This study investigates the role of consumers’ value orientations on their attitude towards assertive green advertisements. We find that biospheric value orientation improves attitudes towards assertive ads and hedonic value orientation positively affects consumers’ perceived threat to their freedom. Besides, the study supports the role of assertiveness in persuasive communication.

Gastro-tourism extends beyond what to eat, but also the attractiveness and the environment. It encompasses a tourist experience journey starting from pre, during, until post-travel. Gastro tourism in the new normal engages with traditional vs novel value of experiences. This study aims to answer how Gen Z experiences gastro tourism and the impact of digital technologies using surveys on Tiktok Ads followed by an experiment with an immersive culinary adventure using 3D visual technology.

Due to the rapid development of technology, the environment is rapidly changing, and new regulations are emerging in the global society. In addition, environmental and social problems such as the pandemic and deepening social polarization have intensified, and the international community and investors have begun to regard ESG as a key factor in decision making. Regulations and systems reflecting ESG elements, such as the Carbon Neutral Act to cope with environmental problems and the Serious Disaster Act to cope with social problems, have already been enacted and implemented in major countries such as the EU and the Republic of Korea. In particular, the EU is pushing to publish ESG disclosure standards and make ESG disclosure mandatory next year. Given this trend, companies should consider ESG management as their business key strategy, as well as consumer characteristics and regulation.

Anthropomorphism is a prevalent marketing practice that fosters consumer perceptions of a brand as humanlike. In today’s hyperconnected marketplace, firms are increasingly imbuing their brands with human features with the hope that the favorable perceptions of humanlike attributes in nonhuman objects could lead to consumers’ positive evaluation of humanized products. For example, Amazon has imbued Echo, a voice-activated Bluetooth speaker, with the human name Alexa, a female voiced virtual assistant that employs familiar human speech pattern, and some advanced personality traits. Similarly, Hormel Foods has used Mr. Peanut, the advertising logo and mascot of Planters that embodies the brands’ selling points. Mr. Peanut is depicted as a humanized peanut with arms, legs, top hat, and monocle and became a vessel of brand meaning and personality, taking on the product quality that the brand aims to communicate. Prior studies that use brand anthropomorphism as a foundation have investigated the impact of brand anthropomorphism on various outcomes such as product evaluations, emotional responses, and intentions to replace a product. However, what is missing from prior work is an understanding of the impact of brand anthropomorphism on the purchase intentions for clearance products which are sold under a retailer’s promotional strategy as an inventory management tool. The lure of cheapened goods may expand the range of consumers who can afford to buy merchandise from the company or may provide existing customers with an appealing purchasing option. In light of this, clearance sales are known to be effective not only for increasing store traffic by alluring price-conscious consumers but also for reducing excess inventory in a retail location or a chain of product fulfillment. The strategic importance of clearance sales has increased since the breakdown of COVID-19 which forced retailers to close their stores and caused demand for many product categories to plunge in early 2020. After the initial shock of the pandemic, consumer spending recovered fairly quickly, giving rise to record levels later in the same year. This surprising recovery continued into the next year as consumer sentiment and spending levels surged together, resulting in consumer demand that surpassed retailers’ stock levels. However, due to inflation and amounting fears of recession, consumer spending started to slow down again in 2022, resulting in the opposite of what happened in the previous year. Such a reversal caused many retailers to face high inventory levels and declining profitability, forcing them to cut prices to move excess inventory out of stores, which increases the importance of conducting clearance sales effectively. Clearance sales are prevalent in retail markets, where considerable discounts are typically offered for leftover items (Zhang & Cooper, 2008). Retailers widely use clearance sales to liquidate their unsold products at the end of a selling season (Nocke & Peitz, 2007). They have strong incentives to get rid of the remaining items in order to make room for the new products (Sällström, 2001). Previous research suggests that anthropomorphism leads consumers to apply human schema to a product, which in turn affects their attitude toward the product (Aggarwal & McGill, 2007, 2012). In this research, we aim to identify the negative effect of anthropomorphism on consumers’ attitude toward clearance products.

