ABSTRACT This study examines how chatbot anthropomorphism shapes consumer responses to service failure by distinguishing between process failure and outcome failure and by testing alternative recovery responses. Across three pretests ( N = 30, 120 and 240) and two scenario‐based experiments (Study 1: N = 346; Study 2: N = 778), consumers evaluated interactions with high‐ versus low‐anthropomorphic chatbots in service settings. The findings show that chatbot anthropomorphism intensifies customer aggression under process failure. This effect is mediated by the disconfirmation of anticipated expectations, such that highly anthropomorphic chatbots elicit stronger expectations for socially appropriate and competent interaction, which are more sharply violated when the failure concerns the interaction process itself. The results further show that, following process failure, an apology is more effective than acknowledgment of the chatbot's AI nature in mitigating customer aggression, particularly for highly anthropomorphic chatbots. By integrating chatbot anthropomorphism, failure type, expectation disconfirmation, and recovery response within a single framework, this research extends understanding of when anthropomorphic chatbots help versus harm consumers in service encounters. The findings also offer practical guidance for firms seeking to design more effective chatbot recovery strategies after service failures.
ABSTRACT Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is reshaping e‐commerce by enabling conversational recommenders that can explain their advice and flexibly enact social roles (e.g., assistant vs. friend). Yet it remains unclear how these roles affect consumers' adoption of GenAI recommendations, through which trust pathways, and under what message designs. Drawing primarily on role theory and trust theory, with product evaluability and dual‐process logic specifying the relevant conditions, we examine how recommender role interacts with product type and message framing. Across three experiments, Study 1 ( n = 263) demonstrates a role–product fit: assistant‐type recommendations generate higher adoption intentions for search goods, whereas friend‐type recommendations generate higher adoption intentions for experience goods. Study 2 ( n = 293) identifies the underlying trust pathways: assistant‐type recommendations increase adoption of search goods primarily through cognitive trust, whereas friend‐type recommendations increase adoption of experience goods primarily through affective trust. Study 3 ( n = 367) shows that message framing is a boundary condition: loss framing strengthens the assistant–search‐good fit, whereas gain framing strengthens the friend–experience‐good fit. Together, the findings show that GenAI role plasticity—the capacity of the same system to enact different socially meaningful roles—shapes persuasion through role‐contingent trust and context‐dependent message processing. The research offers practical guidance for aligning GenAI roles and framing strategies with product evaluability in e‐commerce.
ABSTRACT The effectiveness of cause‐related marketing (CRM) depends on how CRM initiatives are designed and communicated to consumers. To advance theoretical understanding of effective CRM practice, drawing on the attribution theory and martyrdom effect, the current study examined how characteristics of CRM programs, specifically, CRM motives (self‐serving vs. public‐serving), interact with levels of expected consumer engagement (i.e., perceived pain), and personal traits (e.g., calling for the issue and moral identity) to shape support for the CRM initiative and the associated brand. The purposes of the current study were to examine: (1) the effect of CRM motives on perceived authenticity and consumer supporting behaviors, (2) the mediating effects of authenticity and meaningfulness, and (3) the moderating roles of consumers' perceived pain and calling for a children's starvation issue. Experiment 1 demonstrated that the public‐serving CRM motive, paired with a CRM event that requires pain (i.e., a marathon), resulted in greater perceived CRM authenticity and supporting behaviors than other conditions. Experiment 2 extended the first study by incorporating calling and meaningfulness. The results showed that CRM authenticity and meaningfulness sequentially mediated the effects of CRM motives on supporting behaviors (i.e., brand eWOM, event eWOM, and donation). The effect of public‐serving motive on CRM authenticity was significant across all perceived pain and calling conditions but was strongest in the marathon/high‐calling condition. This research contributes to the CRM and marketing literature by identifying the mechanisms that explain when and why consumers perceive authenticity and meaningfulness in CRM programs and, consequently, engage in supporting behaviors.
