Shopping for a home vs. a loan: the role of cognitive resource depletion

The authors suggest that the process of shopping for a home and choosing between alternative property features depletes individuals’ cognitive resources, which in turn results in sub‐optimal home financing decisions. Thus, in the span of time that follows the shopping experience, consumers will devote less attention to choosing a mortgage, resulting in a higher propensity to select higher‐risk, adjustable‐rate mortgage products. The results of two controlled experiments demonstrate that participants in an online house shopping simulation were more likely to select one of the high‐risk mortgage offers, and spent less time selecting a mortgage than participants in the control condition. In addition, contrary to expectations, warning participants about cognitive resource depletion exacerbated these effects. These findings imply that consumer decisions could be improved by imposing a temporal separation between shopping for a home and shopping for financing.     

Do social media platforms develop consumer panic buying during the fear of Covid-19 pandemic

There is inadequate understanding of how social media can shape fear and consumer responses in the manner of consumer panic buying while Covid-19 is spreading across the world. Through taking a social constructionism position this research focused on what people think and feel at an individual and collective level on the role of social media to create panic behaviour. Data have been collected from thirty-four consumers who have minimum one active social media account. These participants are contacted through telephonic interview due to maintaining the social distancing. Findings reveal that uncertainties and insecurities proof, buying as persuasion, product unavailability proof, authorities' communication, global logic, and expert opinion are some of the causes on social media platforms that developed the situation of consumer panic buying during Covid-19 crises. Furthermore, the unprecedented level of real-time information on Covid-19 at users' fingertips can give them the tools they need to make smart decisions, but also make them more anxious about what is to come; experts say that may lead to panic buying or stockpiling of products. The study has tried to develop understanding about how social media generates social proof and offers a window into people's collective response to the coronavirus outbreak and shapes panic buying reaction. The study has provided a consumer panic buying theory based on the results of this study and on existing theories, such as global capitalism/information society risk society, social influence, and social proof. These theories help to understand how global logic is built due to the use of social media and how different social proofs are generated which developed the behaviour of consumer panic buying due to Covid-19 pandemic.     

Consumer perceived value and impulse buying behavior on mobile commerce: The moderating effect of social influence

This study examines how the consumers' perceived values (utilitarian and hedonic values) impact their impulse buying behavior (IBB) in the mobile commerce (m-commerce) context. Moreover, we view interpersonal influence as a moderator and test its impact on the correlation between the consumers' perceived value and their IBB. Data were collected through a survey in China (n = 199). The results show that environmental stimuli significantly influence consumer perceived values (i.e., perceived utilitarian value and perceived hedonic value), and the consumers’ perception of hedonic value significantly and directly impacts their IBB. In addition, the interaction effect of perceived hedonic value and interpersonal influence significantly affects IBB. The findings provide valuable guidance for m-commerce retailers to induce consumer IBB.     

Social networks and social media: Understanding and managing influence vulnerability in a connected society

Influence vulnerability has recently become a concern across society and in business. Such vulnerabilities increase as social networks are leveraged by different entities, oftentimes through social media, to affect how we think and behave. While many instances of social influence are positive and beneficial, others can be quite negative and lead to harmful outcomes for organizations and individuals such as reputational damage and an inability to control desirable thoughts, narratives, and behaviors. In general, they can decrease people’s freedom of thought and behavior. This article draws on the concepts of social embeddedness and network commitment to outline people’s influence vulnerabilities. It then proposes three guidelines to help reduce influence vulnerabilities based on the concepts of trustworthiness, network commitment, and self-management.     

Reexamining emerging market animosity toward western developed countries: A social dilemma in physical retailing consumption under normative influence

Focusing on physical retailing as an apparent target for boycotts in the context of emerging market consumers' animosity toward Western developed countries, this research pioneers in its in-depth examination of a social dilemma whereby consumers on one hand wish to avoid purchasing Western products/services to meet social expectations, while on the other wish to continue purchasing Western products/services, because of perceived Western product/service superiority, at the risk of social disapproval. Differing from conventional animosity research that largely neglects interpersonal influence, this research synthesizes social influence theory and social exchange theory to compare consumers’ purchase decisions in visible (physical retailing) and less-visible (online shopping) consumption contexts that are subject to different strengths of normative influence, and proposes a cost-benefit analysis to explain how consumers make trade-offs between social expectations and self-interest. Two studies were conducted to test the hypotheses. Our study findings have important implications for future animosity research on consumer services that are subject to stronger normative pressure.     

Consumer social voice in the age of social media: Segmentation profiles and relationship marketing strategies

Service failures, once handled quietly by customer service departments, are now played out on a highly public social media stage. These failures can result in not only the loss of a loyal consumer but also can negatively affect relationships with those watching the dialogue between disgruntled customers and organizations. The phenomenon of seeking resolution to service failures online is distinct from both traditional word-of-mouth and voice behaviors. This article introduces social voice: public complaining behavior that aims to change the behavior of the organization. A qualitative methodology defines eight dimensions of social voice and categorizes them by the strength of the relationship to the organization. Results indicate that appropriate response strategies differ based on social voice segment.     

