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This paper aims to investigate whether portrayals of homosexuality in advertising can generate social effects in terms of consumer-perceived social connectedness and empathy.

In three experimental studies, the effects of advertising portrayals of homosexuality were compared to advertising portrayals of heterosexuality. Study 1 uses a thought-listing exercise to explore whether portrayals of homosexuality (vs heterosexuality) can evoke more other-related thoughts and whether such portrayals affect consumer-perceived social connectedness and empathy. Study 2 replicates the findings while introducing attitudes toward homosexuality as a boundary condition and measuring traditional advertising effects. Study 3 replicates the findings while controlling for gender, perceived similarity and targetedness.

The results show that portrayals of homosexuality in advertising can prime consumers to think about other people, thereby affecting them socially. In line with previous studies of portrayals of homosexuality in advertising, these effects are moderated by attitudes toward homosexuality.

This paper adds to a growing body of literature on the potentially positive extended effects of advertising. They also challenge some of the previous findings regarding homosexuality in advertising.

The finding that portrayals of homosexuality in advertising can (at least, temporarily) affect consumers socially in terms of social connectedness and empathy should encourage marketers to explore the possibilities of creating advertising that benefits consumers and brands alike.

The paper challenges the idea that the extended effects of advertising have to be negative. By showing how portrayals of homosexuality can increase social connectedness and empathy, it adds to the discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of advertising on a societal level.

This paper aims to assess the impact of perceived effort related to packaging on overall product evaluations. Perceived effort, defined as the consumer’s perceptions of how much manufacturer effort that lies behind an offer, is assumed to contribute to evaluations by signaling unobservable characteristics of an offer.

Three between-subjects experiments were conducted with soft drink bottles, which were subject to variation in perceived effort.

The results show that perceived effort was positively associated with overall evaluations. The results also show that the impact of perceived effort was mediated by product quality perceptions, which indicates that effort signals quality.

Perceived effort has to date not been examined in the packaging literature. The present findings thus imply that models of packaging characteristics and their impact on consumers would benefit from including the effort aspect.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight challenges for service firms communicating Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) efforts to customers. Specifically, it focuses on the relationship between ESG metrics and reporting and customer perceptions of social innovativeness.

The empirical material comprises three years of data (2018–2020) covering more than 100 firms from three sources: (1) Social Innovation Index (Sii), which is collected as part of the American Innovation Index (Aii), (2) Bloomberg Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) ESG and (3) Datamaran.

ESG metrics and reporting do not suffice to explain customer perceptions of social innovativeness. Rather, a firm's industry plays the prominent role in affecting these perceptions where service firms are at a disadvantage as customers perceive services as less socially innovative compared to goods.

While ESG metrics and reporting provide important information for investors and regulators, they are not reflected in customers' perceptions of firms' social innovativeness, and services are at a disadvantage relative to goods. Therefore, services researchers and managers must advance their knowledge regarding how to better link ESG metrics and report to customers' perceptions.

The paper offers a first large-scale, cross-industry investigation of how ESG metrics and reporting impact customer perceptions of social innovativeness, leading to a research agenda on communication of ESG.

This paper aims to investigate cross-gender effects of gender stereotypes in advertising. More specifically, it proposes that the negative effects found in studies of women’s reactions to stereotyped female portrayals should hold across gender portrayal and target audience gender.

In two experimental studies, the effects of stereotyped portrayals (vs non-stereotyped portrayals) across gender are compared.

The results show that advertising portrayals of women and men have a presumed negative influence on others, leading to higher levels of ad reactance, which has a negative impact on brand-related effects across model and participant gender, and for gender stereotypes in terms of physical characteristics and roles.

Whereas previous studies have focused on reactions of women to female stereotypes, the current paper suggests that women and men alike react negatively to stereotyped portrayals of other genders.

The results indicate that marketers can benefit from adapting a more mindful approach to the portrayals of gender used in advertising.

The addition of a cross-gender perspective to the literature on gender stereotypes in advertising is a key contribution to this literature.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relative importance of dimensions of experience value in four different hedonic- and utilitarian-dominated services.

The proposed hypotheses are tested by an experimental design. Altogether, four different service experiences, taking place during a tourist weekend trip, were studied using a scenario-based approach. In total, 938 members of a nationally representative online panel in Sweden participated in the research.

Both hedonic and utilitarian value dimensions are present for the different experiences. However, the structures of the value dimensions differ between hedonic- and utilitarian-dominant services. Surprisingly, functional value and value for money influence satisfaction most for both categories of services.

The design of the experiment allowed the authors to test different experiences within the same travel setting. The paper shows that all services include both hedonic and utilitarian elements, indicating awareness of what attracts tourists during the whole process of experiencing a journey. Findings suggest that further studies on different hedonic- and utilitarian-dominant firms within the different tourism service categories should be performed.

