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.

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.

Every year consumers spend billions of dollars on impulse purchases across the globe. Noticeably, occasions for impulse buying have been expanding due to new technologies and the growth of e-commerce that enhanced both the consumer’s accessibility to products and the ease of purchase transactions (e.g., one-click purchase) (Strack and Deutsch 2006). For instance, the retail store have become ubiquitous—being present on our desktop, in our mailbox, on our phone, in subway platform, in gas station kiosks—and reaching every street corner in our neighborhood. Such ubiquitous nature of mobile commerce combined with the introduction of IT devices (e.g., smartphones, tablets) makes consumers even more vulnerable to the sudden, powerful, and persistent urge to buy something instantly (i.e. impulse buying) (Rook 1987; Watson et al. 2002; Danaher et al. 2015). From the perspective of firms, this indicates that marketing opportunities to influence shopper attitudes and behavior can emerge at any point in the shopping cycle from the couch in a person’s living room to the shopping cart in mobile devices and media (Shankar et al. 2010; 2011). While impulse buying has been a well-known approach to explaining empirical deviations from the rational choice model in the literature (Strack et al. 2006), previous researchers have mainly focused on antecedents of impulsive behaviors, such as mood (Rook and Gardner 1993), self-construal (Zhang and Shrum 2009), chronic goals (Ramanathan and Menon 2006) and consumers’ self-loneliness (Sinha and Wang 2013). However, relatively little has been studied on what factors drive consumers to purchase products impulsively and how firms can utilize marketing activities (e.g., 4Ps) to engage consumers in such behavior. There exist a few studies paying attention to the interaction of individual characteristics and marketing variables for impulse buying (e.g., Bell et al. 2010; Inman et al. 2009; Narasimhan et al. 1996) but several issues still can arise from measurement problems, self-selection, lack of marketing variables, and limited breadth of product categories. In particular, researchers have used the term ―unplanned‖ purchases exchangeably with impulse purchases despite a conceptual distinction between the two terms: impulse buying is defined with three key components; unplanned, difficult to control, and resulting in emotional response (Rook 1987). In other words, mostly all impulse purchases are unplanned, but not all unplanned purchases are impulse buys and we cannot rule out other alternative explanations (e.g., it is a ―reminder‖ purchase based on true needs). In this study, therefore, we aim to differentiate two terms and investigate the consumers’ impulsive purchase behaviors using the actual behavioral data with respect to product characteristics, customer demographics, timing and controllable marketing activities such as advertising. We obtained the data from one of the leading TV shopping channels in Korea on 2,657 products and 17,848 air time slots covering a broader range of both hedonic and utilitarian products including electronics, food, fashion, home appliances, and so on (7.8 million orders and 2 million order cancels). Unlike typical supermarket shopping where consumers can actively search products, programming on TV shopping channels are shown randomly to viewers which helps us rule out self-selection problems. Most importantly, distinct from previous studies, we use an objective measure for impulse buying by exploiting the actual order placement and subsequent order cancellation (i.e., regret with retrospective judgment about purchase decisions). We find that product characteristics are the primary factors explaining the half (60.5%) of impulse purchase ratio variations followed by marketing variables (20.4%), and timing fixed effects (10.9%). Interestingly, we find little evidence of consumer demographics (1%) as a driver for impulsive buying behavior. Consequently, we focus on the interplay between product categories and marketing activities. Specifically, we classified the product categories into utilitarian and hedonic on the basis of the gross product categories and investigated the roles of two main marketing activities: advertising and price promotion. We find that the informative and persuasive roles of advertising (Akerberg 2003; Mehta et al. 2004) lead to a U-shaped effect on impulse purchases over time as the informative role attenuates over time but the persuasive role increases over time. While utilitarian products are more likely to be influenced by informative role of advertising and hedonic goods are more likely to be influenced by persuasive role of advertising, we detect that the U shape would be moved to the left (right) with a price discount (increase). In other words, price information does not change over time but the persuasive role increases over time with a price discount. Hence, our results can provide managerial insights for retailers and manufacturers to utilize point-of-sale marketing tactics and to improve their shopper engagement strategies to trigger impulse purchases.

