Search results

This study aims to examine the impact of non-fungible tokens (NFTs’) characteristics on Chinese consumers’ purchase intention towards luxury fashion physical products. It also investigates the mediating role of perceived hedonic value and moderating role of perceived NFT–physical product fit during the buying process.

A conceptual model combining Stimuli–Organism–Response Model and Theory of Consumption Value was established. A purposive sampling method was adopted to collect data from luxury fashion consumers aged 21–41 who lived in four Tier 1 cities in China. Structural equation modelling and SmartPLS 4.0 were utilized to analyse the 304 valid questionnaires collected.

The study’s findings indicate that luxury fashion NFTs with four characteristics (NFT scarcity, NFT exclusivity, NFT design aesthetic and NFT novelty) affect Chinese consumers’ purchase intention towards luxury fashion physical products positively, with perceived hedonic value mediating these relationships. Further, perceived NFT–physical product fit moderates the relationship between perceived hedonic value and purchase intention.

This study bridges a gap in investigating the interplay between NFTs as intangible collectibles and tangible products, by stressing the significant role played by NFTs in influencing the purchase intention of luxury fashion products. This paper contributes to an understanding of consumers’ psychological responses and behaviours towards NFTs, providing a new perspective in the study of luxury fashion NFTs in the context of marketing strategy and consumption.

This study aims to determine Chinese consumers’ motivations for purchasing virtual luxury fashion in virtual worlds (i.e. luxury skins in video games), building on a theory of consumption values, luxury fashion and virtual consumption studies.

The researchers conducted qualitative research that utilised semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis using NVivo. About 21 Chinese participant responses were collected and analysed to identify and classify themes.

Consumers purchase virtual luxury products for nine reasons. These include social value, driven by conspicuous consumption needs and self-expression; emotional value, involving perceived enjoyment and emotional connection derived from game characters; functional value, reflected in visual aesthetics; epistemic value, rooted in novelty and conditional value, linked to continual usage intention. These findings offer crucial insights into how consumers perceive the value of virtual luxury. The findings also reveal that brand awareness and perceived exclusivity shape consumers’ perceptions of the social value of virtual luxury fashion, which, in turn, influences their purchasing decisions.

This study is timely for both luxury brands and creators of virtual worlds, given the increasing collaboration between these two industries. By building upon a theory of consumption values, this study contributes to the rapidly growing research field of virtual luxury fashion consumption. Furthermore, the findings of this study, which reveal the key drivers behind consumers’ purchasing decisions, can be applied to real-life brand collaborations with creators of virtual worlds. A comprehensive understanding of consumer purchase motivations can offer strategic guidance for virtual product development and the enhancement of customer experiences in these environments.

Despite growing research on metaverse, the way this is associated with psychological contracts in business is virtually absent. In this paper, we aim to provide a conceptual exploration of this association between metaverse and the psychological contracts of both employees and customers.

This is a conceptual article that examines the implications of metaverse as a workplace and marketplace on frontline employees’ and customers’ psychological contracts. In doing so, we develop a conceptual model and make propositions, while we also offer recent examples of firms that have moved to metaverse.

Although we do not provide empirical results, we indicate through a set of propositions how changes in the workplace and marketplace caused by the firm’s use of metaverse influence the psychological contract of its employees and customers, as well as how these are interrelated. We further explain that the accomplishment of these psychological contracts in a metaverse context can favorably affect business performance.

Companies need to anticipate, monitor and adjust to the changing pattern of psychological contracts of both employees and customers as they move to metaverse because this will have serious implications on their business performance.

We introduce metaverse, a recently introduced phenomenon that is gaining momentum in the business world, causing significant changes in the workplace and marketplace and seriously affecting the nature of psychological contracts of both employees and customers.

With the development of e-commerce network platforms, platform enterprises have mostly completed the first stage of user accumulation during the start-up period. How to enhance users’ stickiness and stimulate their continual participation in platform business activities through innovation and platform design has become a decisive factor for platform enterprises. To increase the motivation of e-commerce platform users, this paper explores the positive impact of gamified rewards on platform user stickiness by dividing the gamified rewards design into social and functional rewards, and studies the mediating role of self-identification and the moderating role of perceived goal progress and information disclosure.

This study applies the “S-O-R” (stimulus–organism–response) model as the theoretical basis for constructing a model of user stickiness for e-commerce platforms and subdivides gamified reward design into social rewards and functional rewards to explore how they affect platform user stickiness and the boundaries of the influencing mechanism.

It turns out both types of gamified rewards promote users’ perception of self-identification, which in turn affects the intention to continue using the platform. In addition, platforms with designs about users’ quantified self-behavior – perceived goal progress in the gaming experience can effectively enhance the effectiveness of users’ gamification rewards. Information disclosure moderates the relationship between the two types of gamification design and self-identification. For functional reward designs and social reward designs, information disclosure can improve users’ self-identification and therefore enhance users’ stickiness.

