer and consumer) indicates such people who not only purchase and use a product a company offers but also actively participate in the production process by communicating and reflecting their preference (Toffler, 1980). This phenomenon is particularly evident with millennial consumers who desire customer-centric experiences with which they feel wanted and valued. They are willing to engage with brands through producing consumer-generated contents and suggesting their ideas during the production process (McGee, 2017). Such desire has driven the growth of customization services and the rapid development of technology further enabling companies to provide customization more easily and at lower costs (Mitrea, Werner, & Greif, 2010). Despite its increasing significance, not much attention has been paid to understanding the psychological underpinnings as to how and why customization services may enhance consumer patronage behavior toward a brand. This study fills this void by examining the underlying mechanism of the relation between personalization experiences and purchasing intention. Literature review and research questions Customization Experience and Happiness “Experience” has emerged as an important keyword for marketing professionals in the last couple of decades (Pine & Gillomore, 1999; Schmitt, 1999). Consumers wanted and were willing to pay for unique, personalized events that are not the same as anyone else’s, and those that can surprise and impress them beyond providing mere satisfaction (Pine & Gillomore, 1999). Customized services thus have a great impact on consumer patronage behavior such as purchase intention and brand loyalty. Recently, marketing and psychology research has also observed that customized experiences bring happiness (e.g. Bhattacharjee, & Mogilner, 2014; Guevarra & Howell, 2015). Happiness refers to a cognitive and emotional evaluation of one's own life (Diener, 1984). While, to some extent, happiness can be assessed by external criteria such as socioeconomic level or objective indicators, subjective well-being is argued to be important for individuals to assess their own psychological states (Diener, 1984). In general, studies have found that material goods provide lower level of happiness than life experiences, since consumers tend to evaluate happiness through specific events. However, Guevarra & Howell (2015) illustrated that the dichotomous distinction between material items and life experience is ambiguous at the boundary, and in the middle of continuum from material items to life experiences exists “experiential products,” which give consumers the same level of happiness as life experiences. Offering consumers the ability to reflect their preferences in product designs is a way to tap into this psychology. Customization can be a unique experience in that consumers themselves participate in production processes. It is expected that the experience of designing one’s own good will positively affect consumer's happiness level. What Drives Happiness from Customization Experiences? Self-determination theory of Deci & Ryan (2012) (e.g., Maltby & Day, 2001; Wilson, Rodgers, Fraser, & Murray, 2004) is used as the conceptual framework to identify the underlying psychological mechanisms for this study. In particular, the selfdetermination theory posits that people feel happiness when they are satisfied with such psychological needs as autonomy (i.e., engaging in behaviors that express one’s true identity and feeling of being in charge of one’s own action), competence (i.e., feeling of fulfillment that one effectively utilize one’s skill and abilities), and relatedness (i.e., feelings of closeness to a desired social group) through experience (Deci & Ryan, 2012). Given the focus of this study is the customized service delivered online, the variable of relatedness is less relevant since our study focuses on independently designing a product to a user’s unique preferences. The variable of relatedness is excluded in our research model. Instead, we include the “pride of authorship” (Trentin, Perin, & Forza, 2014), which refers to the feeling of pride generated when creating an artifact of their own and a sense of being the creator of it (Schreier, 2006). Customized services can enhance the sense of accomplishment as an author which is also found to affect happiness (Schreier, 2006). We thus formulated the following hypotheses. Hypothesis 1-3. Perceived customization experience will have a positive influence on autonomy (H1), competence (H2), pride of authorship (H3). Hypothesis 4-6. Autonomy (H4), competence (H5), pride of authorship (H6) will have a positive influence on happiness. Hypothesis 7. Happiness will have a positive influence on purchase intention. Method The data were collected via an online experiment in May 2017 with women in their 20s and 30s residing in South Korea, nationwide. Procedure The target site we used as an experiment stimulus was a shoe retail site (http://www.shoesofprey.com) that offers customization options (e.g., shapes, colors, and heel height). The data were collected for a week with 180 participants in total. After entering a designated computer lab, participants were given a detailed instruction of how to use the customized services of this brand. Experiment assistants provided real-time help to participants for any technical difficulties. We asked respondents to visit an online website of this brand. The participants were asked to explore the site and to