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Artificial intelligence (AI) has several advantages for enhancing marketing strategies. It raises ethical problems about customer priority, market share consolidation and consumer manipulation. This study examines ethical issues from a modern viewpoint, using insights from AI and previous literature review. The implementation of AI in marketing may result in unanticipated ramifications, including the reinforcement of preexisting prejudices, infringement upon customer privacy, restriction of competitive forces and meddling with consumer conduct. This research seeks to enhance the industry by offering a contemporary viewpoint on the ethical issues related to AI utilisation in predictive marketing, based on insights from previous literature review in the field.

This study aims to examine the construction of feminine beauty by onnagata kabuki actors in Japan’s history, with a focus on their narratives in modern advertorials about beauty products. The objective is to identify emerging themes in their narratives and to analyze the symbolism and rhetoric used to persuade the audience to enhance traditional feminine “beauty” by using the specific brand in the wake of Japan’s modernization and Westernization.

The study primarily employs semiotic analysis of advertorials in the newspaper and in the kabuki theatre’s program. They are supplemented with images from premodern prints. Visual content is described and analyzed as well.

The narration of the onnagata in the advertorial is the process of “truth-telling,” where the primary concern of the storyteller is persuasion about truth, such as belief in the new method of makeup with the advertised brand, and falsehood, such as belief in the old method of skincare. Four themes and binary oppositions of values emerged from the data: (1) Identity: selves vs others; (2) Material objects, cosmetics: scientific vs primitive; (3) Practice: competent vs incompetent, and (4) Transformations: intentional vs incidental.

The research shows that Japan’s onnagata transvestism tradition and its influences on women’s beauty practice have existed since the premodern period, preceding contemporary cross-gender beauty practices observed in social media.

The purpose of this study is to explore the consequences of brand grief resulting from the loss of strong consumer-brand relationships (CBR) and devise a typology of grieving consumers. The paper specifically attempts to understand the effect of brand grief stemming from the termination of CBR due to brand death and brand transgression in the context of product and human brand.

Considering the exploratory nature of this study, qualitative research methodology employing in-depth interviews from consumers of global products and human brands is employed. To derive further insights, the artifacts shared by the consumers were also analyzed.

The research identifies several notable consequences of brand grief, encompassing switching, avoidance, hoarding and diminution of trust. Furthermore, a typology is developed to better understand the diverse reactions to brand grief. This model categorizes grieving consumers into four distinct groups – switchers, evaders, amassers and skeptics – across the three stages of grief: onset, experience and acceptance. These findings are consistent across both product and human brands.

Grounded in theories of possessions, loss and recovery and symbolic interactionism across the salient stages from onset to the experiences and eventual acceptance of brand grief, this research delves into the under-examined consequences of brand grief within the marketing literature. Further, the proposed typologies illuminate the scantly understood behaviors of grieving consumers as they navigate the grieving process following CBR loss due to brand death and transgression.

The metaverse, a virtual space where one can build and explore with others using avatars, is drawing global interest. Then questions arise: What drives consumers to customize their avatars and purchase virtual items in the metaverse? Who customizes and purchases virtual items more than others? To find the answers, this study tested a research model that explains why consumers customize their avatars and buy virtual items in the metaverse.

Based on the stimuli-organism-response model, this study posits that metaverse characteristics (i.e. escapism, visual attractiveness, social interaction and autonomy) arouse consumers’ curiosity toward the metaverse, which in turn evokes avatar customization behavior and virtual item purchase intention. Survey data from 501 metaverse-experienced consumers in both the US and Korea are analyzed.

The result revealed that all four metaverse characteristics were found to stimulate consumers’ curiosity. Consumers’ curiosity enhances avatar customization behavior and purchase intention of the virtual items. Further, avatar customization behavior increases the purchase intention of virtual items.

The findings provide valuable insights into how metaverse platforms can effectively engage consumers by stimulating curiosity, especially through social interaction, and offering extensive avatar customization options and virtual items.

This study highlights how the metaverse’s open-ended experiences, user-driven customization and social interactions – unlike traditional online games – spark consumer curiosity. It emphasizes the pivotal role of curiosity in driving metaverse engagement and highlights the need to consider it as a central construct in future research. Additionally, this study provides managerial implications for virtual item purchases in the metaverse.

This article examines how geographic location (i.e. local or nonlocal) influences fans’ communicative convergence or distinctiveness in the context of an informal online fan community (i.e. Twitter [X]). Nonlocal fans, who live geographically distant from the team they support, derive distinctiveness and belonging from supporting a team from afar. This study considers how these needs materialize in online communication.

Text mining and textual analysis were employed to collect and evaluate tweets (N = 12,865) in terms of expressed emotion. Tweets were evaluated using the NRC VAD sentiment lexicon (i.e. valence, arousal, dominance) and then categorized based on geographic location and in-group/out-group status. The resulting groups were then analyzed with a two-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) to examine how geographic location relates to the expressed emotion of tweets.