This study verifies the impact of gamification design on platform user stickiness, confirming the mediating role of self-identification and the moderating role of perceived goal progress and information disclosure, which has theoretical and practical implications for how platform enterprise can maintain user activity in the digital context.

Metaverse is one of the decade’s most exciting and transformative technological innovations. While the metaverse holds immense promise, it has potential risks and dark sides. This research aims to investigate and identify the crucial dark dimensions associated with the metaverse platforms.

Employing a qualitative phenomenological methodology, the authors interviewed 45 metaverse users to unravel dark dimensions related to the metaverse. Analyzing the themes extracted from the participants' insights revealed an alignment with the underpinnings of the Technology Threat Avoidance (TTA) theory.

The findings of this study revealed seven major dark dimensions: addiction and dependency, isolation and loneliness, mental health issues, privacy and security, cyberbullying and harassment, digital identity theft and financial exploitation.

The study helps organizations and metaverse platforms understand the crucial dark dimensions of the metaverse. This study concludes by synthesizing prevalent themes and proposing propositions, offering insights for practical application and policy considerations.

This study provides a deeper understanding of the dark side of the metaverse environment from a user perspective using the underpinnings of TTA theory.

With technological progress, retail companies must understand how to make virtual channels and environments more interactive to enhance user engagement. In this study, we apply the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) paradigm and the Customer Engagement Theory to investigate the impact of various types of customer engagement on the connection amid interactivity and continuous metaverse-empowered marketing channel usage.

The analysis was conducted using PLS-SEM on data collected via a representative sampling approach from 300 respondents on prolific online (the UK was fed as the country with the sample representing people with AR/VR gear).

It has been found that cognitive, emotional and social engagement positively and significantly mediates the relation between the variables studied. Personalization had a significantly negative moderating influence on the association between cognitive engagement and continuous use.

Besides extending existing research in the area of metaverse-empowered channels, the study’s findings provide important guidelines for retail companies to enhance customer engagement in virtual environments effectively.

Financial literacy is crucial in explaining a broader set of investment behaviors. This paper investigates what financial literacy, wine knowledge, risk propensity and wine purchase behavior have in common.

The analysis is on a questionnaire distributed online to an equal number of young adults from a traditional wine-producing and consuming country (France) and a country less linked to wine by tradition (the UK).

The analysis shows how financial literacy, financial education and financial risk attitudes impact the attitudes toward wine purchase decisions. Results indicate that participants prefer to drink wine for pleasure rather than for potential financial gain. Significant relationships exist between financial literacy, wine consumption frequency and willingness to store and pay for wine.

These results allow for a better understanding of wine purchasing behavior in light of willingness to pay, invest and store.

• (1)

  Financial literacy has a positive role in influencing wine storage and investments.

• (2)

  Culture shapes the impact of financial literacy, habits and risk on wine investments.

• (3)

  Gender and age have a role in influencing wine investments.

Financial literacy has a positive role in influencing wine storage and investments.

Culture shapes the impact of financial literacy, habits and risk on wine investments.

Gender and age have a role in influencing wine investments.

Cuteness has grown to be a global phenomenon fueled by the explosive usage of social media. Cute stimuli are ubiquitous, but few have explored their effects on consumer decision-making; direct evidence is particularly lacking in the area of risky choices. In this research, the authors theorize and demonstrate the unintended effects of cuteness exposure on people’s risk preference.

Across five experimental studies situated in various risk contexts, including health, financial and safety, the authors demonstrate that exposure to cuteness makes consumers more risk-seeking due to the reduction of situational conscientiousness. Study 1 used an experimental lab study with a real circumstance to test the effect on the risk associated with food consumption. Study 2 used a classical gambling experiment to test the effect on financial risk. Studies 3a and 3b used a mass shooting news article to test the effect on safety risk. Lastly, study 4 tested the mediating role of low conscientiousness with the classical gambling experiment.

The findings show that exposure to cuteness makes people more likely to take risks in various domains (e.g. food consumption, safety and financial decisions).

This study tested the effect of cuteness on risk-seeking with a limited number of domains of risk. In addition, the authors tested the effect with visual cuteness stimuli, while individuals may perceive cuteness through other senses, such as sound.

The findings have implications for business owners and marketers when deciding whether and how to use cuteness to promote their products and brands, as well as to avoid potential repercussions. For example, a marketer for a new extreme sports company could use videos or images of cute animals participating in sports on the company’s social media channels to expand its market share. In addition, findings from this research would make consumers more attentive when facing cute appeals as they gain a better understanding of how exposure to cuteness could impact their own decision-making.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first to demonstrate that exposure to subtle, cute environmental cues has a robust effect on consumers’ risk preferences across various domains, regardless of age and gender.