The role of influencer–follower congruence in the relationship between influencer marketing and purchase behaviour

Over the last decade, influencer marketing has become one of the most important tools for companies and brands to increase awareness, sales, or image strength. Since consumers prefer brands and companies whose image is congruent with their actual or ideal self, we could expect that consumers tend to prefer influencers whom they can compare themselves with. Therefore, congruence between consumer and influencer is imperative in influencer marketing and may indicate whether the influencer will be able to promote products to the target audience in an appealing way. Using a quantitative empirical study, we surveyed more than 7500 individuals measuring how they perceive a specific influencer's credibility, content usefulness, congruence, and purchase behaviour. The results suggest that if there is a congruence between an influencer and the follower, the impact of the influencer's experience and its content usefulness on purchase behaviour is stronger.     

大学生心理和谐研究

本研究以《自我和谐量表》为测量工具,分析了大学生自我和谐的特点,得出结论如下:大学生的自我和谐水平在性别、是否为独生子女和不同生源地方面无显著性差异。理科学生的自我概念的灵活性显著高于文科学生。不同年级的大学生自我经验和谐水平有显著差异等结论。     

Condoms and bananas: Shock advertising explained through congruence theory

This research examines the impact of shock advertising on consumer brand evaluations, for both socially acceptable and controversial product categories. The intervening roles of brand familiarity, perceived incongruity and disgust are also investigated. Utilizing two experiments and drawing upon congruence theory, this research offers empirical evidence to demonstrate that: (1) when familiar brands are advertised using a shock advertisement, consumers will show less favorable evaluations towards brands in a socially acceptable product category as compared to controversial products, and (2) for familiar brands, the differences in consumer evaluations between a socially accepted versus controversial product categories is mediated by perceived incongruity and disgust (a serial mediation). Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Building influencers' credibility on Instagram: Effects on followers’ attitudes and behavioral responses toward the influencer

Collaborations between influencers and brands have become increasingly popular in recent years. Previous research has mainly focused on influencer marketing as a commercial action designed to enhance followers' perceptions and reactions toward promoted brands, ignoring the consequences of these promotional actions on influencers' credibility and their relationships with their followers. This research sheds light on the topic by exploring how influencers' promotional actions affect their credibility, and followers' attitudes and behavioral responses toward the influencer (i.e., to continue following, imitate, and recommend them to other users). A study addressed to the followers of a popular influencer was carried out to test the research model. The results showed that perceived influencer-product congruence positively affects followers' perceptions of the credibility of, and attitude toward, influencers, and negatively affects perceptions of paid communication. Followers' perceptions that influencers have been paid to take part in promotional activities harms their credibility; however, credibility is essential for generating positive attitudes toward the influencer. Finally, both perceived credibility and attitude foster positive behavioral responses toward the influencer; influencers must enhance these factors to retain their influencing capacity. This research provides managerial implications for influencers and brands that can help enhance followers’ experiences when exposed to promotions on social media.     

合理接续条件下旅客列车开车时刻研究

在分析接续列车到达时刻协调性的基础上,引入合理接续条件的概念,运用同余理论从多列换乘接续列车的可达性和合理性方面构造多列车换乘衔接模型,界定各方向列车的合理开车时刻。以青藏铁路旅客列车为例,在采用季节性旅客列车开行方案的基础上,模拟验算各方向列车的发车时间范围,说明算法模型计算过程比较简单,但对于实际列车的开行需要进行综合统筹,才能达到满意的效果。     

The role of sponsorship fit for changing brand affect: A latent growth modeling approach

Using a latent growth modeling (LGM) approach, this study examines the controversial role of perceived sponsor–event fit in inducing changes in brand affect. On the basis of two longitudinal studies related to the 2010 FIFA World Cup and the 2012 London Olympics, the authors determine that fit and brand affect increase linearly over time. Resolving an apparent conflict in the marketing literature, the results show that the initial level of fit relates positively to the initial level of brand affect, but relates negatively to the subsequent increase in brand affect. Moreover, a significant and positive association emerges between the change trajectories, such that a steeper increase in perceived fit results in a faster rate of brand affect improvement. Furthermore, the initial level of brand affect is associated with subsequent increases in neither brand affect nor fit. Therefore, incongruence resolution is key to ensuring that sponsorship improves brand affect. Finally, both attitude toward the sponsorship and event involvement have positive impacts on subsequent increases in both brand affect and perceived fit.     