design customized shoes to their liking. After spending some time on the site and finish customization, they were asked to answer questions in our questionnaire. Measures/Data Collection and Analysis The measures of our constructs were developed based on previous literature. All items (except for demographic characteristics) were measured using a 7-point Likert scale (1 = “strongly disagree;” 7 = “strongly agree”). About 12 responses were deleted from a total of 180 responses due to incomplete data, thus168 were used for final analysis. The data were statistically analyzed using SPSS 21.0 and AMOS 18.0. Results Underlying Mechanism of the Relation between Personalization Experience and Happiness: Autonomy, Competence, and Pride of Authorship With the pooled data (n=168), the results of the confirmatory factor analysis on the entire measurement model showed that our measurement model had a reasonably good fit (χ2(df=145)=300.546, p=.000; Normed χ2(CMIN/DF)=2.073; GFI=.847; CFI=.924; NFI=.864; TLI=.910; RMSEA=.080). The measurements of reliability yielded Cronbach’s α coefficients above 0.7. The convergent validity and discriminant validity were confirmed between the measurement variables, and the measured values were found to be appropriate. Customization experience had a significant influence on the path of autonomy, competence, and pride of authorship at the .001 level. Specifically, the results showed that the coefficient of the path from “customization experience to autonomy” to be .71***, that from “customization experience to competence” was .81***, and that from “customization experience to pride of authorship” was .68***. We thus accept Hypothesis 1, 2, and 3. These mediation variables were found to have a positive influence on happiness at the .001 level. The coefficient of the path from “autonomy to happiness” was .38***, that from “competence happiness” was .29***, and that from “pride of authorship to happiness” was .25***. We thus accept Hypothesis 4, 5, and 6. It was identified that happiness was positively related to purchase intention with coefficients, 0.49***. Thus, Hypothesis 7 was supported. Discussion and implications Previous research found that offering customization service positively influences purchase intention and willingness-to-pay. This paper extends the current understand as to the effect of customization service experience on consumer patronage intention by identifying underlying psychological mechanism. The customized products allow and demand consumers to engage in the designing process. This distinctive experience generates psychological reactions that are linked to personal happiness. In particular, we find that a heightened sense of autonomy, competence, and the pride of authorship are critical mediators linking the customization experiences to happiness. The results also indicate that feeling of happiness is a significant driver for consumer patronage behavior. Our results imply that millennial consumers want to experience consumer-centric events and to engaging in creating their own contents to feel fulfilled with consumption experiences and that customized services can be a power tool to meet this desire.

Consumers have enjoyed shopping via the web for over a decade, but the emergence of shopping through social media or social commerce is slowly gaining traction Instagram is one of the largest interactive photo-sharing sites that retailers, specifically apparel and accessory companies, are utilizing to sell their merchandise. Consumers are increasingly using this platform to engage, discover and get inspired; therefore, it is critical for retailers to understand how this platform influences purchase intention. This paper focuses on analyzing the impact of Instagram on consumer’s purchase intention based on an adapted model of Technology Acceptance Model and Theory of Reasoned Action. Using multi-group analysis, consumers (n=317) were divided into two groups: shopped for fashion products (including browsing, making a one-time purchase, or making repeat purchases) or not shopped using Instagram for apparel specific brands. The participants were surveyed using an online instrument with questions related to attitude, subjective norms, normative beliefs, perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use (PEOU) and purchase intention. Frequency statistics were obtained for the demographic variables. Overwhelmingly (approximately 78%), respondents used Instagram daily with 82.6% following an apparel brand. 40% of the respondents had shopped previously on Instagram (i.e. browsed as well as purchased products), with 13% of these respondents spending more than $100. An exploratory factor analysis using principal component with varimax rotation and a minimum eigen value of one was used to identify the latent variables in the model: PEOU (α = 0.82); PU (α = 0.81); Normative Beliefs (α = 0.81); Attitude (α = .87); Subjective Norm (α = 0.88); Purchase Intention (α = 0.79). Results indicated that subjective norms did not influence purchase intention for both the groups indicating that consumers do not follow “groupthink” mentality while intending to purchase via Instagram. Furthermore, it was found that PEOU influence on attitude for the two groups of consumer were different, with no impact for the group who had shopped on Instagram. All the other relationships were supported in the model. These results provide both implications and limitations for retailers and academia.

