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Brand centrality is a religion-like brand–customer relationship, which refers to the extent to which a brand is in the center or heart of a consumer’s life. While its role in the fast fashion industry is prominent, its drivers and effects have not been comprehensively studied. This study aims to investigate the relationships between three psychological drivers (i.e. fashion-conscious, chronic shopping orientation and self-esteem), one behavioral driver (i.e. the average frequency of shopping), brand centrality and relationship quality in the fast fashion industry.

A survey of 250 fast fashion consumers was conducted and partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to analyze the data.

The study shows that fashion consciousness and chronic shopping orientation are positively related to brand centrality, whereas self-esteem is negatively related to brand centrality. The findings also show that shopping frequency moderates the relationship between fashion consciousness and brand centrality, and between chronic shopping orientation and brand centrality. Post hoc analysis indicates that brand centrality fully mediates the relationship between chronic shopping orientation and relationship quality.

This study is one of the first studies to investigate the psychological and behavioral drivers of brand centrality.

La centralidad de la marca es una relación religiosa entre marca y cliente que se refiere al grado en que una marca está en el centro o corazón de la vida de un consumidor. Aunque su papel en la industria de la moda rápida es destacado, sus impulsores y efectos no se han estudiado exhaustivamente. El presente estudio investiga las relaciones entre tres impulsores psicológicos (la conciencia de la moda, la orientación a las compras crónicas y la autoestima), un impulsor conductual (la frecuencia media de las compras), la centralidad de la marca y la calidad de las relaciones en el sector de la moda rápida.

Se realizó una encuesta a 250 consumidores de moda rápida y se utilizó (PLS-SEM) para analizar los datos.

El estudio muestra que la conciencia de la moda y la orientación a las compras crónicas están positivamente relacionadas con la centralidad de marca, mientras que la autoestima está negativamente relacionada con la centralidad de marca. Los resultados también muestran que la frecuencia de compra modera la relación entre la conciencia de la moda y la centralidad de marca, y entre la orientación de compra crónica y la centralidad de marca. El análisis post-hoc indica que la centralidad de la marca media totalmente la relación entre la orientación a las compras crónicas y la calidad de las relaciones.

Este estudio es uno de los primeros en investigar los impulsores psicológicos y conductuales de la centralidad de marca.

品牌中心性是一种类似于宗教的品牌-客户关系, 指的是一个品牌在消费者生活中处于中心或核心的程度。虽然它在快速时尚行业中的作用很突出, 但它的驱动和影响还没有得到全面的研究。本研究调查了三个心理驱动因素（即时尚意识、长期购物取向和自尊心）、一个行为驱动因素（即平均购物频率）、品牌中心性和快时尚行业的关系质量之间的关系。

对250名快时尚消费者进行了调查, 并使用部分最小二乘法-结构方程模型（PLS-SEM）来分析数据。

研究表明, 时尚意识和长期购物取向与品牌中心性呈正相关, 而自尊心与品牌中心性呈负相关。研究结果还显示, 购物频率分别调节了时尚意识以及长期购物导向对品牌中心性的影响。事后分析表明, 品牌中心性在长期购物取向和关系质量之间具有完全中介作用。

本研究是最早研究品牌中心性的心理和行为驱动因素的研究之一。

This paper aims to explore tourist perceived value and attachment to intelligent voice assistants (IVAs) as antecedents of the quality of the human–IVA relationship in the hospitality domain. This research also examines the moderating role of psychological factors (self-esteem) and knowledge factors (past experience and technology expertise) in the relationships between antecedents and relationship quality.

The researchers conducted two quantitative studies, collecting data via online surveys in Mechanical Turk (n₁ = 124 and n₂ = 281). The proposed model was tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The first study uncovers that tourist perceived value is the main influence on the quality of the relationship between tourists and IVAs. The second study confirms the direct relationships of the first and shows that self-esteem and technology expertise act as moderators.

This study advances the understanding of the tourism and hospitality stakeholders in using modern technologies (e.g. IVAs). Through comprehending the relationship building between individuals and IVAs, the stakeholders will be able to craft better strategies.

