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Consumer engagement has become a critical component to many brands' relationship and promotional efforts. Empirical studies have documented the psychological elements that can drive consumers to engage with brands. However, there is a knowledge gap regarding how consumer engagement is influenced by the social environment consumers are embedded in. Taking an egocentric network approach, this study explores the social network factors that affect different dimensions of consumers' online engagement behaviors with a brand.

An online survey with an egocentric network design was employed, and 263 completed responses were collected from college students in US. The dimensionality of consumer engagement was validated using exploratory factor analysis. The hypotheses were tested through three sets of hierarchical regression models.

The results suggest that consumer engagement with a brand was partially shaped by the attributes of consumers' brand discussion networks that emerge from their conversations about a brand with others in everyday life. Specifically, the size, heterogeneity, and density to consumers' discussion networks were associated with certain engagement behaviors.

This study introduces a novel type of network method known as egocentric network analysis to explore and investigate the social network antecedents to consumer engagement behavior. It advances the conception of consumer engagement as a dynamic process influencing and is influenced by consumers' social interactions rather than merely a product of their psychological mechanisms. The study contributes to a social network approach to examining and conceptualizing consumer engagement.

The aims and intentions of the founders, funders, managers and keepers of libraries are reflected on and compared with the hopes and wishes of readers and other library users.

Despite the growing number of studies surrounding user-generated content (UGC), understanding of the implications, potential and pertinence of user-generated images (UGI), the visual form of UGC, on brand image in services is limited. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept and a comprehensive framework of image word of mouth (IWOM), which identifies UGI as visual articulations of service experiences that result in consumer judgment of service brand image. The framework takes a consumer-focussed approach and covers key branding issues relevant to services marketers such as identifying and linking valued services dimensions, made evident through IWOM, to ideas and thoughts inferred by consumers (viewers) of the brand image and consequent consumer intentions.

The paper reviews and synthesises current services, marketing and branding literature surrounding electronic word of mouth (WOM) and UGC, where it highlights the need to consider interpretations of UGI as persuasive forms of visual WOM or IWOM, as well as a critical stimuli of brand image.

The paper illuminates the importance of adopting a visual perspective that applies constructs developed in cognitive psychology, to decode how viewers (consumers) interact and form associations of brand image via IWOM.

The paper examines, integrates and adds to extant literature surrounding WOM, UGC, visual images and brand image within services.

Central to the celebrity creation process is mass media communication and impression management (IM) behaviors of social actors. The emergence of social network sites (SNSs) such as Twitter offers a platform for social actors to engage both of these means in efforts to manage their celebrity. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of how celebrity athletes manage their celebrity status by investigating IM tactics employed by National Basketball Association (NBA) celebrities on Twitter.

A content analytic design was employed to examine the Twitter posts of the top ten most popular and influential NBA celebrity athletes (past and present) at the time of tweet acquisition.

The findings revealed the celebrity athletes used a variety of IM tactics to manage their celebrity. Defensive IM tactics (i.e. reactive measures taken) were used sparingly when compared to offensive IM tactics (i.e. proactive measures taken). Also, consistent with extant IM literature, the celebrity athletes utilized IM tactics in isolation as well as in combination.

The extant literature suggests that celebrities cultivate their relationships with the various media outlets with the potential to create (or even damage) one’s celebrity. This study offers celebrity athletes and their managers with useful insight on celebrity management.

This study is the first to examine IM in a sport business context, particularly the use of IM of athletes on SNSs.

This study aims to move beyond the current understanding of corporate social responsibility (CSR) to propose the concept of just-in-time (JIT) CSR as a metaphor that reflects hospitality operators’ endeavors to expedite socially responsible measures to both internal and external organizational stakeholders during times when functional and emotional supports are urgently needed.

This research used a qualitative approach in two studies. Study 1 engaged a media analysis to better grasp the knowledge of the research problem at hand. Study 2 involved interviews from stakeholders to assess their emotions and perceptions of meanings of major contents discerned from the first study.

This research highlights a process in which operators’ CSR practices (e.g. for business practices, for organizational strategy and for stakeholder well-being) during the COVID-19 crisis are imbued with connotative meanings (e.g. place-as-safety, place-as-partnership and place-as-warmth) that ultimately give shape to three core outcomes (e.g. individual rejoinder, brand resonance and societal resilience).

While JIT CSR is not an antidote for all devastations caused by COVID-19, it is posited as a needed mechanism that operators could use to ameliorate the situation and to go beyond their own stake to bring a broader array of societal benefits to humanity.

