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The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of web-surfers’ conative reactions to websites’ dominant hue by taking into account mental imagery’s role.

A conceptual model considering mental imagery as a mediator of web-surfers conative reactions to websites’ dominant hue was tested. It also supposes that mental imagery promoted by websites’ dominant hue is moderated by web-surfers’ involvement towards the product sold. To validate this model, an online experiment was conducted with a sample of 400 web-surfers.

Results reflect the importance of “vividness/clarity” and “valence” dimensions of mental imagery. In fact, hues congruent with the website’s content seem to be more able to generate vivid and positive mental images which affect positively web-surfers’ conative reactions. However, this relationship is reversed when web-surfers are strongly involved with the product sold.

Although this study focused on a particular product category, the obtained results can help the research community to understand better conative reactions of web-surfers to websites’ dominant hue through the consideration of mental imagery’s role.

Findings can help managers to better the performance of their commercial websites through the choice of the adequate background hue.

This study highlights the importance of mental imagery prompted by dominant website’s hue taking into account its congruence degree with the website’s content. It provides empirical evidence about its mediating role.

Influencer marketing is nowadays an essential practice for companies wishing to establish a rapprochement with its customers and gain their trust. Building close relationships can be fulfilled through Instagram live-streamings. Drawing upon equilibrium theory and brand extension theory, this paper aims to determine the effect of influencer–follower congruence on trust, attitudes and intentions in Instagram live-streamings.

A survey was carried out on a sample of 330 Generation Z Instagram users exposed to a live-streaming of an influencer promoting a clothing brand on Instagram. A PLS analysis was performed to validate the proposed model.

Results revealed that influencer–follower congruence in a live-streaming promotes followers’ trust toward the brand. In addition, influencer reputation is found to reinforce this relationship. Moreover, results showed that brand trust mediates the effect of influencer–follower congruence on brand attitude. Besides, the latter turns out be a mediator of the relationship between brand trust and followers’ intentional reactions.

The study has focused on one particular live-streaming as well as a particular influencer which reduces the generalizability of the results. Future research should therefore replicate the study with different stimuli. Furthermore, it would be interesting to manipulate influencer–follower congruence in an experiment to explore the effect of varying congruence levels on trust.

This paper highlights the importance of using live-streamings for brands, especially when Gen Z is targeted. This tool can be considered as very useful to establish a trust relationship with young consumers. Moreover, the study emphasizes on the importance of choosing influencers whose image is in line with that of their followers to establish close relationships with them and gain their trust. The findings also suggest that to further strengthen trust toward the influencer, the latter should benefit from a prior good reputation.

Despite abundance of research on communication strategies on Instagram, little has focused on live-streamings. Particularly, research on influencer–follower congruence is relatively rare. Thus, this study contributes to the understanding of the effects of influencer–follower congruence on followers of Instagram live-streamings and offers valuable theoretical and practical implications in this field.

This paper aims to determine the effect of the congruence between a website's background color and its context (product category) on online trust and resulting behavioral intentions in emerging markets.

An online experiment, conducted on 240 web-surfers, compared two versions of a website (high vs low color-context congruence) in terms of online trust and resulting behavioral intentions. The authors also studied the moderating role of the online shopping experience on the color-context congruence impact on online trust.

Results revealed that a website's color-context congruence enhances online trust. The authors have also demonstrated that online trust plays a mediating role in the relationship between color-context congruence and behavioral intentions. Moreover, they found out that the influence of the color-context congruence on online trust is enhanced when the web-surfer is highly experienced in online shopping.

This research contributes to fill in the theoretical gaps and to better understand the influence of color-context congruence on online trust and behavioral intentions in emerging markets. Indeed, past studies had focused on the color impact on online trust without taking into consideration congruence with the website context. However, this study is limited to a single category of products (tourist products) and only two colors (blue and red) were manipulated in the experiment.

This study highlights the importance of selecting a background's color that matches with the sold product category to reassure web-surfers so that they trust the commercial website and express some favorable intentions like buying.

Prior studies had focused on the website's color effect on online trust neglecting color-context congruence. Our study helps to highlight the importance of selecting background colors matching the product category.