ABSTRACT The global fashion industry is both an economic driver and a major contributor of environmental and social challenges. This research examines how sustainable luxury fashion is constructed and adopted within an emerging market context by integrating perspectives from entrepreneurs, industry managers, and consumers. Utilizing a mixed‐methods approach and drawing upon Self‐Identity Theory and need for uniqueness, this research explores how identity‐based motivations shape sustainable luxury consumption. Study 1 employs in‐depth interviews with luxury fashion entrepreneurs and practitioners to uncover how sustainability is embedded within luxury value propositions. Building on these insights, Study 2 quantitatively tests a conceptual model examining the relationship between NFU and sustainable luxury purchase intentions, mediated by identity‐based constructs. Results reveal that green self‐identity significantly mediates the NFU–intention relationship, whereas minimalism, cultural fusion, and quiet distinction do not exert significant mediating effects. These findings suggest that the desire for uniqueness translates into sustainable luxury consumption primarily when aligned with internalized environmental identities rather than purely esthetic or cultural differentiation motives. By bridging entrepreneurial and managerial strategy with consumer psychology, this research advances theoretical understanding of identity‐driven sustainable luxury consumption and provides actionable insights for brands seeking to reconcile exclusivity with sustainability in emerging markets.
ABSTRACT Generative AI has led many e‐commerce firms to adopt AI shopping assistants that advise consumers much as human salespeople do. In offline retail, salespeople often praise either the consumer or the product to encourage a purchase. Although praise is among the most common persuasion tactics in selling, its effects in AI‐mediated commerce have drawn little attention, in contrast to tactics such as empathy. This paper examines how the target of an AI shopping assistant's praise (the consumer versus the product) affects consumers' intention to purchase the recommended product. Across three studies, we find that praising the consumer rather than the product lowers purchase intention, and that perceived manipulative intent largely accounts for this effect: when the assistant praises the consumer, consumers infer that it is trying to manipulate them, which lowers their intention to buy. Consumers' AI literacy moderates the effect of praise target on perceived manipulative intent, such that consumer‐directed praise raises perceived manipulative intent more strongly among consumers with higher AI literacy. Together, these findings show that praise can backfire in AI commerce, extend the Persuasion Knowledge Model to AI‐mediated shopping, and offer practical guidance for firms deploying AI shopping assistants.
ABSTRACT Although artificial intelligence and robot services are widely regarded as the future of the hospitality industry, unmanned smart hotels centred on service robots face significant risks of service failures. Hence, it is worth exploring whether human employees should intervene in the apology process when service failures occur. Based on feeling‐as‐information theory and attribution theory, this study conducts four experiments to explore the interaction effect between service failure severity (high vs. low) and apology agents (robot‐only vs. human‐robot collaboration) on customer forgiveness in unmanned smart hotels, the mediating roles of cognitive fit and perceived empathy, and the moderating role of customers' regulatory focus (promotion vs. prevention). The findings reveal that the robot‐only (vs. human‐robot collaboration) apology leads to higher customer forgiveness in low‐severity service failures. This interaction effect is mediated by cognitive fit. The human‐robot collaboration (vs. robot‐only) apology leads to higher customer forgiveness in high‐severity service failures. This interaction effect is mediated by perceived empathy. Customers' regulatory focus also plays a moderating role in the influence path. For promotion‐focused customers, the interaction effect exists. The robot‐only (vs. human‐robot collaboration) apology leads to higher customer forgiveness in low‐severity (vs. high‐severity) service failures through cognitive fit (perceived empathy). For prevention‐focused customers, the human‐robot collaboration (vs. robot‐only) apology leads to higher customer forgiveness regardless of service failure severity. The findings provide novel insights into the field of service failures in unmanned smart hotels and offer practical guidance for service recovery strategies.
ABSTRACT This study examined the interaction between music genre, tempo, and bodily posture in influencing consumers' pleasure and experiential value, offering new insights for designing retail and service atmospheres. Across two laboratory experiments, participants listened to either classical or rock music (Experiment 1) and fast‐ or slow‐tempo music (Experiment 2) while seated or standing. The results indicate that on pleasure and experiential value when consumers are seated, highlighting the moderating role of vestibular input in auditory experiences. These findings contribute to the advancement of embodied cognition theory and present practical implications for sensory marketing and the design of service environments. We suggest that the effectiveness of background music is influenced not only by its auditory attributes but also by the listener's bodily state.