In determining artwork prices, the identification of characteristics of the artist is crucial. While the impact of demographic profiles of artists has been examined in the literature on art pricing, the relationships among artists have been highly disregarded. In the current research, the authors focus on the measures of network centrality derived from group exhibitions in order to investigate their influence on artwork prices. The analysis results suggest that degree centrality and closeness centrality positively affect artwork prices, whereas betweenness centrality has an adverse effect. Moreover, network centrality values play a more important role in explaining artwork prices than historical reputation indexes such as gender, nationality, time elapsed after death, and main residencies of the artists. This study contributes to branding literature, while also providing art marketers with valuable insight into artist branding.

Visually superior design provides a competitive edge in the marketplace by attracting consumers and increasing the perceived value of product quality and functionality. Although the positive influences of visual product design on market performance are well documented in the literature, little is investigated on how visual design plays a role in a negative situation such as product failure. The positive halo effect of visual design on product evaluation is called ‘beauty premium’, while little is investigated on how beauty premium changes when consumers face product failure. For example, would the beauty premium continue or fire back when a product with superior design, called a ‘beauty’ in this study, has functional harm? To answer this inquiry, we focus on the following research questions 1) Would the beauty effect protect or damage consumer purchase intention and product sales after product failure, and 2) Under what conditions can beauty effects be positive or negative after product failure?

Algorithms are rapidly altering the way society operates (SIOP, 2020). Algorithms are used in modern businesses for tasks such as hiring, advising investors on financial matters, recommending new products to customers (Shankar, 2018). However, lay people frequently oppose them, a phenomenon known as algorithm aversion (e.g., Dietvorst et al., 2015). While prior research tries to address this issue by identifying cognitive and affective predictors of algorithm aversion, we seek to contribute to the algorithm aversion literature by investigating an understudied antecedent of people’s support for algorithm adoption—their cultural values (Dietvorst & Bartels, 2022).

Engaging customers is a critical requirement for sharing economy platforms (SEPs) to sustain and grow their user base. Although the interactions between users who consume the service (customers) and those who provide it (peer service providers) are the primary source of SEPs’ economic value, little is known about the role of interactivity in driving customer engagement. This research links these two important concepts by theorizing and empirically testing the influence of different dimensions of interactivity (two-way communication, participation, joint problem-solving) on customer engagement (cognitive engagement, emotional engagement, behavioral engagement) in SEPs.

Blockchain is an immutable ledger that records transactions and tracks assets using a common communication protocol. It stores a copy of the blockchain and implements a consensus function to verify transactions. Blockchain is applied to industries beyond finance, such as retail, to maintain security and transparency. Consumers with knowledge of blockchain technology are likely to be affected when evaluating products with blockchain embedded, impacting their product evaluation. The study investigates the impact of blockchain technology on consumers' product evaluation and how knowledge of blockchain and product quality moderate its effects.

The market for counterfeit luxury goods is growing rapidly, with estimates suggesting that counterfeit trades are valued at around $4.5 trillion globally, with 60% to 70% of this being made up of counterfeit luxury goods. Research has shown that counterfeits dilute the perceived quality of luxury brands and reduce consumers' purchase intentions. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are a form of ownership record that is linked and stored on a blockchain.

This study examined the combined effects of scarcity appeals and time remaining from the travel date on attitudes toward advertising and purchase intention. The results lead to a rationale for disparate advertising strategies of scarcity appeals considering the temporal distance of a consumer's hotel booking.

Online shopping has grown exponentially in the last decade, benefiting both consumers and companies. Among several advantages, online shopping lets consumers compare values and prices from different stores on multiple mobile devices in real time. In addition, for young people, it is a way of expressing their identity and independence.

E-commerce has seen significant growth since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. This has led to changes in consumer preferences and increased pressure on companies to develop effective e-commerce and social media capabilities to retain customers. This study examines the impact of these capabilities on customer retention and firm performance by collecting quantitative data from 160 small U.S. e-commerce companies in the fashion industry. The study finds that customer retention positively relates to firm performance and that factors, including cross-device shopping, payment methods, page speed, standard delivery time, Pinterest activity, and Instagram activity, significantly impact customer retention. The study suggests strategies for companies to remain competitive in the dynamic e-commerce landscape.

This research demonstrates that consumers with high (vs. low) usage of social networking sites (SNSs) prefer NFTs representing a partial but the only digital piece (vs. one of the limited digital copies) of artwork. NFT uniqueness is identified as the psychological mechanism underlying the SNS usage effect on NFT preference.