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.

Introduction Existing studies have revealed various value systems’ relationship to consumer behavior. The factors that have been shown to explain consumer behavior include basic values (e.g., Rindfleisch, Burroughs, & Wong, 2009), consumer worldview (e.g., Saatcioglu & Ozanne, 2013), the dominant ideology of society (e.g., Juhl, Fenger, & Thøgersen, 2017), and political ideology (e.g., Jung, Garbarino, Briley, & Wynhausen, 2017). In this study, we attempted to identify a new, overarching construct that captures individuals’ socioeconomic worldview and then to investigate its impact on consumer behavior. In doing so, we developed a neoliberalism scale and investigated how it relates to consumption-related factors. This neoliberalism construct encompasses individuals’ perspectives on various dimensions, including profit centrism, government intervention, welfare, and self-development. Theoretical development Neoliberalism, as used in this construct, is defined as one’s tendency to support economic liberalizations (e.g., free trade, open markets, financial liberalization, deregulation, globalism, privatization, and private-sector enhancement) and the government’s powerful ruling and legal enforcement to reinforce them even at the expense of significant demographic processes. However, neoliberal individuals otherwise tend to consider the government and political system to be much less efficient and much more oppressive than the competitive market and private sector are. Additionally, they strive to manage everyday life strategically, as if they were innovative entrepreneurs. These individuals believe that one’s success largely depends on his or her own merits and efforts, and thus that inequality or unequal compensation is inevitable in order to achieve efficiency, economic growth, and moral justice (e.g., Peck & Tickell, 2007; Steger & Roy, 2010). Methods We distributed our survey to 374 adults (187 female) who are recruited through a market research firm’s online panel in Korea. Participants’ education levels were as follows: those who have only graduated from high school or have yet to graduate from high school = 20.9%, those who are current college students or have graduated from college = 66%, post-college graduates = 13.1%. Based on the literature on neoliberalism, we generated 54 items to measure neoliberalism tendencies. We initially created 12 dimensions, each of which included between four and six items. The dimensions included belief in economic growth, opposition to government intervention, belief in the inefficiency of the government, opposition to labor unions, opposition to policies that favor the majority, hostility toward social welfare, belief in the need to protect private property, support for globalization, interest in time management, elitism, interest in self-development, and interest in wealth management. We adapted our measures from existing scales, except for perceived social mobility and perceived social inequality, which were measures that we created. We measured long-term orientation (Bearden, Money, & Nevins, 2006), the perceived importance of achievement (Burroughs & Rindfleish, 2002), community values (Burroughs & Rindfleisch, 2002), political cynicism (Kaid, 2002), political liberalism (Mehrabian, 1996), life values (Schwartz, 1992), materialism (Richins, 2004), consumer values (Sánchez-Fernández, Angeles Iniesta-Bonillo, & Holbrook, 2009) and impulsive buying behavior (Rook & Fisher, 1995). Results Using the data from 374 respondents, we conducted an exploratory-factor analysis to examine the factor structure of our neoliberalism scale. The exploratory-factor analysis used a principle-component method with direct oblimin rotation, and the criterion of eigenvalue greater than 1.00 generated an 11-factor solution. This factor solution accounted for 59.83% of the total variance. This study employed the following three criteria to retain factors and items: (a) items with factor loading greater than .4, (b) factors with at least three items, and (c) items that do not cross load on the other factors. The results yielded 32 items that comprise seven factors: interest in economic development, hostility toward welfare, interest in wealth management, distrust in government ability, opposition to labor unions, support for the protection of private property, and interest in self-development. We ran an another exploratory-factor analysis using the same methods and items as before, which confirmed that those items loaded well for the seven factors, explaining 59.37% of the total variance. Each factor—hostility toward welfare, interest in self-development, distrust in government ability, interest in economic development, opposition to labor unions, interest in wealth management, and support for the protection of private property—was found to account for 24.08%, 14.11%, 5.12%, 5.01%, 4.27%, 3.40%, and 3.30% of the total variance, respectively. Additionally, the reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) of each factor was as follows: hostility toward welfare = .87, interest in self-development = .83, distrust in government ability= .62, interest in economic development = .68, opposition to labor unions = .76, interest in wealth management = .75, and support for the protection of private property = .67. Finally, we created the neoliberalism index by averaging these seven factors. There was a significant difference in how survey participants responded to the five factors of the neoliberalism construct used in this study—namely, interest in economic development, interest in self-development, opposition to labor unions, hostility toward welfare, and support for the protection of private property. In general, support for those five factors tended to increase with the age of the individual, such that participants over 50 years old appeared to place the most emphasis on the importance of economic development, self-development, and the need to protect private property, while showing more unfavorable attitudes toward labor unions and government welfare policies compared to younger age groups. Overall, neoliberalism index, which is the average of all seven factors, also demonstrated similar patterns. People seem to agree more with neoliberal values as they age. We examined the correlation between the neoliberalism index and related measures such as perceived social inequality, perceived social mobility, and long-term orientation. Our data revealed a significant and positive correlation between neoliberalism and perceived social mobility (r (372) = .35, p < .01), and neoliberalism and perceived social inequality (r (372) = .23, p < .01). Neoliberal individuals are likely to perceive the society to which they belong as relatively equal and to believe that they can achieve a satisfactory social status as long as they strive to do so. This tendency is well explained by the significant correlation between neoliberalism and long-term orientation (r (372) = .47, p < .01), that of neoliberalism and the perceived importance of achievement (r (372) = .39, p < .01). Neoliberal individuals’ positive attitudes toward their future status appear to encourage them to work diligently for their future achievements and to improve their status. In contrast, a significant correlation with political cynicism (r (372) = .27, p < .01) indicates neoliberal individuals’ distrust in government. It can be also inferred that neoliberal individuals are politically conservative, given that neoliberalism is negatively correlated to political liberalism (r (372) = -.29, p < .01). Finally, this index is positively correlated to community values (r (372) = .32, p < .01). Furthermore, our neoliberalism index was correlated with Schwartz’s general life values (Schwartz, 1992), including efforts toward self-enhancement (r (372) = .41, p < .01), openness to change (r (372) = .28, p < .01), efforts toward self-transcendence (r (372) = .32, p < .01), and interest in conservation (r (372) = .45, p < .01). Highly neoliberal individuals may strive to develop themselves, seek interesting and stimulating experiences on their own, tend to be altruistic, and conform to what has been established. Given that politically conservative individuals have been considered to be less altruistic and less open to change, the current results, which contradict prior assumptions, seem to indicate that neoliberalism is very different from conservatism. Our data indicated that there is a significant correlation between neoliberalism and the five dimensions of consumer values—namely, efficiency (r (372) = .26, p < .01), quality (r (372) = .37, p < .01), social values (r = .30, p < .01), play (r = .27, p < .01), aesthetics (r = .32, p < .01), and materialism (r = .16, p < .01). Individuals with neoliberal views are likely to consider various factors prudently in choosing products and proper places to shop. What matters to them in their consumption would be satisfactory shopping experiences as a whole rather than just the quality of the products for which they shop. It is interesting to note that highly neoliberal individuals are likely to value possessions. Given the significant correlation between neoliberalism, social mobility, and inequality, neoliberal individuals may believe that they can be like others who achieve a better status than they have and perceive that having more possessions is an efficient tool for acquiring a higher social status. Impulsive buying behavior was not significantly correlated with neoliberalism. Self-development, one of the seven dimensions of this neoliberalism construct, is closely linked to an emphasis on efficient time management and self-control. Neoliberal individuals are likely to be more thorough and careful in their decision-making and consumption behavior. Thus, it is not surprising to observe an insignificant relationship with impulsive buying behavior. Discussion We attempted to determine if individuals’ worldview could explain consumption-related phenomenon such as the extent to which they value possessions. The data supported the prediction that neoliberalism is closely linked not only to basic human values (Schwartz, 1992), but also to consumption phenomena, including materialism (Richins, 2004) and consumer values (e.g., Sánchez-Fernández, Angeles Iniesta-Bonillo, & Holbrook, 2009). Although we were unable to make clear casual inferences from correlational findings, our results shed light on future research in the field of materialism and other consumerbehavior phenomenon using this neoliberalism construct. Experimental manipulation of neoliberal tendencies would generate more intriguing results.