This research underscores how hospitality operators expedite crisis responses to the pandemic, and how their societal objectives transform the image of a place from a commercial venue into a place imbued with meaning associated with safety, partnership and warmth.

The present competitive marketing environment demands effective role of distribution channels to create and develop a value-based infrastructure where companies can easily distribute their products into the consumers’ market. Relationship bonding between the channel partners and the company strengthens marketing efficiencies of the distribution function, which is supported by policies of the companies relating to joint business actions and value sharing. Both the tangible functional value and emotional functionalities play a vital role in the continuous success and the growth of distribution channel. The purpose of this paper is to understand the value-based distribution channel relationship for greater channel equity in fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector.

The present study used a survey design to collect data from 156 FMCG channel members selected through stratified random sampling procedure. A five-point Likert-type scale was personally administered to obtain participants’ responses. Data were analysed using the Relative to an Identified Distribution (RIDIT) approach.

The findings of the current research paper have demonstrated that in the current competitive marketing environment, only the functional values are not enough. This research paper identifies that there is a strong need of emotional touch and linkages which leads to a symbiotic channel–company relationship and commitments in FMCG industry.

The present research is an original and innovative thought process of evaluating factors influencing the value-based distribution channel relationship for greater channel equity pertaining to FMCG industry by using the RIDIT approach.

This study aims to investigate the representation of human rights issues within photographs in the 2015 corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports of Fortune 70 companies.

Content analysis is used to examine human rights photos in CSR reports by Fortune 70 global corporations for the year 2015. Based on impression management theory and Roland Barthes’ work on visual rhetoric, a total of 744 photos are analysed.

The findings of this study reflect the main feature of the omnipresence of the linguistic in photographic human rights disclosure. Denotation and connotation in the photographs are inextricably intermingled; the linguistic message has the “anchoring” function that guides the interpretations of the symbolic message of the photos. The authors conclude what the proliferation of photos and associated text achieves, or attempts to achieve, is not only to provide information, but also carry visual rhetoric and impression management.

International accounting standard organisations, such as GRI, might provide guidance on the utilisation of photos in CSR reports to improve the realism of the reports. The principle of balance applicable to reported information should be extended to photos as much as possible. This may help ensure that the CSR reports reflect the reality of human rights issues within the organisations, rather than the construction of idealised images.

The findings have potential for global reporting institutions.

This study contributes to the impression management literature by analysing how companies present human rights issues and by demonstrating the way the photos are used to construct images of happiness, safety, diversity and mutual support.

This study aims to investigate whether United Kingdom (UK)-based companies have changed their voluntary disclosures on curbing the bribery of foreign officials in response to the UK Bribery Act 2010, and if so whether and how such disclosure changes substantively reflected allegations of bribery of foreign officials by news media.

By using the notions of institutional pressure and decoupling and applying content and thematic analysis, the authors examined, in particular, disclosures on curbing bribery by the largest 100 companies listed on the London Stock Exchange in periods before and after the Bribery Act (2007–2012). News media reports covering incidents of bribery of foreign officials and related corporate disclosures before and after the Act were thoroughly examined to problematise corporate anti-bribery disclosure practices.

The study finds a significant change in disclosure on curbing bribery before and after the enactment of the UK Bribery Act, consistent with the notion of institutional coercive pressure. However, decoupling is also found: organisations' disclosures did not substantively reflect incidents of bribing foreign public officials, mostly from underprivileged developing nations.

This study acknowledges a limitation stemming from using media reports that focus on bribery incidents in identifying actual cases or incidents of bribery. As some of the incidents identified from news media reports appeared to be allegations, not convictions for bribery, companies could have defensible reasons for not disclosing some aspects of them.

Regulators should think why new or more regulations without substantive requirement are not helpful to curb corporate decoupling and injustice. The regulators should address the crisis that multinational companies (MNCs) being suppliers of bribery are much more harmful for the underprivileged communities in developing nations. Accordingly, this paper provides practical insights into how stakeholders ought to critically interpret MNCs' accounts of their involvement in bribery.

This study contributes to the accounting literature by problematising MNCs' operations in underprivileged countries. The findings suggest that not only public officials in developing countries as creators of bribery but also Western-based MNCs as the suppliers of bribery contribute to perpetuating unethical practices and injustices to the underprivileged communities in developing countries. This research is imperative as this is one of the first known studies that provides evidence of the actions including disclosure-related actions companies have taken in response to the UK Bribery Act.