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The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of “social information” in Facebook News Feed ads on American users’ advertising responses, including ad credibility, attitude-toward-the-ad, brand interest, intention to click and purchase intention. Using social impact theory as a conceptual framework, three factors were tested – relationship strength, physical distance and number of affiliated friends. The moderating role of product involvement was also investigated.

A 2 (strength of relationship: weak vs strong) × 2 (immediacy of relationship: close distance vs long distance) × 2 (number of friends: one vs several) between-group factorial design was used, and 397 research participants were recruited through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk).

Significant main effects were found for relationship strength and physical distance. Product involvement was identified as a moderating variable. No significant effects were found under the high involvement condition. Under the low involvement condition, however, relationship strength and physical distance significantly affected Facebook users’ advertising responses.

Research samples were recruited through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk). It is possible that the characteristics of this specific social group might have influenced the findings of the study. Only one specific product category, fast casual restaurant, was tested. Participants were asked to imagine themselves in certain scenarios. Even though the scenarios were carefully tested in the pretest and clear instructions were given, field experiments might be helpful in future research to better reflect the actual consumer experience.

Marketers should take advantage of the “social information” feature in Facebook News Feed ads, especially for low involvement products. Names of friends with stronger social relationships and within close physical distance should be included in the ads.

The study is one of the first to examine the effects of “social information” in Facebook advertising. It also confirms the Social Impact Theory in a social media setting.

This paper aims to examine the effects of visual themes and view perspectives on users’ visual attention to brand posts on Instagram. The impact of visual attention on brand attitude and recognition is also explored.

The authors conducted a 4 (visual themes: customer-centric, employee-centric, product-centric and symbolic visuals) × 2 (view perspectives: first-person view vs third-person view) between-subject factorial eye-tracking experiment to explore their effects on viewers’ visual attention (fixation frequency and fixation duration), attitude toward the brand and brand recognition.

Results showed that, under a first-person view, participants spent the longest time viewing customer-centric images and paid the most attention to product-centric and customer-centric images. For images in the third-person view, product-centric images received the longest fixation duration and highest fixation frequency. Customer-centric image and product-centric image generated significantly higher amount of fixation duration and fixation frequency than the symbolic image, regardless of view perspective. Brand recognition was positively influenced by fixation frequency but not by fixation duration.

This study is an extended application of Aaker’s (1996) brand identity planning model in visual branding on Instagram. As the findings indicated, the effective use of visual strategies could lead to more positive responses toward the brand. By understanding how optical elements stimulate visual branding processing, marketing professionals will be able to improve information designing skills in visual-based social media platforms (such as Instagram).

Reports a study of 1,304 Chinese brand names of ten types of products in China. These brand names are content analyzed following a linguistic approach which the authors developed from their earlier studies. The ten types of brand names are presented in three broad categories representing the three different developing stages of the consumer product industry in China: brands of traditional products (illustrated by matches and spirits), brands of traditional products with current development (illustrated by bicycles, shoes, and toothpastes), and brands of new and modern products (illustrated by cosmetics, soft drinks, washing machines, refrigerators and TV sets). The conclusion drawn from the analysis is that one of the variables in determining how linguistic principles are being applied to Chinese brand naming is the respective stages of development of such products in the context of the Chinese market economy.

The purpose of this paper is to prepare a multifunctional nanocomposite that is slow-release and resistant to seawater corrosion and biofouling corrosion and to explore the synergistic effect between the two corrosion inhibitors.

The morphology, structure and release properties of CAP@HNTs, BTA@HNTs and CAP/BTA@HNTs were investigated by scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, specific surface area analysis and UV spectrophotometry. The corrosion resistance and antimicrobial properties were investigated by electrochemical measurements and bioinhibition rate tests, and the synergistic effect between the two corrosion inhibitors was explored by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy.

The CAP/BTA@HNTs are responsive to acidic environments and have significantly improved antibacterial and corrosion resistance compared with CAP@HNTs and BTA@HNTs. CAP and BTA have a positive synergistic effect on anticorrosion and antifouling.

Two types of inhibitors, anticorrosion and antifouling, were loaded into the same nanocontainer to prepare a slow-releasable and multifunctional nanocomposite with higher resistance to seawater corrosion and biocorrosion and to explore the synergistic effect of CAP and BTA on corrosion resistance.

Millennials, an understudied segment of the sustainable market, are enthusiastic about adopting greener lifestyles but fail to translate pro-environmental attitudes to actual behavior, thus understanding factors that motivate their actual purchase of green products is imperative. Using the consumer socialization framework, the researchers studied the impacts of social structural variables (i.e. age, gender, education and family structure), socialization agents (i.e. family, peers and mass media) and environmental concern on the buying behaviors of millennials from two of the world’s most populous nations: India and China.

Using online panels (Amazon M-Turk and sojump.com), online surveys were administered to an online sample of millennials aged 18-24 years from India (n = 253) and China (n = 255).

