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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the evolution of wedding-related consumption of urban families in China during the past 50 years.

This study used qualitative and quantitative approaches to collect and analyse data from 157 families in China. Data collection occurred through semi-structured interviews and questionnaire surveys.

The findings are as follows: average wedding expenses per family have increased, mainly as a result of the substantial growth of indirect wedding costs; the percentage of total wedding expenses represented by direct costs pertaining to the ritual is trending downwards; the percentage of total wedding expenses borne by the groom’s family is much higher than that borne by the bride’s family, and the gap is enlarging; the proportion of newlyweds living with parents was more than 50 per cent in the 1970s and 1980s, decreased to 10 per cent in the 1990s and began slightly increasing again after 2000.

The authors used signal investment theory to explain the fact that the groom’s family bears more of the wedding expenses than the bride’s family does, but more evidences are needed to verify the theory.

This study contributes to the understanding of evolution of wedding consumption of urban families in China, as well as how social and economic factors influence wedding consumptions in different ages, an area with limited previous research. The authors also propose signal investment theory as an alternative explanation to current wedding consumption theories to justify the phenomenon.

This paper attempts to explore why adult progeny initiate progeny–parents family travel, how two generations interact and deal with intergenerational conflicts during travel and how they evaluate their travel experiences from the perspective of filial piety.

Based on in-depth interviews with both parents and their adult progeny, it is found that “repayment” or “compensation” of filial piety is the most important driving force to family travel with parents, and in many cases an adult child exhibits “overspending” by showing filial obedience. On the other hand, parents occasionally utilize filial piety as cultural resources to fulfill their personal goals and to evaluate their interactions with adult children. Finally, the authors offer an exploratory explanation to why filial generation has a relatively low evaluation while parent generation has a higher evaluation of family trip.

The authors suggest that future study in this particular area should attach much more importance to the “filial piety tool boxes” paradigm, which is in parallel with the paradigm of “concept (values) affecting behavior”.

The contribution of this study is to investigate the family travel process of “taking the elderly people to travel” from the perspective of interaction and filial piety.

This article investigated the relationship between loneliness and anthropomorphic products.

The authors conducted three studies to examine their hypotheses.

The authors confirmed that highly lonely people would like to seek for social relationship. What's more, they may try to compensate by creating a sense of connection with nonhuman products so they will prefer anthropomorphic products. Further, the authors demonstrated that information framework can moderate this effect. Highly lonely consumers would increase their preference to anthropomorphic product under promotion-focus information, whereas they would decrease their preference to anthropomorphic product under prevention-focus information. These effects do not exist in lowly lonely consumers. At the same time, the authors demonstrate that the effect is mediated by perceived social connection.

This article contributes to loneliness literature in the consumer behavior field and proves the moderation effect of the information framework, which can deepen our understanding of the relationship between loneliness and anthropomorphic products.

This paper aims to explore how different service relationships (mentoring relationship versus partnering relationship) in service co-production affect service outcomes. Specifically, it aims to explore whether the effects of service relationships on customers’ intention to purchase the service are contingent upon service appeals’ regulatory focus (promotion versus prevention focus) and when the regulatory fit effects exist.

Three experimental studies were conducted to test hypotheses. ANOVA and bootstrapping were used to analyze the data.

The findings of the three experiments provide convergent evidence for the hypotheses. Specifically, when customers view service employees as mentors (versus partners) in service co-production, promotion-focused (versus prevention focused) service appeals effectively enhance customers’ intention to purchase the service because customers experience a regulatory fit. Moreover, the regulatory fit effects are strengthened or attenuated according to customers’ subjective social status.

Service firms should adopt promotion-focused (versus prevention-focused) service appeals if employees and customers are having mentoring (versus partnering) relationships, especially when customers have higher (lower) social status.

To better manage service co-production, this paper investigates beneficial outcomes of mentoring and partnering relationships from a regulatory fit perspective. It highlights the importance of compatibility between service relationship and service appeals’ regulatory focus and demonstrates a novel regulatory fit effect. It also uncovers engagement as the underlying mechanism for the regulatory-fit effect and identifies social class as a boundary condition.

This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/02634509610152682. When citing the article, please cite: John Saunders, Fu Guoqun, (1996), “Dual branding: how corporate names add value”, Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Vol. 14 Iss: 7, pp. 29 - 34.

The deference towards brands that motivated yesterday’s consumers to purchase is no longer so evident in today’s shopping environment. As consumers become more sophisticated in their assessment of brands and more demanding in their requirements, brand management will need to develop more substantive market models to regain the initiative. Outlines an empirical model of brand loyalty that provides diagnostic data to support the management of brand loyal behaviour and customer equity in grocery markets.

The purpose of this study was to explore whether and to what extent brand origin associations transfer to brand personality (BP) perceptions. Whether and in which ways product involvement and familiarity have some moderating effects on this relationship was also explored.

Using experimental design, hypotheses were tested in two product groups.

Results show that subjects not provided brand origin information perceived the competence dimension of BP significantly lower than subjects who were provided brand information. Also, product involvement positively moderates brand origin effect while product familiarity negatively moderates it. However, two-way interactions of brand origin and product involvement are more meaningful than all other interactions and main effects.

The findings were based on data collected in an experimental setting from a convenience sample that was somewhat homogeneous. Also only one dimension of BP (competence) has been used in this study.

Supporting the importance of brand origin on BP perceptions, these results show that the general characteristics of countries can translate into personalities of their brands from the product categories that have a good reputation on international markets. As the most significant implication for practitioners, the maximum effectiveness of marketing communication strategies can be achieved through the effect of brand origin on BP perceptions only if proper segmentation can be made with regard to involvement and familiarity.

This is the first study that has empirically demonstrated the role of image transfer on building BP perceptions through brand origin information.

There are many investigations in design methodologies, but there are also divergences and convergences as there are so many points of view. This study aims to evaluate to corroborate and deepen other researchers’ findings, dissipate divergences and provide directing to future work on the subject from a methodological and convergent perspective.

This study analyzes the previous reviews (about 15 reviews) and based on the consensus and the classifications provided by these authors, a significant sample of research is analyzed in the design for additive manufacturing (DFAM) theme (approximately 80 articles until June of 2017 and approximately 280–300 articles until February of 2019) through descriptive statistics, to corroborate and deepen the findings of other researchers.

Throughout this work, this paper found statistics indicating that the main areas studied are: multiple objective optimizations, execution of the design, general DFAM and DFAM for functional performance. Among the main conclusions: there is a lack of innovation in the products developed with the methodologies, there is a lack of exhaustivity in the methodologies, there are few efforts to include environmental aspects in the methodologies, many of the methods include economic and cost evaluation, but are not very explicit and broad (sustainability evaluation), it is necessary to consider a greater variety of functions, among other conclusions

The novelty in this study is the methodology. It is very objective, comprehensive and quantitative. The starting point is not the case studies nor the qualitative criteria, but the figures and quantities of methodologies. The main contribution of this review article is to guide future work on the subject from a methodological and convergent perspective and this article provides a broad database with articles containing information on many issues to make decisions: design methodology; optimization; processes, selection of parts and materials; cost and product management; mechanical, electrical and thermal properties; health and environmental impact, etc.