The present work addresses the influence of review valence on consumers' perceived relationship with a firm and identifies the causes of such influence and the underlying process. Based on social exchange theory and signal theory, the authors identify how conflict is pivotal in connecting review valence and consumers' perceived relational benefits and trust. The authors use Qualtrics survey data in three experimental studies to examine how review valence indirectly impacts consumers' perceived trust and benefits. The results indicate that conflict is a moderator between review valence and perceived benefits and trust, and the magnitude of the indirect effect of valence varies according to the different levels of a perceived partner's commitment to the relationship. These findings provide incremental theoretical implications for relationship marketing in online contexts and have managerial relevance for online marketing strategies.

There exists a vast literature on developing and designing scale measurements use in conducting marketing and consumer behavior academic research. Yet questions continue to be raised concerning the actual quality and relevancy of many of the scales designs in capturing quality data for investigating and testing proposed relationships between constructs of interest. This special session narrows its focus on identifying and discussing a variety of fundamental, underlying scale design elements which create different problematic scaling issues, designs, and practices that negatively impact researchers’ efforts of capturing high quality and relevant data. A panel of scale measurement expert researchers’ break down the fundamental, underlying elements needed to enhance the construction of solid scale measurements. The session focuses around discussing specific questions such as: (a) What is the specific contextual defined target population of interest? (b) Is there a clear conceptual definition and understanding for each construct of interest? (c) What are the three elements making up any scale measure? (d) What are the four categorical types of raw data/information that scales can capture? (e) What are the scaling properties that can be activated in different types of scale designs? (f) What are the different categorical scale levels? (g) What are the appropriate measures of central tendencies and dispersions associated with different scale levels? (h) Does framing of the question, or scale setup, impact the selection of scale point descriptors? Other important elements may be discuss including the use of “inclusion and exclusion screening” questions, “attention” questions, and correct ordering of scale measurements in questionnaires. The session encourages audience questions and participation as a means of driving the discussion. The ensuing discussions of these fundamental scale elements should provide clearer insight and understanding of the impact of correctly applying the scaling elements to achieve (or enhance) the capturing of high quality data through the development and use of appropriate scale designs.

Advertising is recognized as an, if not the most, important aspect of cross-cultural marketing. From a researcher perspective, different languages and cultures create notoriously difficult challenges to navigate. This paper presents a review of crosscultural scholarship published in a cross-section of advertising and marketing journals between 1995 and 2022, examining the methodologies applied to assess the state of play. The intent is to point the direction for best practice, rather than catalogue mistakes. The study identifies 267 articles that met the screening criteria. Four coders found a total of 15 methodological issues based upon items from the literature and a leading panel of 13 cross-cultural experts assessed and ranked the 15. Overall, the top problems identified from the 15 were (1) use of non-comparable samples, (2) scale development without following protocols, (3) qualitative studies using only one coder, (4) absence of pretests, and (5) scale development with only back-translation.

This manuscript tracks developments in cross-cultural advertising research published over the past 40 years in the International Journal of Advertising (IJA). A bibliometric analysis was performed for the 111 investigations which examined two or more countries appearing between 1982 and 2021. The data set was analysed by decade to reveal topics addressed, theories relied upon, methodologies adopted, and countries examined. Despite variation in the topics addressed over the years, topics present in every decade included cross-cultural issues/differences and gender issues/role portrayals. Global Consumer Culture/Positioning was used as a theoretical foundation in studies published during the journal's early years and has grown in popularity over the decades. Theories pertaining to cross-cultural differences, such as those developed by Hofstede and GLOBE were among the most frequently employed theoretical foundations. While content analyses were often utilized, surveys, experiments, and qualitative research methods are becoming more popular methods of investigation. North America and Western Europe were well represented, as were more advanced Asian markets, however there continues to be a paucity of research examining Central and Eastern European countries, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa.

Purpose The purpose of this study is to determine the impact of voters’ personal and societal values on presidential candidate brand personality preference. In addition, the research examines which brand personalities are deemed most and least important. This research meets the growing demand to further understand how voters develop preferences for brandidates. Design/methodology/approach Voters ranked which presidential brand personalities they deemed most important in a candidate as well as which of the two major candidates they most associated with that trait. Data were collected weeks in advance of the 2020 presidential election from a national online panel representing a balanced mix of voters by party affiliation. Findings The results indicate that life satisfaction, political orientation and postmaterialism are significant and provide adequate explanatory power in understanding which brand personality traits are associated with a presidential candidate. Also, using an importance-performance matrix, the authors find which candidate is most identified with various brand personality traits and how important those traits are to voters. Research limitations/implications Using the importance-performance matrix for assessing brand/candidate personality preference by consumers/voters provides researchers with a multidimensional method for analyzing how various dimensions influence selection preference. The explanatory power of the independent variables, i.e. political orientation, comparative life satisfaction and societal values, is very low when regressed against personality attributes in general (not assigned to a candidate); however, they provide meaningful results when regressed against personality attributes when assigned to candidates. Understanding the importance of general brand personality attributes is not as important as understanding their importance when associated with a specific brand. Practical implications The importance-performance matrix for brand/candidate personality presented in this research clearly indicated and predicted voter preference for the 2020 Presidential election; thus, this tool can be effectively used by political marketers in future elections. Political orientation so strongly influences voter perception of specific candidate brand personality dimensions that they view their preferred candidate to be universally superior to other candidates. Political marketers can appeal to voters based on their political orientation to strengthen the relationship between candidates and voters. Originality/value This research investigates how personal and societal values impact voters’ preference for brand personality traits in a presidential candidate. Voter preference for presidential brand personality traits is assessed generically, i.e. not associated with a particular candidate, as well as when they are linked to a specific candidate, i.e. Biden and Trump.

