Search results

This paper aims to reconcile conflicting findings about the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in counteracting the negative impacts of brands’ ethical transgressions by testing the moderating role of self-brand connection (SBC).

Drawing on motivated reasoning theory, this paper posits that high- and low-SBC consumers’ information processing and moral judgment are driven by distinct goals: to reach desired versus accurate conclusions, respectively. Five experiments were conducted to test whether CSR efforts can mitigate the impact of blatant ethical transgressions.

CSR allows high-SBC consumers to evaluate brand transgressions more favorably, as CSR serves as counterfactual evidence that reinforces their beliefs in the brand’s morality. In contrast, low-SBC consumers view CSR as hypocritical, leading to more negative responses. Increased perceptions of brand morality (hypocrisy) mediate CSR’s buffering (backfiring) effects among high- (low-) SBC consumers.

This paper does not control for the effect of the time gap between CSR and ethical transgressions even if buffering effects of CSR could be faded out as memories recede.

Brand transgressions may be inevitable events, but firms or managers can alleviate the negative impact of transgressions by engaging in CSR activities. In doing so, they need to make clear to whom they will appeal using CSR information considering its backfiring effects among low-SBC consumers.

Few studies have examined when and how CSR attenuates or exacerbates the negativity of brand transgressions with a strong theoretical framework. This paper, grounded in motivated reasoning theory, explains how the same CSR initiative can yield opposing outcomes based on the consumer’s self-brand connection. Rather than solely exploring how strong consumer-brand relationships buffer brand transgressions, this research shows how high-SBC consumers biasedly seize CSR information to justify brand transgressions, even when they are blatant.

Surprise has been recognized as a key process in humor. Past studies have seldom tested elements that could increase the surprise in humor advertising, subsequently increasing perceived humor and positive ad outcomes. The purpose of this paper was to test the effects of priming a lower arousal baseline before humor ad exposure. It proposed that this would generate greater humor ad surprise because of contrast effects, leading to greater perceived humor and positive ad effects.

Three experiments tested the effects of arousal and valence of primes on humor ads. Attention, perceived humor and ad effectiveness of the humor ads were measured.

Evidence of lower (vs higher) arousal primes leading to greater humor ad evaluations was found across three experiments. Felt arousal of the ad mediated the relationship between the prime conditions and perceived humor.

No study has focused on context effects of the unique process of humor ads. This study advanced the arousal theory of incongruity-resolution humor and further emphasized the role of surprise. The findings implicate that the surroundings of the humor ad could increase its effectiveness.

Frontline employees (FLEs) play a pivotal role in service delivery. Beyond their expected in-role behaviors, FLEs often have to perform extra-role behaviors such as providing additional help to customers. The purpose of this study is to investigate how customers’ power distance belief (PDB) influences their perceptions of FLEs’ warmth and competence when FLEs perform extra-role helping behaviors.

Four experiments were conducted to test the hypotheses. The first three experiments used a one factor two-level (PDB: low vs high) between-participants design. The fourth one used a 2 (PDB: low vs high) × 2 (firm reputation: low vs high) between-participants design.

The results indicate that, compared to high-PDB customers, low-PDB customers perceive greater warmth in FLEs’ extra-role helping behaviors but no significant difference in FLEs’ perceived competence. Importantly, these effects are mediated by customer gratitude. Moreover, these effects are moderated by firm reputation such that customers’ perceptions of FLEs’ warmth and competence are both enhanced when the firm has a favorable reputation.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the study is the first to identify the differential effects of PDB on customer perceptions of FLEs’ warmth and competence in the context of FLEs’ extra-role helping behaviors and to reveal the mediating role of gratitude. These findings contribute to the literatures on FLEs’ extra-role behaviors and social perceptions of both warmth and competence.

This research aims to investigate how consumers’ authentic pride versus hubristic pride affects different construal levels of mind-sets and subsequent product evaluation by activating local versus global cognitive appraisal tendencies. Furthermore, this research also examines how lay theories impact the effects of pride on construal levels and how power moderates the effect of hubristic versus authentic pride on product preferences varying in construal levels.

Drawing on cognitive appraisal and construal level theories, this research conducts eight experimental studies to test the hypotheses with an ANOVA, bootstrap analysis and binary logistic regression analysis. The details of the experiments are presented in the paper.

The results show that people feeling authentic (hubristic) pride dominantly adopt a lower (higher) level of construal, and consequently put more weight on feasibility over desirability (desirability over feasibility) attributes. Authentic pride’s inclination to appeal behavior-specific appraisals triggers local appraisal tendencies and bestows lower construal levels, whereas hubristic pride’s inclination to connect the entire self triggers global appraisal tendencies and confers higher construal levels. Incremental (vs entity) theorists are likely to attribute the pride experience to their efforts (traits), and thus feel authentic (hubristic) pride. Furthermore, the product preferences of people experiencing authentic vs hubristic pride depend on their power state.

