Effects of brand personality on brand trust and brand affect

Given the potential utility of brand personality for marketers, the present research conceptualizes and investigates the relationships between five brand personality dimensions and brand trust as well as brand affect. This research proposes that some brand personality dimensions relate more to brand trust, whereas other dimensions relate more to brand affect. The results suggest that Sincerity and Ruggedness brand personality dimensions are more likely to influence the level of brand trust than brand affect, whereas the Excitement and Sophistication dimensions relate more to brand affect than to brand trust. The Competence dimension appears to have similar effects on both brand trust and brand affect. The research findings are consistent with marketing and consumer researchers' assertions that brand personality can increase levels of brand trust and evoke brand affect, which in turn builds the level of brand loyalty. Theoretical and practical contributions and implications are discussed. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Building value co-creation with social media marketing,brand trust,and brand loyalty

Value co-creation has emerged as a critical challenge for fashion brands in the age of social media. Despite its importance, scholars have not adequately explored the role of social media marketing (SMM) in enhancing value co-creation (VCC) intentions among fashion brand consumers in mainland China. SMM encompasses five hierarchical elements: entertainment, customization, interaction, electronic word-of-mouth (EWOM), and trendiness. This study developed a theoretical framework based on attribution theory and employed the partial least squares–structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) method to analyze the value co-creation process. The results indicate that SMM positively impacts brand loyalty (BL), brand trust (BT), and VCC. Furthermore, BT positively affects BL and VCC, while also serving as a positive mediator between SMM and BL and VCC. Finally, BL positively enhances the VCC intentions of fashion brand consumers. Our study's unique insights, derived from the attribution theory's advantage point, enrich the marketing literature. These findings also offer practical guidelines and tips for marketing managers seeking to optimize their SMM mix for VCC.     

Media amplification of a brand crisis and its affect on brand trust

Abstract

This paper explores the ways in which consumers' brand trust during a brand crisis is affected through direct experience versus when it is amplified through mass media. By using case-study methodology, our findings reveal that generalised public images of a product crisis initiate a public perception of risk, which provides more negative effects on brand trust than the actual consumers' experience does. We introduce the media as a third partner influencing the trust relationship between consumers and brands, and offer suggestions for restoring and preserving customers' brand trust.     

Corporate social responsibilities,consumer trust and corporate reputation: South Korean consumers' perspectives

This study proposes and tests a model of corporate social responsibility (CSR) that specifies relationships among (1) four categories of CSR initiatives as independent variables, (2) three types of consumer trust as mediating variables, and (3) corporate reputation as the dependent variable. Results show that the firm's fulfillment of economic and legal CSR initiatives had a direct positive effect on corporate reputation, whereas neither ethical nor philanthropic CSR initiatives did. In the CSR-trust link, economic performances fostered consumer expertise trust, legal and ethical CSR activities affected integrity trust, and philanthropic CSR activities influenced social benevolence trust in the firm. This study confirms that all three types of trust partially or fully mediate the effect of the four CSR initiatives on corporate reputation. This outcome indicates that CSR activities create and nurture consumers' trust in the company, which will, in turn, bring about consumers' positive or improved perceptions of the firm.     

Checkout button and online consumer impulse-buying behavior in social commerce: A trust transfer perspective

To enhance social media users' shopping experiences, social media platforms launched an online shopping feature – the checkout button –allowing users to browse new products, examine items via multiple photos and videos, and purchase items without leaving the platform. Yet, few studies have examined the impacts of the ‘checkout button’ on social commerce users' perceptions and impulse-buying behaviors. Thus, this study seeks to investigate the impact of the ‘checkout button’ on consumers' trust and impulse-buying behavior based on the trust transfer theory, as well as how the impact will differ based on social factors and brand familiarity in social commerce. This study provides valuable insights into social commerce. Checkout within Instagram does not facilitate impulse-buying behavior, but brand familiarity and social factors influence consumer trust and impulse-buying intention. This indicates that well-known brands might be more suitable for social commerce. Furthermore, active social interaction is conducive to impulse-buying intentions in social commerce.     

