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This research examines how similarities in educational and ethnic backgrounds (status homophily), between word of mouth (WOM) participants, influences the effectiveness of received offline WOM on the recipient's behavioural intentions. The educational similarity between individuals is conceptualized as acquired homophily, whereas ethnic similarity is defined as ascribed homophily. This study employs scenario-based experiments, and the results suggest that positive and negative WOM received from homophilous sources is more effective in influencing the recipient's purchase and WOM re-transmission intentions than recommendations received from heterophilous sources. This research expands the literature about offline WOM and the multidimensional status-homophily construct by providing insights on the differential influence of positive and negative recommendations received from WOM sources similar or dissimilar to the WOM recipients in terms of their educational and ethnic backgrounds. This is important from both the theoretical and practitioner perspective as the recent focus of scholarly research is on understanding the relationship between online homophily and e-WOM at the expense of offline WOM-homophily relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work investigates how the relevance of social influencers' product-specific expertise and utilitarian/hedonic argument style depends on consumers' (hedonic or utilitarian) consumption goals. The experiment consists of comparing a hotel selection for a vacation (hedonic condition) to a hotel chosen for a seminar trip (utilitarian condition). To verify the hypotheses, a structural equation model is developed. Contradicting human intuition, (1) expertise has a similar importance under hedonic and utilitarian conditions. Regarding (2) argument style, the results indicate the necessity for adaptation to a particular consumption goal. This finding marks a surprising contrast to prior results. Collectively, these findings clarify the ideal pairing of influencer characteristics and consumption goals in the context of influencer marketing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Brazilian Business Law Journal / Administração de Empresas em Revista is the property of Administracao de Empresas em Revista and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study examines the critical role of trust in influencer marketing, focusing on how influencers' expertise, authenticity, and homophily affect followers' trust and subsequently their loyalty to influencers and brands. Utilizing an explanatory quantitative cross-sectional non-experimental design, data were collected from 202 consumers who purchased products such as cosmetics, skincare, and gadgets after watching influencer reviews. The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM). The results indicate that authenticity, expertise, and homophily significantly contribute to building trust among followers, with authenticity being the most influential factor. Meanwhile, physical attractiveness does not significantly impact trust. Furthermore, trust serves as a crucial mediator, enhancing the effects of influencers' expertise, authenticity, and homophily on both influencer and brand loyalty. Interestingly, negative publicity does not significantly moderate the relationship between trust and loyalty, suggesting that cultural and emotional factors in the Indonesian context may mitigate its impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to investigate the relationships of narrative role, empathy, host identification, spatial distance, and purchase intention. This study conducts three experiments with 460 participants to analyze the influencing mechanism of narrative role (in-group vs. out-group) on consumers' purchase intentions from the perspective of empathy and host identification through three experiments in different spatial distances (distant vs. close). (a) The study found that in the context of agricultural product live stream, hosts taking an in-group character are more likely to trigger consumers' purchase intentions than hosts taking an out-group character. (b) Empathy and host identification play a mediating role in the impact of the narrative role on consumers' purchase intentions. (c) The impact of the host's narrative role on purchase intention does not significantly differ in a spatially distant location. Compared to the host as an out-group character, the host as an in-group character is more likely to promote consumers' purchase intention when the spatial distance is close. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do best friends influence each-other in their consumption practices? This is the question that our article aims to answer. Friendship, and particularly female friendship is seriously under researched by marketing scholars. We attempt to fill this gap by studying interpersonal influences in female best friend dyads and their influences on consumption. To do so, we rely on marketing, sociological, and anthropological literature and conduct a qualitative study. Our method consists of phenomenological interviews and consumption diaries, with a total of 30 informants. We focalize on a particular age group: young (18-30 years old), unmarried women without children. Our study reveals the existence of four main influences between best friends: co-construction, mimicry, prescription, and conversion. These influences do not always act as expected based on western beliefs on friendship. Practitioners should therefore consider the particularities of best friend influences and offer services/products tailored to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Expertise provides numerous benefits. Experts process information more efficiently, remember information better, and often make better decisions. Consumers pursue expertise in domains they love and chase experiences that make them feel something. Yet, might becoming an expert carry a cost for these very feelings? Across more than 700,000 consumers and 6 million observations, developing expertise in a hedonic domain predicts consumers becoming more emotionally numb—that is, having less intense emotion in response to their experiences. This numbness occurs across a range of domains—movies, photography, wine, and beer—and across diverse measures of emotion and expertise. It occurs in cross-sectional real-world data with certified experts, and in longitudinal real-world data that follows consumers over time and traces their emotional trajectories as they accrue expertise. Furthermore, this numbness can be explained by the cognitive structure experts develop and apply within a domain. Experimentally inducing cognitive structure led novice consumers to experience greater numbness. However, shifting experts away from using their cognitive structure restored their experience of emotion. Thus, although consumers actively pursue expertise in domains that bring them pleasure, the present work is the first to show that this pursuit can come with a hedonic cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers, marketers, and consumers often believe that amplifying emotional content is impactful for the spread of information and purchasing decisions. However, there is little systematic investigation