In recent years, terrorism has become one of the major world's concerns. According to the Institute for Economics and Peace (2016), among OECD member countries, deaths from terrorism have dramatically increased in 2015, rising by 650% relative to 2014. France stands as the country with the largest increase of deaths from 2014 to 2015. Recent terrorist attacks in France have triggered widespread awareness of this tragic phenomenon. Comparatively, Israel is a country that has experienced chronic terror attacks since the early 1960s, creating a high level of awareness that has become part of the citizen’s daily life, as attacks can occur in restaurants, bars, buses, and stores, or in the streets (Ben-David & Cohen-Louck, 2010). Due to their different experiences of terror, we chose to focus our study on France and Israel. In line with the terror management theory (Greenberg et al., 1986), which suggests that death reminders influence behaviors, these terror threats may have consequences on feelings of well-being (Maguen et al., 2008). Most studies concerning the effects of terrorism on consumer behaviour have focused on personal characteristics (Cohen-Louck, 2016). However, to the best of our knowledge, studies have yet to characterize customers' behaviors in different service situations in the wake of a terrorist attack and the factors influencing these behaviors. This will be the main contribution of the current study. A qualitative study has been conducted in France and Israel. We focused on both utilitarian (modes of transportation) and hedonic (cinema, restaurants, bars) services (Bradley & LaFleur, 2016). The study highlighted two specific criteria that could affect customer behavior: time from the terrorist attack and its proximity to the respondent. In-depth interviews were conducted with customers from France (22) and Israel (29; total n=51). Participants were interviewed on their behaviors, either immediately following a terror attack or one month after. Customer strategies were found to be similar and long termed in both France and Israel. However, Israeli customer responses are more personal and emotional, more detailed, more proactive in protecting themselves. The passage of time from the attack has less effect on Israelis’ chosen strategies. Among French respondents, the effect of time is evident: attacks have a significant impact on behaviours immediately after their occurrence, compared with a month later. Whereas the avoidance strategy is mainly adopted immediately after the attack, as time passes, there is a kind of resignation of the situation. The perception of internal vs. external control over one's life seems also to be an important variable that may explain behaviour in both groups.

It is a fact that the present online technologies have empowered consumers not only to share their positive service experiences they have had with a firm on the Internet, but also to express their negative views online via multiple platforms by using varied online communication features (OCFs) (e.g. status updates, comments, chats, reviews, and feedback forms). With that, this study employed the concept of online features affordances, such as response expectation, identifiability (of complainants), and content visibility, based on a novel conceptualization through the lens of uses and gratifications (U&G) theory from a varied perspective. Hence, by modelling consumers’ motivation to complain about brand via online in conjunction with the selected OCF affordances, this study investigated their joint impact on consumers’ emotions and intentions towards the defaulting firm upon making an online complaint. The data were analysed by using correspondence analysis and structural equation modelling approaches. As a result, this study revealed that consumers’ motivation to complain and their interactions with affordances (but not the affordances themselves) exemplify a significant effect upon influencing the intention towards the (defaulting) firm after disclosing a negative service incident. In particular, content visibility and response expectation appear to display an impact on redress-seeking and egoistic complainants, respectively. These findings, hence, provide relevant insights for firms to manage their complaint channels and to address online customer feedback in a more effective manner for mutual benefits. Furthermore, this study happens to be the first of its kind to weigh in OCFs as the concerned media and further proposes a design-based affordance view of OCFs in explaining their influence on both consumers and brands.