Notwithstanding the importance of this research, it is worthwhile to note some of its limitations to encourage future research. First, eight studies in the lab were conducted, but no real behavior study was conducted. Although there is a high correlation between the results of lab studies and those of real behavior studies, the authors encourage future researches to elicit the consumers’ pride in the actual consumption situation using a real behavior study. Furthermore, this research mainly focuses on pride, and does not examine other positive emotions, e.g. happiness. Therefore, the authors encourage future research to examine other positive emotions.

The findings suggest that it is appropriate to use construal levels to match consumers’ pride types. In fact, marketers can induce hubristic pride or authentic pride in ads by simply using words or sentences (“feeling proud because of your hard work” or “feeling proud, you are so superior and remarkably unique”), and present either higher- or lower-level construal of desired behaviors to improve advertising effects.

The research contributes to literature by documenting how hubristic/authentic pride can affect distinct construal levels via activating global/local appraisal tendencies. And this research thoroughly illustrates the mechanism by which hubristic/authentic pride activates global versus local appraisal tendencies. More importantly, this research finds how lay theories affect construal level given a pride experience and it also corroborates the moderating effects of power in the proposed relationship, which establish the boundary conditions of the effects of prides on construal levels.

As information technology advances, the prevalence of AI chatbot products is on the rise. Despite optimistic market projections, consumer skepticism towards these agents persists. This paper aims to expand the scope of the technology acceptance model by integrating the aspect of appearance. It examines the influence of different attributes of AI chatbot, such as usefulness, ease of use and appearance, individually and in combination, on consumers' intentions to share and purchase.

Using an exploratory study of Web Texts, a 2 (usefulness: high vs low) × 2 (ease of use: high vs low) mixed design and a 2 (usefulness: high vs low) × 2 (ease of use: high vs low) × 2 (anthropomorphism appearance: humanoid vs cartoon) for between-subjects designs and the price level (high vs low) for within-subjects designs. The hypotheses were tested by Octoparse and SPSS 22.0.

The research highlights the significant role of usefulness, ease of use and anthropomorphic appearance in shaping consumer attitudes towards AI chatbots, thus influencing their intentions to share information and make purchases. Grouped regression analysis reveals that lower prices exert a more pronounced positive influence on consumers' inclinations to both share and purchase, compared to higher prices. Moreover, novelty-seeking behavior moderates the effect of perceived usefulness or ease of use on attitude. Specifically, heightened novelty-seeking tendencies mitigate the impact of low perceived usefulness or ease of use, leading to sustained positive attitudes towards AI chatbots among consumers.

This study innovatively incorporates product appearance into the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), considering both the functional attributes and appearance of AI chatbot and their impact on consumers. It offers valuable insights for marketing strategies, extends the scope of TAM application and holds significant practical implications for enhancing enterprise product planning.

随着信息技术的进步, AI聊天机器人产品的普及正在增长。尽管市场对这些代理人持乐观态度, 但消费者对这些代理人的怀疑仍然存在。本文旨在通过整合外观方面来扩展技术接受模型的范围。它考察了AI聊天机器人的不同属性（如有用性、易用性和外观）对消费者分享和购买意图的影响, 单独以及组合。

使用Web文本的探索性研究, 一个2（有用性：高vs低）× 2（易用性：高vs低）的混合设计和一个2（有用性：高vs低）× 2（易用性：高vs低）× 2（人格化外观：类人形vs卡通）用于受试者间设计和价格水平（高vs低）用于受试者内设计。通过 Octoparse 和 SPSS 22.0 测试假设。

研究突出了有用性、易用性和拟人化外观在塑造消费者对AI聊天机器人态度方面的重要作用, 从而影响了他们分享信息和购买的意图。分组回归分析显示, 相对于高价格, 低价格对消费者分享和购买的倾向产生了更为显著的正面影响。此外, 新奇寻求行为调节了感知有用性或易用性对态度的影响。具体来说, 增强的新奇寻求倾向减轻了对低感知有用性或易用性的影响, 导致消费者对AI 聊天机器人持续保持积极态度。

本研究将产品外观创新地纳入技术接受模型（TAM）中, 考虑了AI 聊天机器人的功能属性和外观以及它们对消费者的影响。它为营销策略提供了有价值的见解, 拓展了TAM的应用范围, 并对增强企业产品规划产生了重要的实际影响。

The topic of impulsive buying has been studied by researchers for nearly 70 years and made a large number of valuable discoveries. However, most of the existing research studies focused on the impulse buying behavior in the context of single person shopping from the perspective of individuals and lack of research on impulse buying behavior in the context of shopping with others from the perspective of communities. Given that consumers' decision-making in the presence of others is significantly different from that when they are alone, it is necessary to probe into the internal mechanism of impulse purchase behavior in the context of shopping with others.

