Purpose This study aims to examine the impact of virtual influencers’ anthropomorphism on consumer engagement and well-being, along with its underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions. Design/methodology/approach Conducted through two studies, the first study analyses data from 109 virtual influencers on Instagram, comprising 21,745 posts. It evaluates the direct effects of virtual influencers’ anthropomorphism (high vs low) on consumer engagement and well-being while also investigating the moderating roles of virtual influencers’ characteristics, such as size (micro vs macro) and agency (independent vs brand-owned). The second study, a randomised experiment involving 643 participants, validates the findings of the first study and explores the mediating role of upward social comparison. Findings The results of the first study reveal that high (vs low) virtual influencers’ anthropomorphism significantly increases consumer engagement while reducing consumer well-being, with virtual influencers’ characteristics moderating these relationships. The second study further confirms these direct and indirect effects, demonstrating that upward social comparison mediates the impact of virtual influencers’ anthropomorphism on consumer engagement and well-being. Practical implications This study highlights the complex effects of virtual influencers’ anthropomorphism, offering important insights for marketing managers and encouraging policymakers to safeguard consumer well-being, particularly among younger audiences, in virtual influencer marketing. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first to examine both the bright and dark sides of virtual influencers, illustrating how they can enhance consumer engagement while simultaneously diminishing well-being.

A review of the predominant research paradigms for virtual reality (VR) advertisements is presented in this chapter. Research paradigms refer to strategies, models, or patterns for conducting research. This chapter examines the critical research paradigms that guide marketing research on VR advertisements. Considering the evolving literature’s recognition of the importance of core concepts, beliefs, and understandings, the chapter explains how most of these paradigms are derived from two major research approaches: positivism and interpretivism. The chapter describes how these paradigms are applied to VR marketing studies based on the theory, context, and methodology (TCM) framework, which addresses theory, context, and methodology. In addition, it synthesises the most recent research from 2015 to 2023, highlighting significant developments and insights, thus capturing the dynamic evolution of marketing approaches in VR advertising.

PurposeThis paper aims to explore the concept of "actor engagement" within the context of the sharing economy, a novel and dynamic business model. Specifically, it investigates the formation of actor engagement and its relationship with value creation within this business model.Design/methodology/approachDrawing on Storbacka et al. (2016)actor engagement framework and service-dominant logic service ecosystem model, unstructured data (text and images) from the Airbnb platform in seven countries and text- and image-mining techniques such as machine learning are used to measure the research variables and test the model by PLS-SEM.FindingsThe results indicate that affective engagement has a more significant impact on behavioural engagement than cognitive engagement for multidimensional actor engagement. Service providers' engagement - directly, and through customer engagement - influences value creation for service providers (i.e. performance). Moreover, national-level moderator (i.e. economic, competitiveness, technology, social and political factors) plays a significant moderating role in our model.Research limitations/implicationsThis study encourages future research to explore how actor engagement leads to value creation for all actors on the different sharing economy platforms.Practical implicationsThe findings provide practical insights for service providers to engage their customers and platform managers, especially in an international context, on managing their relationships with both customers and service providers in different countries.Originality/valueThis study advances the current literature on actor engagement and its role in value creation by providing a better understanding of the role of the national context in this process through unstructured data analysis.

In the competitive travel accommodation market, peer-to-peer accommodation (P2PA) providers are in desperate need of a value proposition framework that will assist them in guiding the development of an 'engaged' customer base. However, currently, the P2PA literature does not provide such a framework that includes a comprehensive list of tangible and intangible values driving customer engagement (CE). Underpinned by the service-dominant (S-D) logic theory, we adopted a big data-based, two study approach to identify these values (and their composites) that drive CE in P2PA. Study 1 was conducted to identify important tangible and intangible values driving customers to engage with P2PA. This qualitative study adopted a text-mining and sentiment analysis approach which was performed on 499,160 customer reviews. The subsequent quantitative study (Study 2) used a multi-factor ANOVA analysis (i.e., Automatic Linear Modelling) to examine 19,060 listed houses using their star ratings and other available quantitative data (e.g., accommodation cost, response rate and number of rooms). Our findings present an S-D logic-based value proposition framework for enhancing CE in P2PA. This framework shows that customers consider seven tangible-intangible values (i.e., accommodation, perceived enjoyment, perceived friendliness, perceived convenience, surrounding, perceived response and trustworthiness) in creating three values (i.e., re-adopt, recommend, and refer P2PA) for P2PA-platform providers and listed-houses. Overall, by developing an S-D logic-based framework and identifying salient values in P2PA value co-creation, this research extends both the P2PA literature and S-D logic theory. We also provide insightful recommendations for P2PA providers.