The study extends the attachment and social exchange theories to the tourist–IVA relationship context. Specifically, this research demonstrates the impact of tourist perceived value on the quality of the relationship with the IVA. It also points out that tourists’ self-esteem and technology expertise can weaken the tourist–IVA relationship.

This paper aims to explore the relationships between website quality – through consumer-generated media stimuli-, emotions and consumer-brand engagement in online environments.

Two independent studies are conducted to examine these relationships. Study 1, based on a sample of 366 respondents, uses a structural equation modelling approach to test the research hypotheses. Study 2, based on 1,454 online consumer reviews, uses text-mining technique to examine further the relationship between emotions and consumer-brand engagement.

The findings show that all the consumer-generated media stimuli are positively related to the dimensions of emotions. However, only pleasure and arousal are positively related to the three variables of consumer-brand engagement. The findings also show cognitive processing as the strongest dimension of consumer-brand engagement providing positive sentiments towards brands.

The findings provide marketers with an understanding of how valid, useful and relevant content (i.e. information/content) creates a greater emotional connection and drive consumer-brand engagement. Marketers should be aware that consumer-generated media stimuli influence consumers’ emotions and their reaction.

This study is one of the firsts to adapt and apply the S-O-R framework in explaining online consumer-brand engagement. This study also adds to the brand engagement literature as the first study that combines PLS-SEM approach with text-mining analysis to provide a better understanding of these relationships.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the antecedents and outcomes of online consumer brand engagement (OCBE). In addition, a mediator effect of satisfaction and brand love in the relationship between OCBE and positive electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) is analyzed.

Data were collected using a panel sampling with 201 participants from the millennial generation provided by the software tool Qualtrics. The online questionnaire is composed of two screening questions, the items of the constructs and a section with the socio-demographic variables.

Involvement and online brand experience (OBE) are important drivers of online brand engagement. Brand love is a significant mediator between online brand engagement and e-WOM.

Studies about antecedents and outcomes of online consumer engagement are rare. This paper contributes to the fledgling online consumer engagement literature by analyzing three antecedents: involvement, OBE, and self-brand image congruency. For the first time, brand love and satisfaction were considered as direct outcomes of online brand engagement. New insights are provided into the mediating role of brand love between online brand engagement and e-WOM.

Associating robot manipulators with industrial welding operations is common and maybe one of the most successful applications of industrial robots. Nevertheless, it is far from being a solved technological process, mainly because the welding process is not fully understood but also because robots are still at an early satge of development, being difficult to use and program by regular operators. This is also true for Human Machine Interfaces (HMI), which are not intuitive to use and are therefore unsatisfactory. In this paper we discuss these problems and present a system designed with the double objective of serving our R&D efforts on welding applications, but also our need to assist industrial partners working with welding setups. Frequently industrial partners are not happy with available commercial systems, requiring tailored solutions that could be adapted to several robots and robot controllers. The developed system is explained in some detail, and demonstrated using two test cases which reproduce two situations very common in industry: multi‐layer butt welding (used on big structures requiring very strong welds) and multi‐point fillet welding (used for example on structural pieces for the construction industry).

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impacts of left Brazilian political parties and partisan disruption on the homicide rate in Brazil.

The authors use panel data for the states between the years 1980 and 2011. The database used is an unbalanced panel covering a sample of 27 Brazilian states over 32 years, 1980-2011, totaling about 855 observations.

It is estimated that these two political factors are sources that have connection to the increased level of violence in Brazil. These analyses provide several important results. First, partisan disruption is associated with a higher homicide rate, compared to non-partisan disruption. The results from the panel also suggest that left-parties in government have a positive impact on homicide, compared to non-left-parties.