ABSTRACT This paper reconceptualizes consumer confusion as a multi‐stage temporal process rather than a static outcome, addressing theoretical fragmentation in existing antecedent‐consequence models. By integrating cognitive appraisal, contextual amplification, and adaptive coping within a unified framework, we explain how confusion unfolds rather than merely cataloging what causes it. Adopting a theory synthesis approach, we integrate three fragmented literature streams—(1) traditional confusion research (similarity, overload, ambiguity), (2) digital contexts (e‐confusion), and (3) consumer response patterns (cognitive, affective, conative)—into a unified temporal framework. This synthesis generates nine interrelated propositions organized around four process stages: (1) typological foundations, (2) contextual amplification, (3) affective and social dimensions, and (4) strategic responses. Three theoretical insights emerge. First, consumer expertise exhibits paradoxical effects—initially shielding against confusion but later amplifying vulnerability to subtle inconsistencies. Second, intra‐brand similarities (within a brand’s portfolio) generate greater confusion than cross‐brand resemblances, violating consumers’ trust‐based expectations. Three theoretical contributions emerge. First, the framework reconceptualizes confusion as a multi‐stage dynamic process rather than a static antecedent‐consequence relationship. Second, it synthesizes fragmented literature streams into a unified architecture. Third, it challenges linear assumptions through novel propositions on paradoxical expertise effects, asymmetric intra‐brand confusion, and self‐reinforcing affective cycles. Consequently, the study provides critical insights into theory and practice, particularly in brand portfolio management and the design of customer‐facing information systems.
Food loss and waste have become a critical global sustainability issue, with a substantial share stemming from consumers' aversion to imperfect or "ugly" produce. Unlike other domains of sustainable food consumption, ugly food purchasing conflicts with consumers' inherent preference for aesthetically appealing products; however, the psychological and normative mechanisms that can foster its acceptance remain underexplored. This study applies the norm activation model (NAM) to investigate the sequential relationships among awareness of consequences, ascription of responsibility, personal norms, and purchase intention for ugly food. We extend the NAM by incorporating social norms and regulatory focus, offering a more comprehensive understanding of the psychological mechanisms underlying norm activation in this context. Evidence from three online consumer experiments (N = 1650) reveals that increased awareness of the consequences of food waste increases consumers' ascription of responsibility, which subsequently activates personal norms and strengthens their intention to purchase ugly food. Social norms further enhance purchase intention through the sequential mediation of responsibility ascription and personal norms. Notably, the influence of awareness of consequences on responsibility ascription is stronger among consumers with a prevention focus. This study is among the first to apply and extend the NAM to understand the development of personal norms regarding ugly food, providing novel theoretical insights and practical implications for promoting sustainable food behaviors. The findings suggest that marketers and policymakers can leverage social norms and targeted consumer education to effectively reduce food waste.
This study investigates how consumer-brand relationships shape responses to wokewashing, focusing on brand attachment as a key predictor. Across two experiments, our findings provide empirical evidence that highly attached consumers engage in moral reasoning to justify their support. For symbolic wokewashing, strong brand attachment facilitates cognitive moral reasoning, preserving the relationship. However, this protective effect is significantly diminished in the face of deceptive wokewashing. Such explicit betrayal triggers moral outrage and psychological ambivalence, where consumers maintain behavioral support despite reporting negative evaluative attitudes. These insights advance a nuanced understanding of the boundaries of consumer loyalty and provide clear implications for brand activism.
Drawing on the theory of regulatory fit and the theory of transactional utility, this paper examines the influence of consumption motivation on willingness to pay a premium in second-hand consumption through four situational experiments. The results indicate that, compared with Environmental Motivation, Differentiation Motivation is more effective in increasing consumers' Willingness to Pay a Premium; Thrill of the Hunt and Smart Shopper Feelings act as parallel mediators via emotional and cognitive pathways, respectively. Furthermore, the Limited Edition condition, compared with the Standard Edition condition, more effectively amplify the influence of differentiation motivation on both types of psychological experiences and enhance the overall indirect effect. The study identifies two measured psychological pathways underlying willingness to pay a premium in second-hand consumption and offers a transaction-utility-based interpretation of premium acceptance in second-hand markets.