The findings indicate nonlocal fans expressed statistically greater arousal compared to local online community members, reflecting their distinctiveness as nonlocal fans. Nonlocal and local fans expressed similar degrees of valence and dominance in their language, suggesting nonlocal fans converge communication behavior, seeking social approval from the salient online fan community.

This study suggests that geographic location influences communication behavior in online fan communities. Moreover, nonlocal fans may be valuable, and underutilized, advocates for sports teams in online community settings.

This study aims to advance knowledge of channel integration, a key feature of omnichannel retailing, by investigating the role of specific touchpoints in delivering a consistent integration perception.

Quantitative methods were adopted, by testing a model built on the stimulus-organism-response framework. Data collection used a panel survey across the grocery and fashion sectors (1,031 and 739 consumers, respectively). An ordinary least squares regression with clustered standard errors was conducted, combined with a multiple correspondence analysis, followed by a mediation analysis.

This study identifies touchpoints relevant for channel integration perception and shows that they differ across product category and customer types (first time vs repeat customers). Furthermore, it pinpoints touchpoints that are directly and indirectly related to patronage intention, thereby exposing the mediating role of channel integration. By drawing on categorization theory, it discusses individual touchpoints’ contribution to channel integration perception, at general level and on different customer targets.

This study offers a new vision of channel integration perception that highlights touchpoints’ role. It contributes to the established channel integration quality framework by showing that integrated information is concerned not only with consistency of information across channels but also with the specific touchpoints through which such information is disseminated.

This study provides directly actionable managerial implications, by through strategic insights for customer journey and customer experience design/redesign and by offering a practical methodology for retailers to identify the touchpoints they can leverage to improve their customers’ channel integration perceptions – with consequences for patronage intention.

Drawing from transformative service research (TSR) and service ecosystem perspectives, the author seeks to provide multi-level insights into gaming service systems and call to action how this knowledge can contribute to cultivating socially responsible gaming by addressing the following research questions: What insights from service ecosystem and TSR literature can help optimise value co-creation and cultivate socially responsible practices in digital gaming services? What future research directions could advance the understanding of digital gaming services and their potential to develop a responsible gaming ecosystem that balances social well-being with commercial success?

Adopting a conceptual approach of theory synthesis and adaptation, the author discusses four overarching themes alongside key research gaps and directions crucial for understanding the dynamics of gaming ecosystem.

The central themes – “Exploring individuals as game service consumers”, “Gaming service exchange dynamics among meso-level stakeholders”, “A macro lens to gaming service ecosystem” and “The complexities of multi-actor dynamics and interdependencies” – shed light on how responsible services can be fostered.

Given the absence of a well-defined scope for understanding responsible gaming, future research should develop a typology to capture its multifaceted aspects. Expanding beyond micro-level analysis, conducting consultation interviews with industry practitioners and policymakers can contribute insights into promoting responsible gaming services.

The author offers insights for the game players, designers and developers, service providers and policymakers to promote a healthy gaming culture.

Through this research, the author advances the understanding of gaming as a service by illuminating value co-creation and co-destruction within an interconnected gaming service ecosystem through the lens of TSR. Such understanding empowers businesses to prioritise consumer welfare in their decision-making and practices.

This article challenges the prevailing view that a minimum income for the poor is only relevant to basic needs. It contributes to the discussion on the meanings of money by specifically focusing on the Italian Citizenship Income scheme as a case study.

A qualitative research design was developed and implemented in four regions of northern Italy. The analysis is based on 131 in-depth interviews with minimum income recipients.

The empirical analysis shows that money transfer has various meanings. Four dimensions are identified: functional, relational, protective, and emancipatory. The first two are connected to spending, while the latter two are related to self-identity. Although the four dimensions may overlap and coexist in the daily lives of minimum income beneficiaries, they are distinguished for analytical purposes.

The article presents a comprehensive analysis of the multiple meanings that minimum income can have for beneficiaries; meanings which are often not explicitly addressed in social policy studies. It goes beyond the equally important consideration of material needs by adding other meaningful aspects. This approach makes a different way of looking at cash transfers possible, and it provides elements useful for the design and analysis of minimum income policies.

Although there is a rising demand for organic food restaurants (OFRs), limited studies have attempted at understanding the drivers of customers' intention to visit OFRs. There is also a need to examine customers' choice behaviour in the context of OFRs.

This study has assessed the effect of consumption values (functional, emotional, epistemic, conditional, quality and social) on the intention to visit OFRs by utilizing 1863 online customer reviews about different Indian OFRs (Study 1) and 205 survey-based responses of Indian customers (Study 2).

Findings show an overall positive sentiment towards OFRs. Results of Study 1 and Study 2 reveal that functional, quality, social and emotional values have a significant impact on customers' OFR visit intention. Interestingly, Study 2 found that epistemic values have an insignificant impact on customers' visit intention.

Study findings suggest that the OFR management need to provide a better ambience, and good quality organic food in OFRs. Additionally, managers of OFRs can train their staff to be well mannered, cooperative and sincere.

The study on OFRs is still in its nascent stage. The findings of this study will thus provide academicians and policy makers an idea of the consumption values that affect customers' intention to visit OFRs.