Despite its innovative and avant-garde reputation, the luxury industry initially began showing a very low commitment to new online marketing tools and it held a conservative approach to selling when compared to other sectors. Nowadays, the context has dramatically changed and luxury brands are approaching with an increasing interest social networks as well as the online selling. This research aims to clarify the current strategic approaches of the players in the different luxury markets towards the social commerce phenomenon, from both a theoretical and an empirical point of view. The purpose is to test a framework that can be used to classify luxury companies’ strategies regarding social media adoptions based on actual theories on social media. Four strategies related to the social media adoption by luxury brands have been identified: the Social brand ambassadors strategy class (low promotional content percentage and low social commerce score) includes those brands that use social media for entertainment and user engagement; the Social showcases strategy (high promotional content percentage and low social commerce score) includes those brands that use their social accounts as online catalogues; the Social infotainers strategy (low promotional content percentage and high social commerce score) includes those brands that scored high in social commerce, mainly because of the provision of informative content and brand–consumer interactions, but they were linked to more entertainment-oriented actions rather than product-related ones. Finally, the Social sellers strategy (high promotional content percentage and high social commerce score) includes those brands that have integrated social commerce into their online strategies and have subsequently exploited the potential of social media to drive online and offline sales. The database is built using original data from a content analysis of 100 luxury brands’ postings on five different social media platforms – namely Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and Pinterest. The total final sample included 12,132 Facebook posts, 21,216 tweets on Twitter, 1,105 YouTube videos, 10,138 Instagram pictures/videos, and 117,359 Pinterest pictures. The main findings are the following: luxury brands adopt at this stage the Social brand ambassadors and Social showcases approaches; brands belonging to the perfumery, cosmetics, jewelry and watches markets show a more developed attitude towards the social commerce; in other luxury markets, such as wine and spirits, brands still adopt a Social Brand Ambassador strategy, while managers should increase the promotional content in order develop the social commerce. The Fashion & Accessories brands show a positive relationship between the percentage of promotional content and social commerce score. This means that social commerce adoptions depend on the single brand’s strategic choices, ranging from low adoption to best practices. In general, social commerce is still not widespread; many luxury fashion brands, while presenting new collections during fashion weeks, focused on fashion shows, backstage events, and celebrities, rather than really promoting the new product lines with materials, availability, and purchasing indications. This social media approach is mainly focused on increasing brand awareness rather than increasing social commerce. If managers aim at increasing social commerce they should add direct call to action and link the contents to e-commerce market place. Automotive brands are concentrated in the Social showcases area; This sector encounters natural limitations in the introduction of social commerce due to the difficulty of selling products through the digital channel; many brands have, however, devised strategies to approach their users during the purchasing process prior to the actual transaction to take advantage of the increasing ROPO phenomenon. Conversely, the Perfumes & Cosmetics sector shows a highly fragmented approach to social commerce. The content analysis based on single post contents has shown that actually the contents are based on pictures of the products, or the brand, information on events, and a large and increasing presence of video posts based storytelling about the history of the product and the brand heritage; the most social commerce oriented posts are picture or video focused on the product. The commercial contents that aim at developing the see now, buy now approach are mainly based on video shows.

Drawing on psychological reactance theory, this study examines consumers’ reactions to grocery categories’ variety reductions. Results show negative main effects on post-reduction satisfaction with variety and store patronage intentions, which are moderated by grocery category nature and by consumers’ intrinsic need for variety and attitude toward private label brands.

Purpose: It has been suggested that the most potent form of the country-of-origin effect is derived from a country having a perceived specialization in a particular product category. By subjecting a novel conceptualization of how products and places form images in conjunction to experimental trial the evaluative pertinence of different facets of interrelation between country image and product categories is examined. Design/Methodology/Approach: A psychometric test-series, featuring a large number of brands from various product categories and countries was conducted. The results were subjected to structural equation modeling using a partial least squares approach. Findings: The findings suggest that the country-of-origin effect can be thought of as being derived simultaneously from several different image constructs, ranging from general to category-specific. These images generate country-of-origin effects in aggregation and the evaluative influence increases with the degree of specificity of how the image construct applies to a specific evaluation situation. Originality/Value: The present study represents an attempt to discern the relative size of the country-of-origin effects derived from different facets of the relationship between a country image and product categories. The results provide a tentative answer to the question of just how much product categories matter in the context of the country-of-origin effect.