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.

To reduce food waste at the retail and personal consumption stages, discounts are offered in retail channels to encourage consumers to buy goods that are less attractive or close to their expiry dates. While discounts can encourage consumers to accept and purchase suboptimal foods, previous studies find that low prices or price discounts will make consumers produce positive or negative perceptions of product values. Consumers may increase their purchase intentions due to price concessions, but will think that price reductions are caused by quality degradation and thus reduce their purchase intentions. Additionally, the literature rarely explores the interaction between original prices of suboptimal products and discount presentation modes. This study thus contends that the interaction between original prices of goods and discount types will lead to significant differences in consumers' attitudes and purchase behavior toward suboptimal products. For research goals, this study employed a full factorial between‐subjects experiment designed with 2 original prices (High and Low) × 2 discount presentation modes (Discount percentage and Discounted price). An anonymous web-based questionnaire posted on the popular PTT forum and in Facebook and Instagram related communities is used to collect the data, and then a total of 328 valid questionnaires were finally collected. The findings indicate that attitudes and purchase intentions toward suboptimal food with a low original price is significantly higher than that of a high original price. Among the interaction effects, the means of attitudes and purchase intentions on the level of the low original price of suboptimal foods presented by discount percentage are higher the other three types. For the high original prices of suboptimal foods, the means of attitudes and purchase intentions on the level of discounted price are higher than for discount percentage. Based on these findings, this study demonstrates that consumer attitudes and purchase decision-making toward suboptimal foods are shaped by original prices and discount presentation modes. In Asia-Pacific countries such as Taiwan, consumers are price-sensitive but once a food item belongs to the category of suboptimal foods, their perceptions of discounts become different. Consumers’ attitudes toward that food and their willingness to buy may be moderated by the high or low original price of suboptimal food with the levels of discount presentation mode. Thus, based on the analysis and results of this study, we offer fresh findings and make both theoretical and managerial contributions to the related field of suboptimal food marketing and price discounts.

In recent years, advances in the digital and live streaming economy have led to exponential growth in the number of self-employed streamers who have become an integral part of the self-driven digital labor force. However, previous research on the impact of streamers' work time arrangements on their virtual gifts remains scarce. To fill this gap in the literature, using large-scale data from Kuaishou live streaming platform, we demonstrate that several features of streamers' work time have an important impact on their virtual gifts. Specifically, our results suggest that work time duration and timing improve streamers' virtual gifts; meanwhile, work time tempo has an adverse effect on streamers' earnings. Taken together, our results provide novel and actionable insights for millions of self-employed streamers, agencies, platforms, and policymakers.

This research investigates the structure of psychological ownership of people and the antecedents and results. Although research on psychological ownership is prevalent in Marketing and consumer behavior, there are a few works on psychological ownership of people. Recently, regardless of age and sex, people have been more actively engaging in activities that support their favorite celebrities, idols, and animation characters. They invest their time and money in the objects by participating in events, purchasing goods, recommending to others, etc. These behaviors would contribute to their life satisfaction and happiness. Based on previous research on psychological ownership in the field of organizational behavior and interview with idol fans, we built a model and tested it with data from 550 idol fans. The model contains two dimensions of the psychological ownership of consumers’ favorite idols, two factors as antecedents, two moderators relating to other fans, and two outcomes. The result shows that psychological identity positively affects a sense of community with other fans, and psychological responsibility positively influences territoriality toward them. While a sense of community with other fans positively affects their well-being and intention to continue support behaviors, territoriality negatively influences intention to continue support behaviors and positively impacts well-being.

Given the conundrum of moral washing in CSR communication, this research examines the effectiveness of narrative richness using storytelling in marketing. In the process, the moderating role of moral imagination is further explored. An online experiment with a 2 (Narrative Richness: High vs. Low) x 2 (Moral Imagination: High vs. Low) between-subjects factorial design was conducted with two well-known companies (Shell vs. Facebook) suffered from a reputation crisis as the target brands. The results (N = 287) showed that the effects of narrative richness on consumer responses, including positive emotion, negative emotion, and behavioral intention, were significant for Facebook whereas its effect on positive emotion was significant for Shell. Most importantly, the two-way interaction between narrative richness and moral imagination on attitude toward the brand was significant for Shell, indicating that the effect of narrative richness on attitude toward the brand was augmented by moral imagination. In other words, consumers with high moral imagination view narrative-rich messages with virtuous thoughts to figure out the conundrum of CSR communication for the company, and vice versa. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