In total three experiments were used to test the hypothesis. Study 1 examines the differences in the motivation of impulsive desire among consumers with different impulsive traits. A total of 240 undergraduates were recruited to participate in the study. The purpose of study 2 is to examine the effect of external attribution on consumer guilt, which leads to the failure of self-control. A total of 256 undergraduate students participated in the study 2. The purpose of study 3 was to test the moderating effect of the intensity of ties on the impact of goal on impulse purchase intention. A total of 240 subjects participated in study 3.

When shopping with companions, consumers with different impulse traits have different initial impulses in the face of temptation, but they may have a similar higher willingness to buy on impulse. There are two reasons: on the one hand, consumers with high-impulsive traits produce a higher desire to buy on impulse driven by hedonistic motivation. In contrast, consumers with low-impulse traits will also have a higher impulse purchase desire driven by prosocial motivation. On the other hand, external attribution can lead to the failure of self-control and impulse purchase behavior. However, the above effects only occur when there is a strong connection between consumers.

First, this paper simulates the phenomenon of impulse purchase in the relational situation through experimental methods; if the research based on the real consumption scenario can be carried out, the research results will be more convincing. Second, whether there are other intermediary mechanisms, such as whether external attribution can affect consumers' self-control through perceived social support, need to be further tested. Finally, it is also necessary to examine the role of other regulatory variables, such as consumers' sense of power, the type of self-construct, etc., and these research clues will further enrich the research on impulsive buying in the context of relationship.

First, businesses can launch more accurate marketing strategies for consumers who are shopping together, find ways to reduce consumers' attention to their own responsibility or fault and guide them to conduct external attribution to their impulsive consumption behavior. The findings also have implications for consumers to control their own impulse purchase behavior. In addition, the results of this study can provide new insights into the government to prevent social crisis and carry out consumer education.

The key contribution of the current research is that, unlike existing studies that focus on the exploration of impulsive buying in the context of single person shopping, this study explores the internal mechanism and causal process on how consumers' impulsive buying behavior occurs when shopping with others. The authors further make a contribution to a self-control theory by demonstrating that external attribution has a negative effect on self-control in relational situations. Finally, this study also finds that the intensity of ties can moderate the impacts of focus goals on impulsive buying behavior.

Companies often extend brands to higher or lower quality tiers to access different market segments. However, the impact of such extensions on the brand and its subsequent offerings is not yet conclusive. While some studies found an “averaging” pattern (all models contribute equally to the overall perception of the brand: a symmetric effect), others found a “best-of-brand” pattern (the positive impact of an upstream extension is much greater than the negative impact of a downstream extension: an asymmetric effect). This paper aims to reconcile these seemingly conflicting findings by assessing the conditions under which each pattern is likely to emerge.

Three experimental studies are presented to test the conditions under which a symmetric or asymmetric pattern of brand evaluation would merge. Study 1 examined the impact of judgment focus (quality vs expertise) on the pattern of brand evaluations. Study 2 tested the impact of having a comparative set on the assessment of specific brand dimensions. Study 3 examined the impact of the informativeness of price positioning on product quality expectations.

Brand evaluations and attitudes are determined by the presence of a comparative brand and judgment focus. When brands are evaluated without a comparison, a symmetric pattern emerges, as a low-tier extension hurts a brand as much as a high-tier extension helps it. In contrast, when brands are evaluated with a comparison, focusing the assessment on quality leads to a symmetric pattern, while focusing it on expertise leads to an asymmetric one.

The present research specifies conditions under which a low-tier model may hurt brand perceptions. We used hypothetical brands to avoid the impact of preexisting attitudes. While we expect our results to generalize to real brands, this may be considered a limitation of the present research.

The current research delineates the circumstances under which vertical line extensions have positive, neutral or negative impact on brand perceptions and future product expectations. We introduce the presence of a comparison set as a key variable and show how it interacts with assessment focus to affect brand evaluations. When thinking about the impact of extensions on brand perceptions, marketers need to consider which assessment focus is likely to be triggered by environmental cues and whether comparisons are salient.

Brand extension is an important area of investigation as evidenced by the vast literature dedicated to the subject. The present paper advances knowledge in this area by identifying key factors affecting the impact of vertical extensions on brand perceptions.