Social media and sustainable purchasing attitude: Role of trust in social media and environmental effectiveness

The role of social media in promoting sustainable attitudes is currently understudied. Underpinned by social learning theory, this study unveils the effect of social media usage and browsing on sustainable purchasing attitude, the underlying mechanism, and the boundary condition. Drawing on a sample of 693 experienced respondents analyzed using structural equation modeling, this study reveals that social media usage and browsing have a significant positive association. Both constructs significantly impact sustainable purchasing attitudes with complementary partial mediation of the drive for environmental responsibility. Further, trust in social media and perceived environmental effectiveness significantly moderate the relationships belongs to the browsing and drive for environmental responsibility. Contrary to the theorization, moderating constructs cannot substantially impact the proposed associations of social media usage. In this manner, the present research is innovative and provides valued knowledge to comprehend social media's role in encouraging sustainable attitudes.     

The role of trust and privacy concerns in using social media for e-retail services: The moderating role of COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the customers habits of purchasing as well as shopping behaviours. This study seeks to develop an integrated model of the critical role of trust and privacy concerns in influencing consumers purchase behaviour through social media. It also explored the moderating role of COVID-19 on these relationships. Quantitative data were collected using survey strategy through questionnaires to address different levels of the study. Our proposed model was tested with 1,200 consumers, 600 prior to COVID-19 and 600 during COVID-19. Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling was conducted to assess the hypotheses. The findings revealed that purchase intention depends on trust and privacy concerns. Information quality, security concerns, ease of use, privacy/security assurance seal, and disposition to third party certification are the main drivers of trust and privacy concerns. Furthermore, our proposed model during COVID-19 period has higher explanator power (R2 = 0.741) than before COVID-19 period (R2 = 0.603 and consumers buying behaviour has been increased during COVID-19. The results offer important implications for retailers and are likely to stimulate further research in the area of purchase behaviour through social media.     

Customer pre-participatory social media drivers and their influence on attitudinal loyalty within the retail banking industry: A multi-group analysis utilizing social exchange theory

Social media pervades everyday life and firms need to understand what consumer traits antedate participation over these channels. Utilizing social exchange theory (SET), this study seeks to determine what factors precede SET's cost-benefit analysis of social media participation along with these factors' influence on attitudinal loyalty. Important antecedents to this cost-benefit analysis for social media participation are online interaction propensity (OIP), participation attitude and trust. Further, demographic (age, gender, income) and social media page factors (perceived page size and page visit frequency) are identified as potential precursors to customers' cost-benefit analysis towards social media participation. A sample of 482 U.S. banking customers was collected via an online survey. The results found that OIP and trust had direct statistically significant effects on attitudinal loyalty and participation attitude's effect was fully mediated by trust. Age, gender and page visit frequency facets exhibited no differences between groups whilst income (with higher income groups displaying higher levels of loyalty) and page size groups (smaller page sizes demonstrated greater loyalty) demonstrated differing effects on attitudinal loyalty. The study contributes to knowledge and practice by extending particular pre-SET traits in social media to a U.S. retail banking context. The study also furthers academic and managerial capabilities for segmentation analysis' and explicating connections between pre-participatory influences and attitudinal loyalty.     

Creation of consumer loyalty and trust in the retailer through store brands: The moderating effect of choice of store brand name

Within the current economic context, store brands play an important role in differentiation strategies based on assortment and positioning in terms of distributor prices. To begin with, this study identifies three determining aspects of retail loyalty and trust: satisfaction with price levels, the perceived image of the assortment and loyalty to the store brands (SB). Secondly, this study proposes a theoretical relational model among the aforementioned aspects. Finally, this study analyzes the moderating role that the strategy of choosing SB name (umbrella brand label vs. brands different from the label brand) plays in the relationship between loyalty to SB and loyalty to and trust in the retailer. By including this moderating variable, we seek to contribute to current academic research and to provide insights into the importance that SB strategy (label vs. own name) has for the effect of loyalty to SB on the relative results of the retail company. Our research results show that making the umbrella SB name the same as the label brand name increases the positive effect of customer loyalty to SB on loyalty to the retailer, but not the effect of trust on this loyalty compared to chains that use SB names different from those of the label. These results have important implications for management.     

Effect of WeChat interaction on brand evaluation: A moderated mediation model of para-social interaction and affiliative tendency

As an indispensable platform for the interaction and relationship marketing in China, the systematic discussion about the impact of WeChat interaction on brand evaluation is still not well understood. Based on para-social interaction theory, this study examined the relationships between WeChat interaction, para-social interaction, brand evaluation and affiliative tendency, utilizing valid survey data of 216 Chinese users of WeChat. The findings of this study revealed that there is a positive relationship between WeChat interaction and brand evaluation, and para-social interaction plays a mediation role for its virtual intimacy. Compared to the high affiliative tendency, low affiliative tendency enhances the positive effect of para-social interaction on brand evaluation and the mediating path. Through detailed analyses, the conclusions identified para-social interaction as a mediator and affiliative tendency as a moderator in the relationship between WeChat interaction and brand evaluation. On the basis of these results, the practical implications for enterprises are discussed.     