Digital fashion represents key technologies for the online environment, and it has been used as a new marketing strategy for the fashion industry. As consumer digital experience has been diversified, research on the effect on consumer attitudes and behavior toward digital fashion needs to be investigated. This study examines the effect of visual tactile and presence of VR fashion stores on consumer attitude via consumer surveys. Visual tactile and presence positively influence consumer experience which includes fantasy, feeling, and fun. In addition, these three experiences positively affect consumer attitude. The moderating effect of cyber motion sickness is discussed. Academic and practical implications for digital fashion are provided.

With the rapid development and progress of modern social economy and science and technology, a new concept has emerged in the public's vision: the digital creative industry, which is a type of industry that combines modern information technology and cultural creative industries into one and integrates them, such as "the universe", virtual products, artificial intelligence, VR technology, and so on. Research by ARK INVEST shows that the compound growth rate of the "meta universe" will reach 17%, increasing from $180 billion currently to $390 billion in 2025. The mature "meta universe" can satisfy users to complete all social, entertainment, and other attributes similar to the real world.

A ‘brand’ metaverse is a virtual space where customers experience the brand via digital avatars. With the advancement of augmented and virtual reality technologies, a brand metaverse is an important medium for communicating the brand with customers. In this study, we focus on the resemblance between a customer’s self and his/her avatar (i.e., self-avatar resemblance) in the brand metaverse and examine its influence on brand attitude. Prior studies examine self-avatar resemblance exclusively in non-brand-related virtual gaming platforms and test its effect on identity perception and immersion in the platforms. However, few studies probe the extent to which self-avatar resemblance influences customers' exploration in a brand metaverse and their attitude toward the brand. We fill this research gap by uncovering the positive effects of self-avatar resemblance on brand attitude and purchase intentions. Moreover, we proffer that the customers’ engagement toward the brand metaverse platform mediates the relationship between self-avatar resemblance and brand attitude. In addition, based on the interactive nature of metaverse, we hypothesize copresence―the number of avatars exploring the brand metaverse at the same time―to be a moderator, which strengthens the mediation. We conduct an experiment using a fashion brand’s virtual world positioned in a popular metaverse platform. In this experiment, participants create an avatar and freely roam around in the brand metaverse with their avatars. By reviewing the screen recording of each participant’s brand exploration in the metaverse, we measure self-avatar resemblance and other constructs. We also collect responses from questionnaires designed to measure attitudinal and behavioral variables. With the accumulated data, we test the hypotheses using partial least square structural equation model and find the results largely consistent with the hypotheses. With the findings, we provide important and interesting implications to marketing practitioners considering and doing ‘metaverse marketing.’

Digital humans integrating anthropomorphism into the performance and problem-solving features of AI offer innovative sources of insights and value that promotes a product, service, or brand. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of a digital human’s aura and anthropomorphism on perceived interactivity, attitude toward a brand, attitude toward a digital human, electronic word of mouth (eWOM) intention, and purchase intention. An entrenched digital human’s aura and anthropomorphism increase perceived interactivity, attitude toward a brand, attitude toward a digital human, eWOM intention, and purchase intention. This study contributes to the literature by clarifying the concept of the digital human’s aura and anthropomorphism and the relationships between perceived interactivity, attitude toward a brand, attitude toward a digital human, eWOM intention, and purchase intention.

As Hollywood relies heavily on global markets, it is particularly important for studios to understand how their decisions, including on casts, may affect their movies’ box-office in foreign markets. Anecdotal evidence shows that casting actors with similar facial features may be problematic in foreign markets, often disorienting international audiences.

This study analyzed the presence and effect of sexual appeal of plus-size models using Victoria's Secret's Instagram content. A content analysis using roBERTa deep-learning model found that, plus-size models’ sexual appeals increased number of likes and comments, but explicit sexual appeals resulted in less positive sentiments than thin models’.