Hierarchical regressions showed that peer communication predominantly influenced green buying behavior of millennials from India, while family communication was most important to Chinese millennials. Environmental concern, an attitudinal outcome, directly impacted behavior and also mediated the relationship between significant socialization agents and buying behavior in both countries.

Considering the importance given to peers (India) and family (China), green marketers have to use specialized strategies when marketing their products to millennials in India and China. Instead of focusing on mass media campaigns, the study highlights the importance of “personal” social networks to curb the environmental issues plaguing their respective countries.

The current study extends the literature on millennials’ green consumer behavior by exploring millennials in India and China. The consumer socialization framework has not been applied to countries like India and China, and to understand green consumerism, the role played by influential agents such as family and peers in these collectivistic cultures and their potential to change green attitudes and behavior warrants further exploration. The possibility of mediating effects has been represented by weak correlations between socio-demographic and psychological factors. Using the consumer socialization framework, the current study explores environmental concern (EC) as a mediator in the model.

In the practice of venture capital investment, the venture capital will not only claim the share of the enterprise’s future output, but also a certain amount of fixed income. The purpose of this paper is to examine the optimal contract which blends the variable ownership income and the fixed income theoretically so as to provide a keen insight into the venture capital practice.

This paper establishes an extended principal-agent model and researches on the design of optimal contract dominated by venture capital with double-sided moral hazard and information screening.

By establishing theoretical models, the main findings are: first, high-quality enterprise tends to relinquish less ownership but give more fixed return to the venture capital as compensation in order to obtain the venture capital financing; second, low-quality enterprise is willing to relinquish more ownership but give less fixed return to the venture capital for financing; third, due to the existence of double-sided moral hazard, neither of the venture capital and the enterprise will exert their best effort.

This paper furthers the application of principal-agent model in the field of venture capital investment and researches on the optimal contract, considering double-sided moral hazard and adverse selection at the same time originally.

This paper aims to explore the impact of green finance on the heterogeneity of enterprise green technology innovation and the underlying mechanism between them.

Using the data of China's A-share listed enterprises from 2008 to 2020 and the fixed effect model, the authors empirically explore the relationship and mechanism between green finance and green technology innovation by constructing the green finance index while considering both the quality and quantity of innovation.

The study suggests that green finance is positively related to the quality and quantity of enterprise green technology innovation, while green finance is more effective in stimulating the quality of green technology innovation than quantity. In addition, alleviating financial mismatch and improving the quality of environmental information disclosure are core mechanisms during the process of green finance facilitating green technology innovation. Furthermore, green finance exerts a more positive effect on the quality and quantity of green technology innovation with large-size enterprises, heavily polluting industries and enterprises in the eastern region.

This paper enriches the literature on green finance and green technology innovation and provides practical significance for green finance implementation.

This is the third of a series of studies on Chinese brand naming using content analysis from a linguistic perspective. The first study generalized the principles guiding Chinese brands in terms of syllable pattern, tone pattern, compounding structure and semantic preference. The second looked at specific branding rules, focusing on two entirely different products: cosmetic products and bicycles. The present study, following the same linguistic framework of analysis, analyzes three groups of closely related products: spirits, beers, soft drinks, to see how these brands are creatively and distinctively constructed. Finds that the brand naming patterns of the three drinks are basically in agreement with the general Chinese branding principles, and the differences among them directly reflect the development, the consumer markets and characteristics of each product.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the moderating role of product involvement in predicting the effects of self‐concept and consumption situation on consumers' situational decision making.

An experiment was conducted based on a two (self‐concept) × two (consumption situation) between group design. Participants' product involvement was treated as a covariate in repeated measures test to analyze the relationships between product involvement, self‐concept and consumption situation.

Results suggested that, for consumers who were highly involved with the product, self‐concept and consumption situation were both determinant factors in a situational brand choice. For consumers who were not highly involved with the product, however, their situational brand choice was based solely on the situational factor, not their self‐concept.

Participants' pre‐existing attitude towards the brands might have influenced their answers. Only a single product category was used. The findings of this study can help us understand the underlying mechanism for the impact of self‐congruity and situational congruity. From a marketer's perspective, it seems logical to assume that both self‐concept and consumption situation are influential factors for those who find the product personally relevant, while only consumption situation is influential for those who are not.

The paper examines the interaction effect between self‐concept and consumption situation. It introduces a new variable, product involvement, to self‐concept research to extend our understanding of when self/situation congruity effects occur.

This paper investigated the effects of exposure to advertising images on quality of life issues. Affordable products and unaffordable products, as well as control images, were presented to participants of the experiment. Subjects' self-esteem, life-satisfaction and materialism were measured using a battery of scales. Results indicated affordable product images did not affect any dependent variables. However, exposure to unaffordable products enhanced, rather than decreased, Chinese students' self-esteem and life-satisfaction, contrary to results found in previous social comparison research. This suggested that Chinese students were rather optimistic about their future and they used future orientation in their prediction of success. Implications of the study were discussed.