Information regarding premeditated homicides (CID-BR-9 database) is available for all Brazilian states, and may be tabulated from the same micro-data at any level of aggregation. Some of the well-known problems regarding the choice of this variable are as follows. First, deaths resulting from wounds are sometimes included in the statistics whether wounds were intentionally inflicted or not. In addition, some incidents end up not being registered because certain deaths are not reported. This tends to occur more frequently in rural areas. Fortunately, this second problem does not appear to be too significant, as under-registry of deaths due to external causes is much lower than the amount resulting from natural causes (see, e.g. Cano and Santos, 2000). In addition, this problem may be controlled if under-registry remains stable over time by applying fixed effects to the panel data.

The main Brazilian political parties diverge on the causes of crime and how criminals should be punished. For example, in Brazil, the minimum age for one individual to be punished with imprisonment is 18 years old. Practices crimes for young people between 12 and 18 implies only in socio-educational measures. Given the high level of violence in Brazil, there is a bill being debated in the parliament that proposes to reduce the age to 16 years. Based on the research, 90 percent of the population approves the reduction of age to 16 years. However, the majority of parliament is opposed to changing the law. In general, the more conservative parties are favorable to changing the law.

These divergent postures can be associated with the ideological essence or to belief system of each political party. Political parties have the potential capacity of changing crime trends through economic and social policies as well as by applying stronger sanctions against crime. Given the law enforcement system, the cycle of crime in Brazil may be related to the profile of the political party elected.

The authors assume the hypothesis that the current Brazilian multi-partisan system has an incentive system in which politicians do not respond adequately to the basic wishes of voters. Among such desires, the authors emphasize public safety. This paper evaluates the empirical effect of partisan disruption on homicide rate.

This study aims to integrate brand and retailer levels variables to examine the direct and indirect relationships between omnichannel retailing and consumer engagement.

Survey data are collected from a sample consumers of different omnichannel retailing brands operating in the skin care industry. Partial least squares structural equation modeling is utilized.

The study finds brand channels' integrated interactions (process and content consistency) to increase consumer brand engagement. Findings show retailer consumer empowerment to intensify the impact of omnichannel retailing on consumer engagement. Results also show brand channels' integrated interactions to increase consumer brand familiarity, which mediates the effect of omnichannel retailing on consumer engagement.

This study suggests that integrating brand- and retailer-level variables is vital to understand the effect of omnichannel retailing on consumer engagement. The study concludes that for successful omnichannel strategy, collaboration between brands and retailers is imperative.

In this paper a solution capable of extracting robot motion information from CAD data is briefly presented and explored.

The motion information is added by the user to the CAD file, defining in this way the approach, fly‐by and welding trajectories. So the user programs the robot. An application is then used to extract that information and constitute a pre‐program, which should be tuned with the real robot using a small set of rules. In this way, versatility of robotic cells is improved and its programming is simplified.

The developed CAD interface is tested using a robot welding experiment on a steel beam used for industrial buildings.

This paper builds on work previously described in “CAD interface for automatic robot welding programming” published in Industrial Robot, Vol. 31, No. 1.

The study aims to use individuals using the internet and fixed broadband subscriptions as a proxy for digitalization to empirically assess the effects of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), digitalization and their interaction on income inequality in developed and developing countries from 2002 to 2019.

The paper used the system general method of moments estimators for 30 developed and 35 developing countries.

FDI increases income inequality in developed countries but decreases it in developing countries, digitalization reduces income inequality in both groups and interaction term narrows income inequality in developed countries but widens it in developing countries.

The paper is the first to introduce digitalization into the FDI – income inequality relationship. Furthermore, it provides empirical evidence to show the difference in the role of digitalization in this relationship between developed and developing countries.

This research paper's goal is to determine whether social media communication has an impact on the loyalty of visitors. The study will explore the correlation between social media activity and visitors' loyalty by examining social media engagement. The research will take the form of surveys and a total of 385 questionnaires given to visitors at various locations of the Ladakh region, asking them about their social media actions and how they relate to loyalty. The data were analysed and tested using various statistical tools such as factor analysis, regression and structural equation modelling. The study's findings will shed important light on the interconnectivity between social media activity, visitor loyalty and the tourism industry. The study's findings show how environmental issues associated with tourism sites may be made aware to visitors through social media marketing and communication campaigns, which may eventually entice them to return.