This study investigated the effects of social responsibility activities on consumer attitudes, product evaluation, corporate support, and corporate trust through structural equations and path analysis. Corporate social responsibility activities were divided into five areas: consumer and environmental protection, social contribution, cultural business, and economic responsibility, and the relative impact on consumer attitudes was considered. The results and strategic implications of this study are as follows. The same results as in previous studies confirmed that the performance of corporate social responsibility activities induces positive attitudes and behaviors of consumers. It proved that the performance of corporate social responsibility activities leads consumers to form a positive attitude, which can eventually be transferred to products and corporate images by a halo effect, leading to product evaluation, corporate support and trust. In addition, the composition dimension and measurement items of corporate social responsibility activities were re-verified, and from a consumer point of view, it was confirmed that social responsibility activities include not only economic activities, but also activities that contribute positively, such as social contribution, support for local and cultural projects, and actions that do not harm society as a whole, such as protecting consumer rights and protecting the environment.

Despite the orientation towards online retailing journey accelerated by the application of new-age technologies in the pandemic context, the role of the physical store still has a central role in luxury shopping in the digital omni-channel perspective. Digital technologies have increased their impact on consumers (Evanschitzky et al., 2020; Klaus & Zaichkowsky, 2020; Kaplan & Haenlein, 2020; Davenport et al, 2020; Huang and Rust, 2021a; Pantano et al, 2022). In today’s digital age, AI is one of the new-age technologies raising growing interest for their potential disruptive impact on marketing and retailing in different sectors (Forbes, 2022).

This study examined the effects of user interactivity with VR in a digital retail setting on mental imagery and sensory brand app experience and its consequential impacts on perceived enjoyment, perceived usefulness, attitude toward using VR, and behavioral intent. Mental imagery is understood in relation to quantity, vividness, and valence. The user involvement with the device is employed as a moderator to fully understand the impact of VR in connection with consumer engagement. An IKEA VR application was utilized for this study. A convenient sample of college students was recruited from a large research university in the US. The findings of the study show that user interactivity impacts mental imagery, and it subsequently influences sensory brand app experience, perceived enjoyment, perceived usefulness, attitude toward using VR, and behavioral intent. Overall, this study provides meaningful and practical information to academicians and practitioners.

Although influencers establish their reputation and gain popularity by demonstrating expertise toward a specific topic, there is a huge potential to extend their market by tapping into different topics. Specifically, by promoting different types of product categories. However, previous studies tend to have different predictions about the success of this practice. Such that, according to the match-up hypothesis, it is unlikely that the influencer can successfully promote different product categories. On the other hand, Stereotype Content Model (SCM) suggests that influencers might be perceived as competence that overgeneralized to other domains. By conducting a survey to 302 online consumers in Indonesia, this study aims to test two competing routes toward influencer’s success in promoting product categories other than their initial expertise within the fashion context. The findings of this study revealed the primacy of match-up hypotheses, even when the influencers are perceived as competent, it does not mean that consumers are willing to follow their recommendation if it is outside their expertise domain. Only when there is an influencer-product fit, consumers are willing to accept their recommendation. However, perceived competence of the influencers can promote acceptance to follow recommendation on different product categories only when it established trust on the influencer.

With the increasing popularity and attention towards virtual stores, the present study examines how consumers' perception of spatial and human crowdedness affects consumers' behavioral and attitudinal intention to shop at the virtual store through positive emotional arousals. Using two between-subject experiments (crowdedness: low spatial x high; low human x high), 171 participants were randomly assigned to each condition. The results demonstrated highly crowded virtual space with more merchandise creates a consumer’s positive emotional arousal, which leads to a positive attitude and satisfaction. Further, consumers perceive positive social crowdedness (i.e., when other shoppers are present) develops excitement among consumers who may entice positive attitude and satisfaction. Findings suggest that retailers should develop stimulating virtual stores.

Companies frequently rely on pricing algorithms to automate their price-setting in online markets; thereby, algorithmic dynamic pricing (ADP) has become a common pricing practice in the digital era, with retailers regularly tweaking products’ prices in their online shops. On Amazon.com alone, millions of price changes occur within a day, which corresponds to a price change approximately every ten minutes for each product. Yet, so far, the effects of such pricing algorithms on consumers are unclear. Since ascertaining consumer reactions is essential for retailers’ pricing strategies and retailers need to know how to mitigate negative reactions, our focal research questions are: How do consumers respond to ADP? How can retailers mitigate negative consumer reactions to ADP?

The purpose of this research is to examine the impact of firms’ repeated use of crowdfunding on consumer responses and the funding success, focusing on compensatory crowdfunding that provides products and services when funding is successful. The result indicates that the number of crowdfunding round and achievement rates are related to parabolic forms. These results suggest that investors can recognize the number of crowdfunding round as a important signal for crowdfunding investment. In addition, this research aims to present practical implications for crowdfunding firms and platforms to attract ongoing investments.

Intelligent machines (e.g., artificial intelligence, algorithms, and robotics) with the capability to make decisions autonomously either augment or substitute human employees due to rapid evolution in technology (Man Tang et al., 2022; Larivière, et al., 2017). Therefore, studies have shown that in consumer services, the role of intelligent machines falls into two categories: augmentation or substitution of human employees (McLeay et al., 2021; Larivière, et al., 2017). Specifically, human employee augmentation means that the role of intelligent machines is to assist and complement human employee, with the two used together to produce better outcomes (Larivière, et al., 2017). For example, in a retail bank in Japan, collaborative robots work side by side with bank employees to serve customers (Marinova et al., 2017); IBM’s Watson can assist doctors with diagnosis (Larivière, et al., 2017). Human employee substitution reflects the role of intelligent machines to replace human workers (McLeay et al., 2021). For example, restaurants such as Spyce, where robots are replacing human employees to take orders for customers (Wang et al., 2022). However, there are still a lot of unexplored aspects concerning consumers’ specific reactions toward this new form of a service provider. The study examines customers responses when human employees are augmented or substituted by intelligent machines, including responses that promote beneficial consumption (e.g., join a health program) and those that promote harmful consumption (e.g., pursue high return-risk offerings, enhance preferences for risk-taking behavior). In this article, we attempt to answer the following questions:

Purpose of the study is to explore the effect of the types of mobile coupons(textvs. image-focused coupons; free-gift vs. discount coupons) on characteristic perception of mobile coupons, and the causal relationships among characteristic perception, attitude, and use intention of mobile coupons. A total of 140 university students participated in experiments with questionnaires including one of the four stimuli. Important findings are as follows. First, image-focused mobile coupons generated more enjoyment than did text-focused coupons. However, the text/image-focused coupons were not different in perception of informativeness and credibility of mobile coupons. Second, enjoyment perception was significantly increased when image-focused contents were combined with discount coupons whereas enjoyment perception was decreased when text-focused contents were combined with free-gift coupons. This interaction effect reflects that the level of enjoyment of consumers can be changed in terms of the combination of the value-provision types of coupons and the text-image focused contents. Third, it was found that consumer perception of coupon characteristics formed attitudes toward mobile coupons, and use intention of mobile coupons was determined by attitudes toward mobile coupons. Study findings may fill the void of research investigating the effect of text-image contents and the types of coupons on consumer reponses toward mobile coupons. Mobile coupons have limited quantity of information within a small size of mobile phone screen, therefore, the results were not consistent with prior research tested with mobile advertisements indicating the effect of text-image contents on perception of informativeness and credibility.