PurposeSmartphone apps collect users' personal information, which triggers privacy concerns for app users. Consequently, app users restrict apps from accessing their personal information. This may impact the effectiveness of in-app advertising. However, research has not yet demonstrated what factors impact app users' decisions to use apps with restricted permissions. This study is aimed to bridge this gap.Design/methodology/approachUsing a quantitative research method, the authors collected the data from 384 app users via a structured questionnaire. The data were analysed using AMOS and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA).FindingsThe findings suggest privacy concerns and risks have a significant positive effect on app usage with restricted permissions, whilst reputation, trust and perceived benefits have significant negative impact on it. Some app-related factors, such as the number of apps installed and type of apps, also impact app usage with restricted permissions.Practical implicationsBased on the findings, the authors provided several implications for app stores, app developers and app marketers.Originality/valueThis study examines the factors that influence smartphone users' decisions to use apps with restricted permission requests. By doing this, the authors' study contributes to the consumer behaviour literature in the context of smartphone app usage. Also, by explaining the underlying mechanisms through which the principles of communication privacy management theory operate in smartphone app context, the authors' research contributes to the communication privacy management theory.

PurposeRecent literature on customer engagement has introduced the concept of "actor engagement," which serves as the foundation for this study. The study aims to investigate the formation of engagement and engagement's impact on the performance of sharing economy platforms in an international context.Design/methodology/approachThe study analyses unstructured data from 145,434 service providers and 1,703,266 customers on Airbnb across seven countries (USA, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa, China and Singapore). Machine learning techniques are used to measure actor engagement, and the research model is tested using structural equation modelling (SEM).FindingsThe findings suggest that actor engagement, encompassing the reciprocal relationship between customer engagement and service provider engagement, has a significant impact on platform performance. The moderator analysis highlights the role of cultural differences in the relationship between customer engagement and service provider engagement and between actor engagement and platform performance. Specifically, the study reveals that actor engagement exhibits a more pronounced impact on platform performance in Western countries (such as the USA, Australia and the UK), compared to Eastern countries (such as China and Singapore).Research limitations/implicationsThe analysis of the conceptual model is based on the utilisation of behavioural data obtained from the Airbnb website. Due to the nature of the available data, proxies are employed as measures for variables such as platform performance.Originality/valueThis research is amongst the first to provide empirical evidence for actor engagement formation and the function's role in platform performance in the sharing economy. The global nature of Airbnb as a platform facilitates the investigation of country-level factors, specifically cultural values, across seven diverse countries and highlight differences from business to customer (B2C) business models.

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to investigate visual comprehension in memory for 360-degree video advertisements amongst adolescents under single and repeated viewing conditions.Design/methodology/approachThis study explored visual comprehension in memory for 360-degree video advertisements using the theoretical assumptions of the social psychology theory of social information processing by Wyer (2003). The authors conducted two experiments over a timeline of three months. In the first experiment, participants watched the 360-degree video advertisement once, and after one week, the same set of participants watched the same advertisement again. The theoretical assumptions in the comprehension unit were used to design the experiments and to explore visual comprehension in memory for 360-degree video advertisements. The data were collected using surveys and interviews through an experimental research design approach. NVivo software was used to analyse the data.FindingsThis study found that while female participants were able to comprehend colours in the visuals better, male participants were better able to comprehend facial expressions presented in the visuals. Further, both female and male participants were able to comprehend locations within the advertisement visuals. It was found that participants understood the plot or the story of the advertisement better after the second viewing than after the first viewing.Practical implicationsThe two main contributions from this study are as follows: from a theoretical perspective, the application of a social psychology theory for the advertising sector enables us to gather more insights about the social cognition stages of a human mindset such as information retrieval, judgement, decision making, goal stimulation and short- and long-term memory. In doing so, this study not only explored adolescents' visual comprehension memory of 360-degree video advertisements, but it also contributed to the theory of social information processing by Wyer (2003) by exploring consumer visual comprehension memory. From a practical perspective, the findings of this study provide a solid foundation for future advertising firms or agencies, marketers, and salespeople on how to design effective advertisements using 360-degree video versions in a way that appeals to consumer visual memory.Originality/valueThis paper can be considered as amongst the first studies which combine social psychology with advertising to investigate visual comprehension memory for 360-degree video advertisements amongst adolescents.