This study examines the impact of digital payment methods on consumer spending, highlighting adoption's moderating role. A two-phase approach, involving 741 survey participants and 166,151 customer records, reveals that digital payments increase willingness to pay and total spending compared to credit cards. Adoption plays a pivotal role, with simple payment users showing significantly higher credit card usage than non-users.

The present study is designed to assess the ethical-moral effectiveness of three levels of AI implementations in the hospitality industry, which include mechanical AI for transactional services (automated service), thinking AI for functional services (algorithms search), and feeling AI for hedonic services (biometric sensors) when compared to consumers’ interactions with human. AI service robots are ethically challenging in use and morally controversial in its acceptance of labor replacement in hospitality contexts. In the hospitality industry, service robots have been rapidly adopted replacing frontline human services (Park et al., 2021). Service robots refer to “system-based autonomous and adaptable interfaces that interact, communicate and deliver service to an organization’s customers” (Wirtz et al., 2018, p.909). On the one hand, the applications of artificial intelligence (AI)-based service robots are promising in this field owing to remarkable accuracy in error reduction, portion control, and cost control in service operation and delivery (Berezina et al., 2019). However, on the other hand, there has been a debate on ethical and moral principles and values regarding service robots replacing human labor (Cowls et al., 2021). Nevertheless, restaurants’ adoption of service robots seems inevitable in the current marketplace as labor shortages and rising wages have challenged them to invest in automation (Tanzi, 2021). While prior research focused on the benefits of AI-based service offerings (e.g., Cristou et al., 2023; Huang & Rust, 2021; Park et al., 2021), this study explored the extent to which AI-based service robots are accepted by consumers without rising concern about service robots replacing human labors. To this end, we adopted Huang and Rust’s framework that identifies three levels of AI applications: mechanical, thinking, and feeling AIs. Mechanical AIs refer to the automation of repetitive and routine tasks (e.g., self-service technologies); thinking AIs facilitate rational decision-making based on data processing (e.g., conversational intelligent systems such as Siri); feeling AIs are able to interact with human emotions (e.g., humanlike robots that respond to human emotions such as Sophia). Further, we adopted the construal level theory (Trope & Liberman, 2003) to examine how different levels of AIs’ service capabilities influence the way that people think about AI-based service robots. In brief, this study demonstrated how different levels of AI benefits influence consumers’ moral concerns about AI-based service robotization’s replacement of human labor and social acceptance.

Referral programs are ubiquitous in the marketplace and incentive design is crucial in such programs. Most companies opt for a two-sided design where they reward both the referee and recipients in their referral programs. However, surprisingly little research examines the incentive designs in two-sided programs.

Webpage cookies collect and authorize access to users’ online footprints and regulate the data authorization for access, sharing, and usage. Data authorization, which is built based on, but exceeding cookies protocol, enables personalized recommendations under the framework of data-driven content-user matching in a way against customer privacy invasiveness and data breaches. However, gaps exist in how users’ desire for a personalized experience and the site’s perceived ethics contribute to the site-trust and cookies acceptance of categories at each type of site and how businesses’ reward incentives and cookie-based controls may intensify the willingness to contribute to the user data donation continuously.

This study will explore the paradoxical tension influencer face when promoting sustainable luxury leisure activities for sponsoring brands. Social media influencers play a pivotal role in this advocacy as luxury consumers are inspired to associate themselves with sophisticated social values, superior social status, or differentiate themselves from others with lower esteem. However, the commodification of their influence to stimulate consumption amongst their audience and followers creates paradoxical tensions between their brand performance, economic incentives, and ethical socio-ecological outcomes. Despite numerous studies have been undertaken to examine the role of influencers in sustainable luxury tourism, there is still a need for understanding of how influencers negotiate the paradoxical tensions arising from (a) sustainability and luxury; (b) instrumental goals and personal brand identity. Data sources for this study include influencer interviews and social media contents created by the influencers, such as video, blog posts and tweets.

Central to retail therapy is the notion that stress can be eased by simple browsing, which produces immediate and positive psychological effects through shopping. In the Philippines, retailers are slowly adopting omnichannel strategies as a response to the fundamental shift to online retailing. However, during the pandemic, shoppers resorted to retail therapy to appease emotions and senses. This might explain how the Filipino deserve ko ‘to (I deserve this) mindset can be a form of self-gifting that may relate to retail therapy.