Co-branding is popular with partnerships between well-known and new brands. In a laboratory study, this paper aims to examine the effects of a single ally and multiple allies on quality perception of a brand. The results suggest that the quality perception of the new brand depends on the co-branding strategy.

For dual-brand alliances, a single-factor design was used, with secondary brand quality level (high, medium and low) as the independent variable. Three advertisements were created by manipulating quality levels of the single partner. For multiple-brand alliances, a 2 × 3 between-subjects factorial design was used in the experiment. The two factors were diversification (homogeneous vs heterogeneous) and quality levels of the alliance (high-end, mixed and low-end).

The results suggest that the number of brand partners significantly affected the perceived quality of the primary brand. For both dual- and multi-brand alliances, the quality level of the secondary brand positively influenced the perceived quality of the primary brand. For multiple-brand alliances, even though the highest quality perceptions of the primary brand are in the heterogeneous conditions, the heterogeneity of partners (partners across different product categories) did not affect the quality perception of the primary brand.

One limitation of the current study is that it only addresses one type of brand alliance: co-promotion. The generalization of these findings to other forms of brand alliances (e.g. ingredient branding: Intel with IBM, Dell and HP) merits further investigation. Also, in this study, respondents processed the information in a relatively low-involvement condition (note that the target ad was presented along with filler ads). They were more likely to use brand names as heuristic cues to form their judgments. Because an alliance partner also assumes risks, future research should consider the effect of the alliances on the secondary brand.

Understanding brand alliances (especially multiple-brand alliances) is critical for new product managers and marketers. Introducing a new brand has higher risk and failure rates. Companies may lower these risks by co-branding with established brands. However, they should carefully consider the diversification and quality level of the partners. If brand managers position their product as “high quality (luxury)” or “low quality (budget)”, they should choose high- (or low-) quality partners from different product categories (heterogeneous high-end or low-end alliances) because diversification strengthens the primary brand. For a single-partner alliance, the secondary brand should be of high quality.

This paper extends the brand alliance literature beyond single-partner to multiple-partner alliances. With multiple partners, one can explore several critical aspects of an alliance, e.g. quality variance and product class diversity across the partners.

This paper aims to examine the antecedent of purchase intention: online seller reputation, product category and surcharge.

This paper uses five experimental designs to explore the seller reputation, product category and surcharge effects in Internet shopping. The authors chose one seller of low reputation and one seller of high reputation from Yahoo Mall. ANOVA are used to evaluate the results.

Sellers of high reputation can post higher surcharges to increase the total price paid by the buyer, but sellers of low reputation cannot do so (experiment 1). Moreover, partitioned price will decrease purchase intention for sellers of low reputation more than for sellers of high reputation (experiment 2). Consumers take the longest time to make purchasing decisions when buying credence goods (experiment 3) or buying from sellers of low reputation (experiment 4). The effect of surcharge levied by sellers of low reputation is weakened for consumers with low (vs high) shipping‐charge skepticism (experiment 5).

This study is helpful to online sellers if they can identify their reputation, product category and those consumers who have shipping‐charge skepticism, they can create extra profit through surcharge practice.

The authors’ investigation extends the literature on consumers’ price processing by identifying the important moderators (seller reputation, product category, and elaboration) and probing into the decision process (via the response time). The results suggest prescriptive strategies for online sellers.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate returns to search (getting a better product and/or a lower price as a result of search) when consumers use/do not use recommendation agents (RAs). Specifically, it studies the effect of RAs/no RAs on decision quality, decision confidence and decision satisfaction taking into account subjective knowledge (SK) and involvement.

This paper employed two between-subjects factorial experimental designs with subjects searching for digital cameras in a simulated online digital camera store. The experiment was conducted with graduate students in Chennai, Bengaluru and Mysore in India.

Results of two online experiments showed that when consumers used RAs, low search led to better decision quality, whereas when consumers did not use RAs, medium search led to optimum decision quality. When consumers use RAs, SK had a U-shaped influence on the decision quality indicating that decision quality was the lowest for those with medium SK. When consumers did not use RAs, the effect of SK on decision quality was an inverted U-shape, indicating optimum decision quality for medium SK consumers. When consumers did not use RAs, subjects with high involvement made better choices, whereas when consumers used RAs, low involvement subjects made better choices. However, subjects who searched more had higher decision confidence and decision satisfaction even if their choices were not better.

The effect of RA vs no RA in conjunction with relevant consumer characteristics influencing decision quality of the consumer is demonstrated in this study. The findings have important managerial, consumer and theoretical contributions to make.