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to explore and identify the privacy concerns of smartphone app users pertinent to app usage.Design/methodology/approachAdopting a qualitative phenomenological approach, the authors conducted semi-structured interviews with app users to explore the app users' privacy concerns.FindingsCredibility concerns, unauthorised secondary use and vulnerability concerns are the three major privacy concerns of app users, under which these concerns have sub-concerns, i.e. popularity, privacy policy, stalking, data sharing, hacking and personal harm.Practical implicationsThe findings are useful to app marketers, app developers and app stores. App marketers, app developers and app stores can use the findings to understand and properly address app users' privacy concerns, thereby increasing the apps usage.Originality/valueBy exploring the privacy concerns of app users, the authors' study extends the literature and provides a theoretical development of individuals' privacy concerns in the context of a widely used technology, i.e. smartphone applications. Accordingly, this study contributes to the consumer privacy literature.

Peer-to-peer-accommodation, a sharing economy-based business model, enables using unutilized houses, apartments, and rooms of individuals to provide shared accommodation to tourists and travelers. On account of the importance of peer-to-peer accommodation, many studies have been conducted on factors/stimuli driving peer-to-peer accommodation adoption; however, findings remain inconsistent and fragmented. Accordingly, using the stimulus-organism-response model, this meta-analysis provides generalized findings on determinants driving peer-to-peer accommodation adoption. Our meta-analysis shows that stimuli (service characteristics, psychological aspects, social aspects, and technological aspects) drive the organism (perceived service quality) which in turn drives peer-to-peer accommodation adoption. Further, our moderation analysis shows that the relationship between these stimuli and the organism, and the relationship between the organism and peer-to-peer accommodation adoption, vary depending on four moderators: sample type, country of study, survey administration method, and sample size. Overall, this study contributes to the stimulus-organism-response theory by extending it to the meta-analytical approach and suggesting a new organism for inclusion in the original stimulus-organism-response model. This meta-analysis also contributes to the peer-to-peer accommodation and sharing economy literature and provides practical recommendations for accommodation platform providers and their listed houses to develop marketing strategy and policy.

False news has the ability to cause financial harm to organizations by having a negative impact on the consumer purchasing decisions. This paper explores useful organizational and regulatory strategies in response to false news circulated through social media based on five-stage framework for scoping reviews. The purpose of this paper is to advance current knowledge of false news circulation through social media in three distinct ways. It highlights 1) a wide variety of areas in which false news has been examined, emphasising the rising popularity of the topic, 2) the distinct attributes or characteristics that characterise false news and can be utilised to aid consumer detection, 3) a collection of themes that summarise the organisational-level and regulatory-level strategies in responding to false news circulation through social media. This study helps government agencies, marketing agencies, and senior management to explore organizational-level and regulatory-level solutions for responding to social media-based fake news circulation.

The sharing economy has emerged as an influential research area in which a platform mediates customers’ temporary access to service provider resources. To provide a generalizable picture of the platform’s customer and service provider relationship formation process, we integrate effect sizes from 192 studies, including 214 independent samples (N = 88,154). The findings indicate there are motivators and inhibitors for individuals to join a platform as a customer or service provider and that these influence attitudinal and behavioral responses toward the platform through a two-level relationship quality pathway. Moderator analysis reveals that the impact of customer motivators and inhibitors on customer response to service providers and platforms depends on country-level moderators and cultural context. These results provide insight into relationship formation among actors in the sharing economy. The study also makes recommendations for platform managers, especially in hospitality and tourism, to more effectively manage their relationships with their users.