Perceived brand authenticity and social exclusion as drivers of psychological brand ownership

Firms strive hard to make their brands imbibed in consumers’ lives. Psychological brand ownership is one of the best ways to make consumers psychologically own the brand to generate favorable behavior. Thus, it becomes imperative for firms to know about the ways through which psychological brand ownership can be induced. To this end, the current study primarily examines perceived brand authenticity and social exclusion as the important antecedents to psychological brand ownership. In total 407 responses were collected through online mode. The results demonstrate that both perceived brand authenticity and social exclusion engender a sense of psychological brand ownership. In addition, the findings also lend support to positive word of mouth and purchase intentions as the outcomes of psychological brand ownership. The study presents some important implications to both academicians and practitioners.     

Investigating the antecedents of customer brand engagement and consumer-based brand equity in social media

The current research is concerned with identifying and testing the role of three main predictors: consumer involvement, consumer participation, and self-expressive brand on the customer brand engagement (CBE). The customer brand engagement is treated in the current study as multidimensional constructs comprising three main aspects: cognitive processing (CP), affection (AF), and activation (AC). It was also proposed a direct influence for these three aspects of CBE on consumer-based brand equity (CBBE). Using online surveys, we gathered data from fans/followers of mobile phone service providers, via Facebook fan pages in Jordan. The data were analysed using structural equation modelling. Based on structural equation modelling analyses (SEM), it was supported that CBE aspects were largely predicted by the role of consumer involvement (INV), consumer participation (COP), and self-expressive brand (SEB). However, we find that activation impact one dimension of the CBBE dimensions, namely, brand loyalty. Further, we find that brand awareness/associations affect perceived quality but not brand loyalty. To validate the CBE scale, future studies could investigate the impact of the scale using other social media platforms for different brands. The limited amount of empirical research on CBE was the motivation behind this research. In particular, there is no study that has investigated the main predictors of CBE and its consequences over developing context by proposing and testing the association between the antecedents of CBE with the dimensions of CBE, which in turn affect the dimensions of CBBE.     

The interplay of counter-conformity motivation,social influence,and trust in customers' intention to adopt Internet banking services: The case of an emerging country

The aim of this paper is to shed light on the roles of counter-conformity motivation, social influence, and trust in explaining customers' intention to adopt Internet banking services. Data is collected from 245 respondents and analyzed using SmartPLS 2.0 M3. Results show that the intention to adopt Internet banking is mainly influenced by trust in the Internet banking services, followed by customers' counter-conformity motivation and performance expectancy. Social influence and trust in the physical bank, however, have indirect impacts on customers’ intention to adopt Internet banking. Effort expectancy has no effect on it.     

Impact of trust and knowledge in the food chain on motivation-behavior gap in green consumption

The motivations and barriers of the actual green purchase behavior are as real as the product itself, which makes it a systematic process to examine the inconsistency between consumers' motivations and their actual behavior (motivation-behavior gap). The study aimed to clarify the direct and indirect effects of motivations on the purchase behavior of green food. The proposed conceptual model was adopted from the Motivation-Opportunity-Ability (MOA) framework and was extended by adding the serial mediation of consumer perceived knowledge and trust as major constructs. Data were collected from 1788 consumers in China. Results provided support for the model and showed that perceived knowledge about the food supply chain could be both barrier and a positive factor of consumers’ purchase behavior, which mainly depends on the trade-off between certification and planting knowledge. Differences in trust exist and consumers hold authorities and certification bodies more accountable than farmers and retailers. For the direct effects, food safety concern is positively associated with behavior, whereas environmental concern is not. Policymakers shall use the results to narrow the motivation-behavior gap, especially for emerging economies.     

Employee brand engagement on social media: Managing optimism and commonality

This article considers how employees engage with B2B firms on social media, a topic that is largely overlooked in the extant brand engagement literature. Using the results from a large-scale study of employee brand engagement on social media, we identify two key drivers of employee brand engagement using the content analysis tool DICTION—namely, optimism and commonality. Employees of top-ranked and -rated firms express higher levels of optimism and commonality in their reviews of their employers on social media than do their counterparts in bottom-ranked and -rated firms. This permits the construction of a 2 × 2 matrix that allows managers to diagnose strategies for increasing or improving employee brand engagement. This creates four different kinds of employee brand engagement situations, and offers human resources and marketing managers different strategies in each case. We demonstrate how practitioners and scholars can shed new light on the way stakeholders engage with brands.     