Understanding how regulatory focus shapes consumer responses is critical to explaining innovation adoption. Existing research has primarily examined chronic regulatory focus, product message-related regulatory focus, and temporary regulatory focus in isolation, thereby neglecting their interplay and the role of regulatory fit in shaping adoption behavior for innovations. Addressing this gap, this research conducts four experimental studies. In the first two studies, we examine the impact of regulatory fit/non-fit between consumers' chronic regulatory focus and the innovation's product message-related regulatory focus on adoption behavior for incremental and radical innovations. Subsequently, in studies 3 and 4, we scrutinize whether inducing a temporary regulatory focus aligned with the product message-related regulatory focus changes these effects. Results reveal that regulatory fit significantly heightens adoption intentions compared to non-fit conditions, and that these effects are more pronounced for radical than for incremental innovations. Moreover, inducing an aligned temporary regulatory focus attenuates the negative effects of regulatory non-fit but decreases adoption intentions in existing fit conditions rather than further strengthening existing fit effects. This research contributes new insights into the interplay of regulatory focus constructs, extends regulatory fit theory to the context of innovation adoption, and offers actionable implications for innovation communication strategies across different levels of product innovativeness.
Excessive choice imposes substantial cognitive demands on consumers, impair decision-making, and generate negative consumer responses-a phenomenon widely known as the choice overload effect. Despite its conceptual prominence in consumer research and its enduring relevance in today's consumer markets, existing approaches to measuring choice overload have not converged on a validated psychometric instrument. Addressing this gap, the present research introduces an eight-item Choice Overload Scale, developed and validated across seven studies. Grounded in cognitive psychology and problem-solving theory, the Choice Overload Scale captures the core psychological processes underlying choice overload in consumer contexts and is available in both English and German. Across multiple validation stages, the scale demonstrates robust psychometric performance, theoretical coherence, and comprehensive validity evidence. Combining psychometric rigor with practical relevance, it provides a reliable measure for academic research and managerial use. This research advances construct operationalization and offers a foundation for future research on how consumers navigate decision-making in complex environments characterized by excessive choice.
ABSTRACT Social media influencers (SMIs) increasingly use video content as a persuasive tool, shaping consumer perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors in the digital marketplace. Despite this growing influence, research examining SMIs' video content and its impact on consumer behavior remains fragmented. To address this gap, the present study systematically reviews 112 peer‐reviewed articles using the TCCM (Theory–Context–Characteristics–Method) framework, complemented by a multi‐method approach that integrates topic modeling with in‐depth interviews to identify underlying themes. Combining insights from academic literature and practitioner perspectives, this study offers a comprehensive understanding of how SMIs' video content influences consumer behavior. The findings reveal a sharp increase in publications since 2020, with YouTube and TikTok emerging as dominant platforms and China and the United States as key research contexts. Persuasion and parasocial interaction theories are the primary theoretical anchors, while trust, authenticity, and engagement consistently emerge as critical constructs. The field remains quantitative mainly, though interest in computational and multi‐method approaches is growing. This literature review presents a thorough understanding of how SMIs' video content impacts consumer behavior and offers future research directions.
Examining the consumption values associated with sustainable luxury, as also the personal values driving sustainable consumption among young luxury consumers, is critical for the future of sustainable luxury fashion. However, there is limited research examining the link between personal values and new luxury consumption values of young luxury consumers. Additionally, most of these luxury studies focus on Western luxury consumers with limited focus on the sustainable luxury consumption among young consumers in emerging economies. This study focuses on personal values (altruism, self-direction, self-esteem, ecocentrism) among young Indian consumers and how they drive new luxury consumption values (inconspicuous consumption, craftsmanship, self-directed pleasure, intrinsic experiential value and sustainability) in the context of intention to engage with handloom as sustainable luxury fashion. The responses from the qualitative interviews with 28 participants and survey data from 212 respondents were analysed using the sequential exploratory method. The results indicate a link between the personal values, new luxury consumption values and intention to engage with handloom as luxury fashion. Self-direction (personal value) has a significant influence on craftsmanship (new luxury consumption value) which in turn is the strongest predictor of intention to engage with luxury handloom. The study offers novel insights that facilitate mainstreaming of handloom as sustainable luxury.