All or Nothing in Sensory Marketing: Must All or Only Some Sensory Attributes Be Congruent With a Product’s Primary Function?

Given the challenges and costs of implementing high sensory congruence, this article examines whether all sensory attributes, such as product color and ambient music, must match a product's primary function to ensure favorable product evaluation or whether a match of only some sensory attributes is sufficient. For this purpose, we consider multiple sensory attributes and their fit with a product's primary function in terms of key semantic associations. In contrast with approaches that focus on a single sensory attribute and its fit with a product's primary function, this approach allows investigating the impact not only of high versus low sensory attributes–function congruence but also of partial sensory attributes–function congruence. We conduct three experimental studies in online and field settings and two product settings (cooling and heating pads) that consider sensory attributes at the product and ambience level across the senses of vision, smell, and hearing. Our findings show that depending on its type, partial sensory attributes–function congruence can lead to favorable product evaluation similar to high sensory attributes–function congruence or unfavorable product evaluation similar to low sensory attributes–function congruence. Thus, sensory attributes–function congruence has non-linear degressive or progressive positive effects on product evaluation. Overall, these findings indicate that if properly designed, a match of only selected sensory attributes with a product's primary function can indeed lead to sufficiently favorable product evaluation and, thus, help avoiding unnecessary effort in implementing high sensory congruence.     

Managing Complaints to Improve Customer Profitability

In this study, the authors aim to understand whether, to what extent, and under what circumstances, organizational responses to customer complaints improve customer profitability. To do so, they build upon the congruence approach and propose a contingency framework in which the effectiveness of three organizational responses to customer complaints (timeliness, compensation and communications) in improving customer profitability is contingent upon the strength of the relationship and the type of failure. The framework is tested empirically in the financial services industry applying latent class techniques to longitudinal data for a sample of complaining customers. The results reveal that: (1) different complaint-handling initiatives affect customer profitability differently for each of the four segments of complaining customers that are obtained; (2) these heterogeneous responses to complaint handling are explained by differences in the orientation of the relationship and in the failure context; and (3) complaint-handling initiatives are more (less) effective at improving customer profitability when the benefits they offer strongly (poorly) match the benefits sought by customers in each segment to recover from the failure. These results contribute to a better theoretical understanding of customers’ heterogeneous responses to complaint handling and offer managerial recommendations to allocate marketing resources across alternative complaint-handling strategies to improve profitability.     

Reliability of Coordinates Obtained by MINISSA Concerning the Order of Presented Stimuli

In this work we study the stability of similarity judgements of sentences in regard to the presentation order of stimuli through MINISSA(Michigan–Israel–Nijmegen Integrated Smallest Space Analysis),which allows a Multidimensional Scaling with a triangular matrixof global similarity indices. Two forms of the same questionnaireby inverting the order of presentation of all possible unidirectionalcomparisons were applied. Results indicate that both forms areequivalent with similar structures and a high correlation coefficientbetween the judgements. We conclude a high stability of the usedprocedure. Furthermore, in comparison with a previous study, itcould be shown that the stability of solutions obtained by MINISSAis equivalent to that obtained by INDSCAL (INdividual DifferencesSCALing) which is not able to handle so many data as MINISSA.     

Shape congruence in product design: Impacts on automatically activated attitudes

Scientific studies have strongly emphasized the importance of automatic (unconscious) processes underlying consumers’ behavior. However, research is missing on automatically activated attitudes resulting from product design. This study aimed at examining such attitudes by relying primarily on evaluative priming methods (i.e., affective priming task, and lexical decision task combined with a semantic priming procedure). In line with a processing fluency framework, it provides evidence that shape-congruent (vs. shape-incongruent) product designs may be associated with a more positive affective response and a greater activation of trust-related perceptions. Important implications are involved for retailing and professionals in charge of product management.