Advertising and, more generally, marketing communications, along with consumer behaviors, have changed in important ways. Whereas, traditionally, brands and companies have forced information on consumers, they now are creating numerous forms of communications to trigger diverse gratifications for consumers who are most often exposed incidentally to them. This essay, therefore, urges researchers and practitioners to open up the theoretical framework of marketing communication research beyond the traditional information-processing paradigm by incorporating the experiential view. The authors develop three major arguments in favor of adding the experiential view to provide an enhanced framework for examining the effects of contemporary marketing communications. They conclude with a set of implications for both researchers and practitioners.

Advertising and, more generally, marketing communications, along with consumer behaviors, have changed in important ways. Whereas, traditionally, brands and companies have forced information on consumers, they now are creating numerous forms of communications to trigger diverse gratifications for consumers who are most often exposed incidentally to them. This essay, therefore, urges researchers and practitioners to open up the theoretical framework of marketing communication research beyond the traditional informationprocessing paradigm by incorporating the experiential view. The authors develop three major arguments in favor of adding the experiential view to provide an enhanced framework for examining the effects of contemporary marketing communications. They conclude with a set of implications for both researchers and practitioners.

Advertising has rapidly evolved in recent years, with a significant increase in the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and its applications. While AI advertising literature dates to the 1990s, the field has experienced a surge in research attention and development in recent years, presenting varied potential avenues for future research. Despite this progress, understanding of the evolution of AI advertising research remains limited, and a state-of-the-art overview is required to advance future research. To address this gap, this review aims to map the field's evolution by conducting a bibliometric and framework-based analysis of 75 AI advertising articles published between 1990 and 2022. The study's key findings are the publication trends in AI advertising, TCCM classification, and research contexts identified through bibliographic coupling. Four themes emerged as key focus areas of AI advertising research: programmatic advertising and automation, ad planning and engagement, advertising effectiveness, and trust in AI advertising. In addition, this review offers practical guidelines and future research directions for developing AI advertising literature. Lastly, the review suggests broader implications for industry and academia, highlighting how the identified themes can inform advertising practice and contribute to the theoretical development of the field.

This study presents a thorough and systematic analysis of political advertising research to chart the thematic progression of political advertising literature. This study further aims at helping academics, industry, and society understand the current state of political advertising while recommending suggestions for future research. The Web of Science (WoS) database synthesized 413 research articles related to political advertising. The network and bibliometric analysis are used to find the most prestigious journals, authors, universities, and research work to capture information about developing challenges and charting the growth of political advertising research. The study identifies three primary clusters of political advertising research: (1) the communication medium used for political advertising, (2) the role of content, tone, and ad exposure in political advertising, and (3) political advertising effectiveness. This article highlights the existing research knowledge gaps and proposes vital future research questions towards the end.

This chapter addresses productive innovation and development, which can play a pivotal role in marketing strategy. Innovation is based upon technological superiority and posits that buyers are most interested in goods and services that provide the best performance, features, quality, and value for money. Central to this is the concept of new product development (NPD), a creative activity towards which there are many different approaches. The chapter then considers issues related to market disruption, market leadership, categories of innovation, and customization. A discussion of customization, in a marketing strategy context, inevitably leads to an assessment of mass customization, which is similar to mass production in terms of its basic structure, with some significant differences. Instead of selecting one variety of product or service, the buyer provides unique information so that the product or service can be tailored to varying degrees.

This chapter focuses on branding strategies, presenting a series of suggestions to help the brand strategist to create, maintain, and enhance this valuable company asset. A brand is a ‘name, term, sign, symbol (or a combination of these) that identifies the maker or seller of the product’. It allows the consumer to develop a relationship with a product/service. Strategic brand management requires a sophisticated understanding of, first, industry cost structure, brand efficiency, and brand profitability, and second, consumer perceptions of brands and the potential for differentiation and sustainable competitive advantage. The chapter then looks at some examples of the strongest brands in the market, before reviewing various tools and techniques used in branding. It also considers some of the latest thinking regarding brands: scent branding and brand vulgarity.