The role of organizational justice and social interaction in mitigating the negative effects of high-performance member retailers on strategic integration

Drawing on resource-based view, social exchange theory, and organizational justice theory, this study tests the link between high-performance member retailers (HPMRs) and strategic integration to retail buying groups, and the mediation and moderation of social integration and organizational justice, respectively. Using structural equation modeling, we analyze data from 241 independent retailers participating in retail buying groups in Japan. Results reveal that although HPMRs are negatively associated with strategic integration, they also increase strategic integration via enhanced social interaction with other member retailers. Additionally, organizational justice by buying group headquarters weakens the negative link between HPMRs and strategic integration. The study newly shows how member retailers’ past performance characteristics, the role of buying group headquarters, and member retailers’ interactions affect strategic integration to retail buying groups. The findings contribute to resource-based view, social exchange theory, and organizational justice theory by examining how retail buying groups can encourage HPMRs’ strategic integration using social interaction and organizational justice as boundary conditions. Practical and theoretical implications are described.     

Influence of consumer attitude toward online brand community on revisit intention and brand trust

This study proposes to illustrate the relationships between perceived benefits in using online brand communities, attitudes, revisit intention, and brand trust, and it also assesses the moderating role of two types of online brand communities: marketer- and consumer-created communities. The research model is tested by regression analysis using a random sample of 242 respondents. The study finds that social and informational benefits have positive impacts on attitude, which, in turn, significantly influence revisit intention and brand trust. The moderating effect of the type of online community was significant in predicting the relationship between attitude and brand trust but not between attitude and revisit intention. The study concludes the importance of managing online brand communities through managerial implications.     

A cross-cultural analysis of ridesharing intentions and compliance with COVID-19 health guidelines: The roles of social trust,fear of COVID-19, and trust-in-God

Ridesharing services such as Uber and Lyft have been substantially affected by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on social capital theory, the current research investigates how social trust relates to three types of trust in compliance with COVID-19 guidelines and consumers' ridesharing intentions. Analyzing data from two economically and culturally distinct countries, the results suggest that social trust positively affects trust in platform companies' compliance with COVID-19 guidelines (TPC), but not (or to a lesser extent) trust in drivers' (TDC) and other riders (TRC) compliance with COVID-19 guidelines in both the United States and Bangladesh. Importantly, TPC, TDC, and TRC are positively related with consumers' ridesharing intentions in the United States but not in Bangladesh. Furthermore, the analysis reveals two counterintuitive moderating effects of fear of COVID-19 and trust in God. The results provide important insights on factors affecting the ridesharing industry in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, and they emphasize the importance of considering cultural context in understanding consumers’ intentions to engage in the sharing economy.     

The role of consumer-consumer interaction and consumer-brand interaction in driving consumer-brand engagement and behavioral intentions

Grounded on service-dominant logic (S-D logic), a vital issue for marketers is to understand how the multiple approaches encouraging consumer participation (CP), as manifested by consumer-consumer interaction (CCI) and consumer-brand interaction (CBI), reflect on the extent of consumer-brand engagement (CBE). This study examines the role of CCI and CBI in driving the CBE's cognitive, emotional and behavioral dimensions, and their effect on consumers' behavioral intentions based on repurchase intention and ongoing search behavior. Data collected from 316 Malaysian consumers using a self-administrated online survey was analyzed using Partial Least Square – Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM). The findings demonstrate the importance of the two forms of CP in strengthening the CBE dimensions, revealing that the cognitive engagement is an influential driver of consumers' ongoing search behavior, while emotional engagement and behavioral engagement are significant predictors of consumers' repurchase intention. We provide meaningful implications for marketers to manage CP on social-media platforms.     

Building engagement in online brand communities: The effects of socially beneficial initiatives on collective social capital

Using social capital theory, this study investigates members' perceptions of socially beneficial initiatives on collective social capital. A total of 359 valid surveys were collected from two types of online brand communities (OBCs). The results demonstrate that high levels of empathy can lead to increased prosocial behavior. In both product and social OBCs, social trust affects affective and cognitive engagement, while reciprocity impacts affective and behavioral engagement. Moreover, our findings show that the link between prosocial behavior and reciprocity is partially mediated by social trust. This study provides several implications for the management of OBCs.