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The international marketing field has witnessed many studies related to “country of origin” (COO) effects or the “made in” concept over the past few decades. Yet COO research is deeply rooted in the so-called “production-related” approach, which mainly accounts for production- or technology-based factors. Barely considered is the “consumption-related” perspective, which reflects consumers' proclivity to base their buying decisions on foreigners' product choice. In this paper, we propose the “country of reference” (COR) concept, in which consumers deliberately imitate the product choices of consumers from another country, to whom the former (i.e. the imitators) attribute superior or more prestigious personas.

Unlike the made in concept, which emphasizes favored product qualities from superior manufacturing countries, we believe product preferences may arise from cross-border benchmarking or “cross-country referencing.” Pivoting on the optimal distinctiveness theory, this paper suggests a COR framework that incorporates the system justification theory and the self-discrepancy concept, along with decision heuristics and mental simulation effects. The proposed framework aims to explain consumers' inclination to “buy what certain foreigners buy.”

We suggest critical propositions related to the COR concept, discuss its marketing implications, and pinpoint further research issues.

COR may become a coping strategy through which low-status consumers perceiving themselves as less privileged than their high-status counterparts can narrow this gap by means of decision mimicking.

A brand community consists of relationships between a brand and consumers; community members’ identification with the brand community is a central characteristic of the community. This study aims to provide a comprehensive conceptual framework to investigate how and why such identification-based relationships yield firm- and member-level benefits to participants in the brand community.

This cross-sectional study analyzes data collected through a questionnaire survey of members from the brand community of VW-Golf Club members in Taiwan. The researchers attended the annual meeting of club members and handed out questionnaires directly to the members. The degree centrality of each member was calculated using UCINET 6 for Windows, a social network analysis software application. This study adopts the partial least squares program to evaluate the measurement properties and structural relationships specified in the research model.

The findings suggest that when customers’ identification with a brand community becomes salient, they strengthen their emotional attachment to the brand and improve their centrality in the network. Consequently, emotional attachment can serve as a guiding principle in decision-making and thus strengthen brand equity and assessment of brand extensions. Central members will also gain greater benefits, including collaborative opportunities and influence, through their advantageous position in the network.

This study makes four main contributions to the brand community literature. First, this is the first empirical study to simultaneously examine the relationships among community identification (customer to community), emotional attachment to the brand (customer to brand) and network centrality (customer to customer). Second, the empirical framework depicts dual value-creation routes that explain how identification-based relationships can yield firm- and member-level benefits. With respect to firm-level benefits, this is the first empirical study to examine the brand equity and assessment of brand extension in the brand community research. Third, this study applies the rarely adopted UCINET 6 software to scrutinize the network data from the brand community. Finally, this paper examines three actions that organizations can leverage to enhance consumer identification with a brand community.

Social networking sites (SNSs) have significantly influenced people's lives and changed their behavior. Although previous research has explored self-disclosure in virtual communities, little is known about the impact of other users, particularly their online social support, on self-disclosure. The aim of this study is to explore how online social support dimensions (i.e., emotional, informational, esteem, instrumental and network support) influence people's self-disclosure, which in turn affects their commitment to SNSs.

Based on social exchange theory, this study proposes a research model that explores the role of other users on self-disclosure. This study collects data from a sample of 558 respondents and applies the structural equation modeling technique to test the research model.

The findings show that users are motivated to disclose information and commit to a specific SNS because of the supportive climate. Results also show that self-disclosure mediates the effect of online social support on users' commitment to SNSs.

This study focuses on the influence of other users' roles on self-disclosure on SNSs, extending the application of social exchange theory.

Emerging markets play an important role in the global economy. However, a common feature of most emerging markets is that firms must operate in a resource-constrained environment. In emerging markets, global mindset is a necessary resource for firms’ global competitiveness. Although global mindset has been proven to improve export performance, the theoretical mechanism behind this relationship is less clear. Based on the resource-based on the resource-based view and capability-building perspective, this study developed a model linking global mindset, relational capability, bricolage capability, innovation, and export performance.

A survey was conducted to collect data from exporting firms in Taiwan. Subsequently, the data (n = 172) were analyzed using a partial least squares program.

The analytical results reveal that a global mindset positively influences relational and bricolage capabilities; relational capability positively affects bricolage capability; relational capability and bricolage capability have significant and direct effects on innovation; and innovation positively affects export performance.

The findings confirm that a global mindset plays a crucial role in the capability-building process, which suggests that it contributes to the development of relational and bricolage capabilities. Also, relational capability is critical for exporting firms to develop bricolage capability. Finally, innovation is an important mediating mechanism between capabilities and export performance. Therefore, exporting firms can develop their international business models on the basis of their capabilities, including relational capability and bricolage capability. These capabilities improve innovation, which, in turn, enhances export performance in a resource-constrained environment.