Marketing researchers, particularly in consumer behavior, rely increasingly on crowdsourcing and online panels as data sources. An examination of the top four journals in Marketing (Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research and Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science) from 2014 to 2018 indicates that 360 out of 1101 articles (32.7%) utilized MTurk data. To date, researchers have focused on analyzing the validity and generalizability of data obtained through crowdsourcing and online panels. Yet given that crowdsourcing and online panels are being so relied upon, the panel will discuss ways of improving data quality rather than examining the question of whether academic researchers should use or avoid crowd-sourced data. We propose a special session to discuss how to increase the quality of online panel samples. Screening and identification are important in setting up a sample. The presentation introduces a typology for classifying screening criteria that reflect the sampling goals of identifying respondents that (1) match the target population as much as possible and (2) provide honest, attentive responses. The presentation includes the results of a study testing screening criteria using Dynata, Qualtrics, three different MTurk panels, and students. The results show that screening criteria directly influences sample attention, honesty, and prevalence of VPNs to disguise physical location. Based on these results, we will discuss best practices for collecting high quality samples using online panels from the viewpoint of authors, reviewers, and journal editors. We will also allow time for a question and answer session. This special session will help researchers who use online sample improve the validity of their sample and also help readers/reviewers evaluate the quality of online panel samples. The panel consists of researchers with considerable experience in marketing research and survey data methods.

The United States is becoming increasingly multi-cultural and there are various new immigrant consumer groups that businesses try to reach through ethnic-based segmentation and targeting. However, there is evidence that acculturation may be a better predictor of consumer behavior such as preferences for brand, services, and/or marketing communications. Acculturation is an important measurement tool for understanding consumer behavior and for segmenting and targeting multi-cultural consumers appropriately (Poulis et al. 2013; Ogden et al. 2004). Acculturation is defined as a process, but it has not been treated as a process, and the literature calls for a desire to assimilate first before an individual is able to do so. Past research has suggested that first an individual has a desire to acculturate and this desire influences the acculturation process and outcomes (van den Berghe 1981; Bun and Kiong 1992). Acculturation is defined as all the changes that arise following contact between groups and individuals of different cultural backgrounds as well as the adoption by a person or group of the culture of another social group or the process leading to this adoption (Berry 1997). Assimilation is the adoption by a person or a group of the culture of another social group to such a complete extent that the person or group no longer has any characteristics identifying him or her with their former culture and no longer has any particular loyalties to the former culture, or the process leading to the adoption (Berry and Sam 2016). The findings from extant literature suggests that acculturation is a multi-process variable that starts with first a desire or a propensity to assimilate, which then influences acculturation behavioral outcomes. We conducted an in-depth literature review and two qualitative studies in order to uncover the acculturation process and establish the Propensity to Assimilate construct. To control for possible cultural confounding, this study focuses on the Chinese American cultural demographic and through conducting two qualitative studies with 57 participants on both the east and west coasts of the country (Virginia, New York, and California), we found that in order to effectively examine acculturation, there must first be a desire or propensity to assimilate and then that propensity in turn will influence actual acculturation behaviors. Thus, through a combination of deduction and induction methods, we contributed to the theoretical understanding of the acculturation process and offered a new construct in that process.

The valence of online reviews (positive or negative) offers a systematic linkage between consumers and company brands. Online reviews can deteriorate or improve electronic customer relationships. The findings of a thorough analysis of a set of organisational and individual behavioural theories indicate that negative reviews increase a consumer's perceived conflict with a focal firm, leading to a reduced level of perceived relational benefit and trust, undermining the consumer's loyalty. Fundamental propositions indicate that researchers should focus more on word-of-mouth (WOM) as an antecedent of relationship marketing, and marketers should focus on proactive WOM campaigns, critical for establishing long-term reciprocal relationships with consumers.

This chapter evaluates market segmentation, targeting, and positioning, which are vital for organizational success and are central components of an effective marketing strategy. Market segmentation involves the analysis of markets to identify subgroups of consumers with similar wants and buying requirements. Targeting refers to the actual development of the marketing mix variables to be used to reach the target market consumers. Meanwhile, positioning is the ‘core engine’ of strategy and refers to the ability to influence consumer perception; it is the attempt to place a good or service in a perceptual position within the mind of the consumer. The identification of a segment allows the organization to make a profile of its typical desired customer, which in turn allows the organization to develop a product configuration, pricing scheme, promotional campaign, and distribution coverage plan to best meet the needs of that identified typical consumer.

This chapter examines the options and appropriateness of different metrics available to marketers working on the implementation and control of strategy. Financial measures can reveal short-term and long-term profitability, cash flows, and the value of the business. Marketing metrics can enable one to link such hard evidence with data on consumer behaviour. The direction of the strategy can be chosen on the basis of various types of analytics, from descriptive to prescriptive. The logic of the process of competitive advantage is that the superior returns enjoyed will be reinvested in the sources of competitive advantage. A significant change in marketing has been a shift to the single yardstick of customer lifetime value (CLV); the summation of an organization's CLVs is known as customer equity. The chapter then reviews the nature of big data that are produced from the records of numerous touchpoint interactions.

![Figure][1] The breadth of tools and topics shaping 21st-century marketing are evident in the content mix of the current issue of the Journal of Advertising Research ( JAR ). In the pages that follow, you will find a rich offering of six disparate studies that includes the development of a