The present study is a systematic literature review that identifies the context of consumer behaviour and analytics in business to forecast the future of consumer behaviour with changing business trends through TCCM (theory, context, characteristics, method) guidelines. The authors identified that prior research used theories in different disciplines to explain the phenomenon in customer behaviour and analytics literature. When considering the theory, these phenomena often can be segregated based on the industry (e.g., marketing, advertising, sales, healthcare, human resource management, tourism), focusing on status-based mechanisms (e.g., cross-gaming predictive models), inertia-based mechanisms (e.g., theory of rational expectations and adaptive learning), or relationship-based mechanisms (e.g., theory of consumer engagement behaviour).

Gamification has recently been discovered as an excellent user engagement strategy that has the potential to improve online education, online brand engagement, and information system engagement. Even though the number of studies on gamification has expanded, there is currently no systematic literature review approach for categorizing its online engagement strategies. Therefore, the main purpose of this systematic literature review is to find effective online engagement strategies based on gamification. The literature, as published in top management, information systems, and education journals, was reviewed using preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, and the authors categorized the studies published during the period 2016 to 2021. This study can be considered as among the first to include a systematic literature review with a potential future research agenda on effective online engagement strategies through gamification. The findings indicate several effective online engagement strategies through gamification for three major aspects.

The present study is a systematic literature review that identifies the context of consumer behaviour and analytics in business to forecast the future of consumer behaviour with changing business trends through TCCM (theory, context, characteristics, method) guidelines. The authors identified that prior research used theories in different disciplines to explain the phenomenon in customer behaviour and analytics literature. When considering the theory, these phenomena often can be segregated based on the industry (e.g., marketing, advertising, sales, healthcare, human resource management, tourism), focusing on status-based mechanisms (e.g., cross-gaming predictive models), inertia-based mechanisms (e.g., theory of rational expectations and adaptive learning), or relationship-based mechanisms (e.g., theory of consumer engagement behaviour).

This study aims to examine the effects of experiential value in firm-initiated social media activities on brand attitude and purchase engagement. An online survey with the experimental design was used to collect data from 181 social media users who were over 18 years old. The results of this study showed that experiential value positively influenced both brand attitude and purchase engagement. In addition, brand attitude mediated the relationship between experiential value and purchase engagement. The most significant effects of experiential value on brand attitude and purchase engagement were observed at the medium level of participation required in the activity. It was also revealed that the more privacy concern customers had, the stronger the effect of experiential value on brand attitude became. In contrast, as privacy concern increased, the impact of experiential value on purchase engagement decreased. The study extends the current understanding of customer experience and provides important managerial implications.

Gamification has recently been discovered as an excellent user engagement strategy that has the potential to improve online education, online brand engagement, and information system engagement. Even though the number of studies on gamification has expanded, there is currently no systematic literature review approach for categorizing its online engagement strategies. Therefore, the main purpose of this systematic literature review is to find effective online engagement strategies based on gamification. The literature, as published in top management, information systems, and education journals, was reviewed using preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) guidelines and authors categorized the studies published during the period 2016 to 2021. This study can be considered as among the first to include a systematic literature review with a potential future research agenda on effective online engagement strategies through gamification. The findings indicate several effective online engagement strategies through gamification for three major aspects.

Customer engagement behaviour has emerged as an influential concept in marketing and refers to customers' behavioural manifestation towards a firm originating from motivational drivers. To provide a comprehensive and generalisable picture of this concept, this study provides a meta-analysis integrating data of 196 effect sizes of 184 publications with a sample of 146,380. The findings reveal engagement through two pathways: organic pathway as relationship-oriented (perceived quality, perceived value and relationship quality) and promoted pathway as firm-initiated (functional and experiential initiatives). Moderator analysis indicates that the influence of the two pathways on engagement depends on engagement context (online vs. offline), industry type (service vs. manufacturing) and product type (hedonic vs. utilitarian) and cultural context. Findings support attitudinal engagement-loyalty and behavioural engagement-firm performance linkage. Study results provide new insight into various engagement approaches and their relationship to each other. The authors offer recommendations to help marketers manage their customer engagement process more effectively.