With the rapid adoption of virtual streamers in live streaming commerce, how their language strategies shape consumer decision-making remains insufficiently understood. Although sensory language is widely used by human streamers as a persuasive device, its effectiveness in virtual streamer contexts remains inconclusive. Drawing on processing fluency theory, this study examines the interactive effects of virtual streamers' sensory language (present vs. absent) and message appeal (rational vs. emotional) on consumers' purchase intention, while testing processing fluency as a mediating mechanism and streamer-product matching level as a moderating factor. Using scenario-based experiments, the results show that sensory language is not universally effective; rather, its persuasive impact depends on its alignment with the type of message appeal. Specifically, sensory language enhances processing fluency and, when combined with emotional appeals, increases purchase intention, whereas it may undermine processing fluency under rational appeal conditions. Further analyses indicate that a high level of streamer-product matching strengthens this interaction effect. By adopting an information-processing perspective, this research identifies critical boundary conditions for the persuasive effectiveness of virtual streamers' language strategies, extends the literature on virtual streamer persuasion mechanisms, and provides actionable insights for content design in live streaming commerce.
ABSTRACT This study investigates how artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot message tone, fashion product recommendation type, and personalization level interact to shape consumers' continuance intention in online fashion shopping. Building on Construal Level Theory and the Stereotype Content Model, we treat warmth and competence cues as psychological distance signals and define construal congruence as their fit with the abstraction level of recommendation content. Two experiments provide converging evidence. In Study 1 ( n = 225), competent (vs. warm) tones are more effective when paired with benefit‐focused (vs. attribute‐focused) recommendations. Study 2 ( n = 357) shows that personalization conditions these effects through perceived task‐solving competence and psychological reactance. Together, the results suggest that continuance intention improves when message tone, recommendation abstraction, and personalization convey a consistent level of psychological distance in fashion e‐commerce.
ABSTRACT This study investigates how consumer values and behavioural attitudes influence mobile money (MM) continuance usage intentions in Ghana, using two integrated studies. Study 1 employs PLS‐SEM analysis of survey data from 515 MM users, revealing that utilitarian, hedonic and economic values significantly shape attitudes and continuance intentions, while social value shows no significant effect. Study 2 complements these findings through 25 in‐depth interviews examining contextual and experiential factors. The study develops the Consumption Value–Behavioural Model (CVBM) by integrating the Theory of Consumption Values and the Cognitive‐Affective‐Conative framework to explain continuance usage behaviour. Findings demonstrate how functional benefits and emotional engagement drive sustained usage differently across user segments, thereby offering theoretical advances for the technology adoption literature and practical strategies to enhance financial inclusion in developing economies.
In today's digital and fragmented marketplace, characterised by dwindling consumer attention spans, the subtle power of language in a brand name becomes a key tool for customer engagement. Our research explores how grammatical cues (classes) in brand names shape consumer responses. Grounded in the dual-perspective model of agency and communion and the stereotype content model, we hypothesise that verb-based names elicit agency-related associations, while noun-based names invoke communion-related associations. Through four empirical studies, including an implicit association test, guided latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic modelling and two online experiments, we demonstrate that the grammatical class of verbs and nouns significantly influences brand evaluations. Membership in various generational cohorts acts as a key moderator. Verb-based names consistently boost perceptions of brand competence, particularly among younger cohorts such as Millennials and Gen Z. Conversely, noun-based names enhance perceived brand warmth, resonating more with older generations (Boomers and Gen X). These linguistically driven associations directly affect purchasing intentions. We combine these findings to propose the Brand Linguistic Action Framework, which categorises brand naming strategies along a spectrum from static (noun-oriented) to dynamic (verb-oriented). Our work provides actionable insights for marketers, offering evidence-based tools to craft names that cut through the noise of saturated digital spaces, in which consumers form snap judgements in seconds.
Scarcity often times acts as a coping mechanism for consumers in their day-to-day lives. While most prior studies have focused on how firms and businesses induce scarcity as a demand generation tactic, the current study examines how scarcity is experienced by consumers in their daily lives through natural constraints which then influence their behaviour. The current research uses a mixed-method approach. In study 1 we identify five core resource dimensions, namely time, financial, cognitive, physical, and social. We then extend the findings of study 1 to understand these concepts qualitatively in study 2 by conducting 27 interviews, where we identify emotional scarcity as a depleting resource dimension, which is associated with consumers' exhaustion and stress. Across both studies, we identify that consumers cope with scarcity mainly by setting boundaries in order to regulate their cognitive, emotional, and behavioural resources. This study contributes to the literature by consolidating the fragmented literature and reconceptualising resource scarcity as a multidimensional consumer condition. This study also contributes to providing theory-driven and ethically grounded managerial recommendations and suggests clear future directions.