The role of social influence on adoption of high tech innovations: The moderating effect of public/private consumption

As technological innovations have become an integral part of the world economy in recent decades, predicting acceptance of those products has become a major goal of many researchers in academia and industry. The main objective of this study is to examine the role of social influence and the moderating effect of a product's public/private status on consumers' intended adoption of high-tech innovations. The results indicate that both social influence and adoption attitude have positive effects on consumer intention to adopt an innovation. Specifically, the effect of social influence on adoption intention is fully mediated by consumer attitude. Further, the relationship between social influence and adoption intention is stronger when an innovation is publicly consumed rather than privately consumed. Implications and future research directions are discussed.     

Modeling consumer engagement on social networking sites: Roles of attitudinal and motivational factors

This paper reports on a study that seeks to assess an extended typology of consumer social networking engagement behaviors. Drawing on uses and gratifications theory, this study assesses consumer engagement with social media, where consumer engagement incorporates consumer responses to marketing communications. The paper argues that certain motivations for social media use serve as antecedents to general attitudes toward social networking sites, which subsequently affects attitudes toward marketers' social networking sites. These attitudes then influence subsequent consumer engagement behaviors. The results show that social facilitation motivation, participating and socializing motivation, and information motivation positively influence consumers' general attitudes toward social networking sites, which had a strong effect on their attitude toward marketers' social networking sites. The relationship between attitudes toward social networking sites and engagement with social networking sites was mediated by attitudes toward marketers’ social networking sites also mediated. The current study brings together the online advertising perspective and the consumer motivation/gratifications perspective of using social media in branding and marketing into a conceptual model that holds up to empirical testing. The paper ends with a discussion of some limitations of the study and proposes avenues for future research.     

Retailer corporate social responsibility and consumer citizenship behavior: The mediating roles of perceived consumer effectiveness and consumer trust

Retailers often face pressure from stakeholders to address social and environmental issues. The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of retailer corporate social responsibility (CSR) on consumers' perceptions and behavior. Drawing on the theoretical foundations of social identity theory and signaling theory, this study presents and validates a unique model which examines the mediating effects of perceived consumer effectiveness and consumer trust on the relationship between retailer CSR and consumer citizenship behavior. Using a sample of 407 consumers in China, results of structural equation modeling show that retailer CSR is positively associated with consumer citizenship behavior. Additionally, perceived consumer effectiveness and consumer trust positively mediate this association. Taken together, these findings provide support for retailers to develop CSR programs that remind and reinforce consumers’ perceptions about socially responsible behaviors.     

The role of network embeddedness across multiple social networks: Evidence from mobile social network games

This article examines peer influences from network relationships within a social network game (i.e., embeddedness) and across such games (i.e., multiplexity). Drawing on social influence theory, we develop a bivariate Poisson model of users’ repeated visits and latent attrition that accommodates peer interaction after controlling for homophily. We estimate the model using data from two social network games with considerable overlap among network members. We find that friends who are only multiplex across games exert greater peer influence on users’ game visits than members who are embedded within a single game. We also determined that ignoring network multiplexity across games may lead firms to mistarget users due to biased peer influences of embedded friends. This result provides an unresearched explanation—strength of peer influence—for the mixed findings in previous literature on network embeddedness. We utilized our results to conduct several scenario analyses to demonstrate how firms can effectively manage users’ engagement and target users in multiple social network games.     

Future fantasies: a social change perspective of retailing in the 21 century

Experts expect great retailing changes in the next ten years. What do consumers expect? With increasing innovation in retail technology and the large-scale implementation of e-commerce formats, shifts in consumer behavior can be categorized as social change. Sociologists have long studied the interaction of social change and technology, focusing on society members’ characteristics to help predict the future. One characteristic of enduring influence is age. In this research note, we consider consumer expectations regarding the evolution of retailing, with an emphasis on expectations of social change and the variance of such expectations by age cohort.     

We’re all connected: The power of the social media ecosystem

Consumers are adopting increasingly active roles in co-creating marketing content with companies and their respective brands. In turn, companies and organizations are looking to online social marketing programs and campaigns in an effort to reach consumers where they ‘live’ online. However, the challenge facing many companies is that although they recognize the need to be active in social media, they do not truly understand how to do it effectively, what performance indicators they should be measuring, and how they should measure them. Further, as companies develop social media strategies, platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter are too often treated as stand-alone elements rather than part of an integrated system. This article offers a systematic way of understanding and conceptualizing online social media, as an ecosystem of related elements involving both digital and traditional media. We highlight a best-practice case study of an organization's successful efforts to leverage social media in reaching an important audience of young consumers. Then, we conclude with several insights and lessons related to the strategic integration of social media into a firm's marketing communications strategy.     

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.     