This study constructs a model to predict ad attitude when AI influencers act as ad endorsers. In the results, search products and rational ad appeal have more positive ad attitude, perceived empathy and perceived expertise as mediator. These three variables can be reinforced by the consistency of ad appeals and product categories.

Integrating both the Computers-Are-Social-Actors Theory and Social Exchange Theory, this study investigates human-robot interactions in a frontline service setting. Data was collected via an intercept survey of 282 Gen Z visitors at a polytechnic library in Singapore. The data was analyzed using structural equation modelling with partial least squares. The results demonstrate the significant positive effects of robot anthropomorphism attributes, namely perceived warmth, perceived coolness, appearance, social capability, and personalized service on perceived trust as well as the significant positive effects of perceived coolness and social capability on positive emotion. Both trust and emotion affected consumer co-creation while only emotion impacted consumer wellbeing. The results add to the service robot literature and offer practical guidance for service managers to leverage trust in designing and personalizing inclusive service experiences for successful human-robot interactions.

Following the military advance of Russian forces into Ukraine in February 2022, Russia became the most sanctioned country in the world (Shapiro, 2022) as global leaders attempted to condemn the act and impose several sanctions on the Russian Federation including the ban of Russian oil and gas imports, the closure of airspace to Russian airplanes and the removal of Russian banks from the Swift international payment network (BBC, 2022). Among the noticeable effects of the Russia-Ukraine conflict is the animosity expressed against Russians. In a marketing context, animosity has been studied mostly from the perspective of consumers and is conceptualized as the “anger related to previous or ongoing military, economic or diplomatic events” (Klein et al., 1998:90) which impacts purchasing behaviour. Given that animosity has been found to have enduring effects, it is worth examining the anti-Russian sentiments currently manifesting as these may have impacts in terms of tourism management and marketing.

Personalized pricing provides great potential for revenue, but is also accompanied by negative consumer reactions. Therefore, it is of great importance to investigate potential mechanisms and variables that could mitigate these negative effects. In this context, the following paper examines the role of perceived fairness, cognitive dissonance, and product categories.

While there is an increasing number of studies highlighting the power of videos in influencing audience attitudes and behavior, academic research in tourism is largely behind due to the methodological challenges of analyzing unstructured video data. This study adopts an automatic video analytics approach to examine the relationship between content features of pro-environmental videos and audience engagement in tourism. Artificial intelligence was used to extract video content features by detecting scenes and shots as well as labels (e.g., trees). Our findings suggest that there exists an inverted U-shape relationship between video informativeness and audience engagement. This study makes significant theoretical and methodological contributions to extant tourism literature by theoretically explaining and empirically testing how video content features influence audience engagement in pro-environmental video communications in tourism.

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?

This study explores the role of the digital communication in determining customers’ e-service agent use behavior and examines whether perceived communicator authority interacts with communication style toward strengthening or weakening future e-service agent use intention. The results of this study provide pioneering evidence on the effects of digital service communication strategies. This study contributes to digital service research by exploring the communication strategies of e-service agents. Results also provide implications for practitioners on how to achieve most out of deploying digital communications in the digital customer service platform.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how customer relationship termination (i.e., preparation and process), alone or in combination with customer involvement, contributes to the new product development outcome. While termination preparation has a synergistic effect with customer involvement, the termination process has a trade-off relationship with customer involvement.

This study aims to address two important questions: will advertising on mobile short-form video apps jeopardize the value perception of luxury brands (RQ1), and if so, how will self-deprecating online reviews eliminate these negative effects (RQ2). An experimental design approach was employed to investigate the proposed research questions. Three experiments were conducted to test the hypotheses. SPSS was used for data analysis. The study 1 finds that compared with traditional media, advertising on mobile short-form video apps shortened the psychological distance between consumers and luxury, therefore has a more negative impact on consumers’ perception of luxury brands. The study 2 reveals that self-deprecating online reviews can eliminate the negative effects of advertising of luxury brands. On the basis of previous research, this paper proves the negative influence of social media on luxury brands in the scene of new social media-mobile short format video application. In addition, it also studies the moderating effect of online comments, especially self-deprecating comments, on consumers' perception of luxury brands. This study outlines theoretical contributions and practical implications for the luxury marketing management and made suggestions for future research in the field of luxury marketing in Social Media.