Theoretically, the paper only partly confirms the two structures of consumer service value, hedonic and utilitarian, revealed in earlier studies. The paper also reveals that functional value affects satisfaction more strongly in both hedonic- and utilitarian-dominant services. Several explanations for this are suggested. For the tourism industry to enhance experience value and tourist satisfaction, they should, therefore, focus on delivering functional value during the stay and probably more on emotional value in attracting visitors to travel. Results of the paper reveal that services are a part of a continuum between what is mostly utilitarian at the one end and mostly hedonic at the other end.

The purpose of this paper is to examine if the service worker's display of smiles in the service encounter has an effect on customer satisfaction.

An experimental design was used in which participants (N=220) were randomly allocated to one of four service encounters. Two variables were manipulated; the service worker with whom the participant interacted had either a neutral facial expression or a smiling facial expression, and the service worker was either male or female.

The smiling service worker produced a higher level of customer satisfaction than the neutral service worker, regardless of the sex of the service worker (and the sex of the participant). In addition, the results indicate that this outcome involved both emotional contagion and affect infusion.

This paper extends the service literature's discourse on the impact of the service worker's smile behavior on customer satisfaction by including intermediate variables such as appraisals, emotions, and the attitude toward the service worker.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of advertising creativity on consumer perceptions of product quality, value, retailer brand attitude and purchase intention.

Two experimental studies were conducted. Study 1 shows the impact of creativity (high/low) for two product categories (mineral water and chewing gum) and one known retailer. The findings are replicated and extended in Study 2 for four categories (mineral water, chewing gum, batteries and detergent) and two known retailers.

The results show that advertising creativity positively signals perceived product quality, which increases perceived value. These effects fully mediate a positive impact on retailer brand attitude and purchase intentions. The positive effect of advertising creativity on perceived product quality is mediated by perceived advertisement effort.

This study introduces advertising creativity as a way for retailers to increase perceived product quality and value. The results show that advertising creativity increases perceived effort on behalf of the sender, which positively influences purchase intentions.

The current study shows that advertising creativity can work as a signal of product quality, which has positive effects for retailers.

This study aims to explore whether creativity can overcome banner blindness in the viewing of web pages and demonstrate how visual saliency and banner-page congruity constitute the boundary conditions for creativity to improve memory for banner ads.

Three studies were conducted to understand the influence of advertising creativity and banner blindness on recognition of banner ads, which were assessed using questionnaires and bias adjustment. The roles of online user tasks (goal-directed vs free-viewing), visual saliency (high vs low) and banner-page congruity (congruent vs incongruent) were considered.

The findings suggest that creativity alone is not sufficient to overcome the banner blindness phenomenon. Specifically, in goal-directed tasks, the effect of creativity on recognition of banner ads is dependent on banner ads’ visual saliency and banner-page congruity. Creative banners are high on visual saliency, and banner-page congruity yields higher recognition rates.

Creativity matters for attracting consumer attention. And in a web page context, where banner blindness prevails, the design of banners becomes even more important in this respect. Given the prominence of banners in online marketing, it is also necessary to tap the potential of creativity of banner ads.

First, focusing on how creativity influences memory for banner ads across distinct online user tasks not just provides promising theoretical insight on the tackling of banner blindness but also enriches research on advertising creativity. Second, contrary to the popular belief of extant literature, the findings suggest that, in a web page context, improvement in memory for banner ads via creativity is subject to certain boundary conditions. Third, a computational neuroscience software program was used in this study to assess the visual saliency of banner ads, whereas signal detection theory was used for adjustment of recognition scores. This interdisciplinary examination combining the two perspectives sheds new light on online advertising research.

Building on the attitude–behavior relationship model, this study aims to contribute to customer orientation literature by suggesting that service employees’ commitment (i.e. personal attitude) affects their customer orientation via the effect of their participation in knowledge sharing with colleagues (i.e. employees’ behavior).

The empirical analysis has been developed around survey data, collected from 165 service workers of Italian museums. The hypotheses are tested through the SPSS PROCESS macro plugin.

Drawing on the importance of human capital to tourism organizations, this study illustrates that affective commitment has a positive and significant influence on employees’ customer orientation, and that this relationship is fully mediated by knowledge-sharing behaviors.

As attitudes are more stable than behaviors, the findings suggest that managers of tourism organizations implement appropriate selection and recruitment techniques, together with adequate involvement and empowerment activities, to identify and support individuals whose attitudes fit the organizational goals.

Acknowledging the contribution that workers can give to service organizations’ success, this paper enriches the understanding of the mechanisms that underlie the relationship between employees’ attitudes and their orientation toward the customer. Building on the cognitive dissonance theory, it adds to extant research on the individual antecedents of employees’ customer orientation by shedding light on the attitude–behavior relationship in tourism organizations.