The role of ethical problems related to a brand in the purchasing decision process: An analysis of the moderating effect of complexity of purchase and mediation of perceived social risk

The objective of this article is to identify the effect of the perception of a brand's ethical problems on consumer behavior. The research contemplates two experimental studies, in which different brands were used in different product categories. Based on the results of the experiments, we verified the moderating effect of the perceived purchase complexity and the mediating effect of perceived social risk in the relationship between the perception of ethical problems related to a brand and the declared purchase intention, both by university students and by real consumers. Through the analysis of means differences and conditional models analyzed with PROCESS (Hayes, 2012), we identified that the perception of ethical problems related to a brand affects consumer confidence and, in some cases, the perception of product quality. In addition, we find that for products with low purchasing complexity, the effect of ethical problems is mitigated both in relation to the purchase intention and in the formation of the perception of social risk linked to consumption.     

Consumption in the public eye: The influence of social presence on service experience

Continuous improvement in managing customer relationships is a necessity for companies wishing to remain competitive in today's global marketplace. The two studies presented herein respond to this need by developing and testing a new nomological net that features social presence and its moderators as antecedents to service satisfaction. Study 1 discovers that when service experiences are positive, social presence enhances service satisfaction. Study 2 examines the interaction between service experience valence, social presence type and self-construal prime. The results show that when an interdependent self-construal is primed, social presence (both in-group and out-group) increases service satisfaction (dissatisfaction) during a positive (negative) service encounter, whereas, when an independent self-construal is primed, social presence exerts little impact on service satisfaction. Managers can benefit from these findings by considering the impact of social presence as they design their servicescapes.     

The influence of social capital through social media: a study of the creation of value in shopping behaviour

When consumers access information from groups through social network sites (SNSs), they develop social capital in the form of bonding and bridging ties with these groups. The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of these bonding and bridging behaviours on consumers’ use of the social network information (SNI) gained from SNSs in their purchasing decisions. The study integrates constructs from the Technology Acceptance Model and the concept of flow to examine how these behaviours influence consumers’ perceptions of how useful the SNI is, of how easy the SNI is to use, and how they engage with SNI. The study utilizes structural equation modelling to examine questionnaire data from a random sample of social network users. The findings demonstrate that bonding and bridging ties influence consumers’ perceptions of the usefulness and ease of use of the information provided by SNSs, and therefore influence their use of the information when making shopping decisions. In addition, consumers who access SNI through bonding ties are likely to have flow experiences which further contribute to their use of the information. This study makes a theoretical contribution by expanding knowledge of the social capital influences on consumers’ perceptions of the value of the social media shopping experience.     

Understanding the role of social influence in piquing curiosity and influencing attitudes and behaviors in a social network environment

Social networks provide an innovative means for facilitating social influence as well as arousing consumer curiosity. However, research on how social influence impacts attitudes and behaviors in this context is limited. Further, even less research exists examining how curiosity impacts consumers’ behaviors, which is concerning since curiosity may be especially relevant in an online setting. To overcome these gaps, two studies were conducted which demonstrate that a consumer's curiosity toward a social network post is influenced by the group membership of the individual who created the post. In turn, curiosity leads to more positive attitudes toward the experience described or represented in the post, which leads to higher intentions to undertake that experience. Additionally, consumer susceptibility to interpersonal influence is found to moderate the relationship between group membership and curiosity. If susceptibility to interpersonal influence is strong enough, content posted by a dissociative group member can also arouse curiosity and positively influence attitudes and behavioral intentions.     

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.     

Social media revolutions: The influence of secondary stakeholders

Traditionally, firms have tried to listen to primary stakeholders (e.g., customers, suppliers, creditors, employees) but have paid little attention to the concerns of secondary stakeholders (e.g., the general public, communities, activist groups). This is because primary stakeholders were perceived to have power, legitimacy, and urgency behind their requests, while secondary stakeholders had little or no leverage. With the coming of the Internet and social media this asymmetry of influence has changed. Today, secondary stakeholders have to be managed as adroitly as primary stakeholders. In this installment of Marketing & Technology, we show managers how social media and the Internet have amplified the influence of secondary stakeholders, and offer guidance on how to manage these groups effectively.     

Privacy assurances and social sharing in social commerce: The mediating role of threat-coping appraisals

The social sharing of consumers (e.g., posting about a shopping experience) is the basis for the flourishing of social commerce; however, it conflicts with consumers’ psychological need for privacy. This study attempts to investigate the comprehensive effect of privacy assurances from different institutions on social sharing, involving privacy policy and privacy-protective technology provided by social media companies as well as government regulation and industry self-regulation. We conducted a large-scale empirical survey with 1,311 users of Xiaohongshu in China. The results show that all the four privacy assurances have a positive effect on social sharing that is almost equal. The results also reveal that threat appraisal and coping appraisal jointly mediate the relationship of privacy assurances and social sharing. Our results provide operable implications for stakeholders on how to facilitate social sharing and thus the flourishing of s-commerce through fostering privacy assurances.