This study aims to present a conceptual model of how blog readers' perceptions of satisfaction generate blog loyalty, which in turn enhances bloggers' power. This study also seeks to investigate the moderating influence of subjective norms on the relationship between satisfaction and loyalty.

The structural equation modelling approach was used to estimate a conceptual model based on survey data from blog readers in Taiwan. After discarding incomplete responses, the final sample consisted of 567 completed responses.

The majority of the results supported the hypotheses. Three types of exchange outcome satisfaction influence blog readers' perceptions of bloggers' power by increasing attitudinal loyalty. Information satisfaction has a direct and positive effect on expert power. Most importantly subjective norms exhibited a positive moderating relationship between exchange outcome satisfaction and attitudinal loyalty. The authors found no evidence to support the relationship between exchange outcome satisfaction and behavioural loyalty.

From the perspectives of exchange outcome satisfaction, loyalty, power, and susceptibility to normative influence, this study contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the process through which blog readers become loyal to their bloggers and are influenced by bloggers' expert and referent power.

The purpose of this paper is to treat bloggers as human brands and applies self-congruity theory to explore how actual and ideal blogger-reader self-congruity, combined with the blog’s functional congruity, influences blogger-reader relationship quality (BRRQ) and the blogger’s informational influence, taking perceived interactivity among blog members as a moderator.

Using a survey of 372 female beauty blog readers, this study employs the structural equation modelling approach to investigate the proposed model.

The empirical findings indicate that readers’ perceived self-congruity with beauty bloggers raises the bloggers’ informational influence, mediated by BRRQ and functional congruity. Actual self-congruity has greater predictive power than ideal self-congruity in explaining bloggers’ informational influence. Moreover, perceived interactivity plays a two-sided role because it strengthens the positive impact of BRRQ on informational influence but weakens the positive impact of functional congruity on informational influence.

The findings should help marketers identify influential beauty bloggers through their presented image on their blogs to encourage readers’ acceptance of their opinions about products and services. However, when focusing on beauty blogs featuring high-perceived interactivity among blog members, marketers should carefully balance the facilitating and offsetting effect of perceived interactivity and identify bloggers equipped with superior BRRQ.

Using human brand and parasocial interaction perspectives, this study contributes to emerging research on human brands and blog marketing and demonstrates that perceived interactivity is a double-edged sword in stimulating a blogger’s informational influence.

Drawing on embeddedness theory, the purpose of this paper is to develop a comprehensive model that explains the incremental innovation process in the supplier‐manufacturer relationship.

Utilizing the partial least squared (PLS) technique, this study examines the incremental innovation process through the theoretical lens of the embeddedness perspective.

The overall picture emerging from this study indicates that establishing an embedded tie between a manufacturer and a primary supplier enables the creation of informal coordination mechanisms, including trust, joint problem‐solving, and commitment. These coordination mechanisms safeguard the transfer of knowledge and lead the partners to joint action. Such joint action provides an interactive forum for developing innovation capabilities that allow firms to enhance their incremental innovation performance.

From an academic perspective, this study is the first to examine the innovation process theoretically through the embeddedness perspective.

The evidence reported here is consistent with the finding that relational embeddedness plays a strong role in predicting better incremental innovation. In addition to engaging in their own trial‐and‐error experimentation to develop innovation capabilities, firms learn about innovation capabilities vicariously through embedded ties with primary exchange partners.

In essence, these results provide valuable insights for managers who wish to draw on knowledge from external sources in their innovation activities. Whereas previous studies have shown how a firm's incremental innovation is influenced by its internal resources, this paper illustrates that relational embeddedness also represents an important source of incremental innovation.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a conceptual model of how technology‐enabled virtual experiences contribute to community members' online trust and engagement through inducing their community identification. It also seeks to examine two types of social influence in the virtual community: within‐community normative pressure and normative pressure from outside the community.

The authors employed the structural equation modelling approach to estimate a conceptual model using survey data from participants in the World of Warcraft online game community.

The results mainly supported the hypotheses. It was shown that three types of experience could influence community members' engaging behaviour through an increase in community identification and community trust. More importantly it was found that normative pressure from outside the community exhibits a significant and inverted U‐shaped relationship with online community engagement, while within‐community normative pressure had a positive relationship with community engagement. No evidence was found to support the inverted U‐shaped relationship between within‐community normative pressure and community members' engagement.

From perspectives of virtual experience, social identity theory, social trust, and susceptibility to normative influence, the current study contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the process through which community members are willing to share what they know, participate in collective actions, and spend their time with strangers in a virtual space.