This chapter investigates behavioural loyalty in the service sector. The research framework consists of eight factors influencing behavioural loyalty which are trust, satisfaction, perceived risks, loyalty reward, price, time, people, and effort. The researcher collected data from 305 hand car wash customers and analysed quantitatively. The findings confirm that price and people are critical drivers that heavily influence customer behavioural loyalty. Trust and satisfaction demonstrate a moderating impact on loyalty. Perceived risks, time and effort demonstrate a weak correlation with behavioural loyalty, while loyalty reward does not affect loyalty behaviour in this researched context. This chapter reveals that especially price and people are the crucial drivers of customer loyalty. It is highly recommended that the service company should manage pricing policy and human resource strategically. On the other hand, company's management must ensure the professionality of service staff with a helpful service mind to satisfy customers. Both constructs highly increase the degree of behavioural loyalty.

Purpose This paper focuses on exploring the relationship between Australian university websites and international student enrolments. Few studies have investigated this relationship and, as such, this research addresses some of the existing knowledge gaps. Design/methodology/approach A mono-method qualitative methodology was adopted for this study. Primary data collection was through the website content of selected Australian universities. Six Australian universities were selected; three universities with positive international student enrolments and three universities with negative international student enrolments. The website content of the selected six universities was analysed using the dimensions of the ICTRT framework (Li and Wang, 2011) to evaluate website effectiveness. The study results were based on two analysis levels, an overall thematic analysis (level 1) and an ICTRT framework-based analysis (level 2). The thematic analysis, based on the major themes and concepts, was conducted using Leximancer 4.5. Findings Two major findings emerged. First, the websites of universities with positive international student enrolments tend to be more people focused whereas websites from universities with negative international student enrolments tend to be technology or system focused. Second, websites from universities with positive international student enrolments tend to be more visionary or forward focused whereas websites from universities with negative international student enrolments tend to be more backward focused. Additionally, the study findings indicate some important website marketing strategies for Australian universities with negative international student enrolments. Research limitations/implications This study used ICTRT framework to evaluate the websites of Australian universities. Li and Wang (2011) proposed this framework for evaluating websites. Hotel, travel agency and destination marketing organisation websites have been assessed using the ICTRT framework (Li and Wang, 2011; Paiet al., 2014; Sunet al., 2017). This model has not previously been used, however, to evaluate tertiary education websites. This study is among the first to examine the university websites using a theoretical framework employed in destination marketing organisations which is a major theoretical contribution. Practical implications The major findings indicate that the website attributes, which are future focused and people oriented, are necessary for university websites with negative international student enrolments. Similar to university websites with positive international student enrolments, university websites with negative international student enrolments should also provide more contact details of staff members, should be more people oriented and should provide information focused on future students rather than past and current students. These practical implications are useful for administrative bodies in Australian universities for increasing international student enrolments. Originality/value This study is among the first to examine the university websites using a theoretical framework used in destination marketing organizations which is a major theoretical contribution. For example, this study has provided an illustrative example of how a research model of destination marketing organizations will be used in the universities or higher education context.

This research examines third-party perceptions of unfair reviews and effects of managerial responses. Using an experimental research design, this research reports the findings of two studies involving 1115 US consumers. Study 1 examines third-party perceptions (i.e., severity of incident, attribution of blame and opportunistic intentions) after reading reviews. Study 2 examines the moderating influence of the managerial response strategies. The findings provide significant insight for service providers in scripting their responses to unfair reviews. To protect their reputation, a defensive managerial response strategy is found to be best when (1) severity of the reported incident is high and (2) review content indicates possible opportunistic intentions of the complainant. Alternatively, when attribution of blame lies strongly with the service provider, then an accommodative strategy is more effective. Our findings contribute to the unfair review and managerial response literature by highlighting the benefits of both the accommodative and the defensive strategies.