of when emotionality backfires. This research demonstrates when and why positive emotion can have enhancing versus backfiring effects. The authors find that reviewers who express greater positive emotion are indeed more positive toward their products, regardless of product type. In addition, expressed emotion for hedonic products has a positive impact when read by others, but this emotion backfires for utilitarian products, leading others to be less positive. The authors construct a conceptual model of these effects and show that violated expectations leading to decreased trust underlie this divergence between reviewers and readers. The effects occur in well-controlled experiments as well as computational linguistic analysis of 100,000 Amazon reviews across 500 products. Indeed, emotional reviews of utilitarian products are less likely to become popular and be displayed on the product's front page on Amazon. This work also introduces a novel tool for quantifying natural language in marketing: the Evaluative Lexicon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The mediating role of perceived organizational politics has been examined in this research to determine how homophily affects organizational cynicism and employee loyalty. This research is based on the idea that people feel more comfortable around similar people. Similarities foster a feeling of affinity, leading to the formation of a relationship known as homophily. This principle asserts that individuals who interact tend to share similar attitudes, perspectives, educational backgrounds, and social standings. A quantitative methodology was employed in the current study. The model was verified by analyzing data from 300 respondents using SEM, following the two-step approach proposed by Andersen and Garbing (1988). The findings derived from the administration of survey questionnaires indicate that attitudinal homophily has an indirect adverse influence on organizational cynicism, while simultaneously having a favorable influence on employee loyalty. These effects are mediated by the perceived presence of organizational politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to address these questions. Word-of-mouth (WOM) is increasingly important in business-to-business (B2B) decision-making. Yet, research on this topic is rather limited, and often borrows from business-to-consumer (B2C) WOM literature. The question remains as to whether these assumptions realistically occur in B2B WOM. Specifically, this study explores the following questions: What value does B2B WOM have? Why do social media influencers in B2B engage in WOM? What type(s) of social media influencers spread WOM in B2B? Design/methodology/approach: To address these questions, this study adopts a qualitative research strategy. This study focuses on industry analysts in information technology markets who often influence the buying decisions of customers through their expertise and recommendations of technology solutions. Based on interviews with these influencers, this study explicates B2B WOM, an area the authors know much less of in comparison to B2C WOM. Findings: This study reveals differences in who spreads WOM within B2B, their roles, key features of their content and how they spread WOM. Second, this study demonstrates the types of actors spreading WOM in B2B in relation to the type of WOM and how it actually influences B2B markets. Originality/value: This study broadens the current definition of WOM and, specifically, showcases WOM not only as amplifying messages but as a means to co-create the market itself with vendors and clients. This research offers several contributions to the B2B WOM literature and influencer practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consumers often rely on online review sites (e.g., Yelp, TripAdvisor) to read reviews on service products they may consider choosing. Despite the usefulness of such reviews, consumers may have difficulty finding reviews suitable for their own preferences because those reviews possess significant preference heterogeneity among reviewers. Differences in the four dimensions of individual reviewers (Experience, Productivity, Details, and Criticalness) lead them to have differential impacts on various consumers. Thus, this research is aimed at understanding the profiles of multiple influential reviewer segments in the service industries under two fundamental evaluation principles (Quality and Likeness). Based on the results, we theorize that reviewer influence arises from writing either reviews of high quality (Quality) or reviews reflecting a significant segment of consumers' common preferences (Likeness). Using two service product categories (restaurants and hotels), we empirically identify and profile four specific influential review segments: (1) top-tier quality reviewers, (2) second-tier quality reviewers, (3) likeness (common) reviewers, and (4) less critical likeness reviewers. By using our approach, product review website managers can present product reviews in such a way that users can easily choose reviews and reviewers that match their preferences out of a vast collection of reviews containing all kinds of preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista CEA is the property of Revista CEA and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Turkish Studies - Economics, Finance, Politics is the property of Electronic Turkish Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Despite the growing importance of influencers' word‐of‐mouth through audiovisual content, little is known about its effect on consumers' brand evaluation, purchase intentions, and decisions. Drawing on Ohanian's source credibility framework, we conducted two studies across different influencers, product categories, and respondents' gender and tested the hypotheses using covariance‐based and partial least square structural equation modeling. Study 1 focuses on a mega‐influencer of cosmetic and beauty brands and predominantly involves female respondents. The findings show that the influencer's attractiveness affects perceptions about source expertise and source trustworthiness but not brand attitude, while source expertise predicts source trustworthiness, and both mediate the effect of source attractiveness on brand attitude. In contrast, brand attitude predicts purchase intention and mediates the impact of source credibility dimensions. Study 2 focuses on various influencers of hedonic products (lifestyle, fashion, and beauty). The results confirm the influence of source attractiveness and expertise on source trustworthiness, which ultimately predicts consumer purchase decisions. This study reveals the interdependencies between different source constructs, contributing to source credibility theory. Furthermore, we show that the effect of source dimensions that are relevant in the celebrity endorsement literature, such as source attractiveness, do not directly influence consumers' intentions and decisions in the context of influencers' electronic word of mouth. Finally, the two studies confirm that only influencers perceived as honest and sincere can influence consumers' purchase decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electronic word‐of‐mouth (eWOM) communication is considered an important source of information for consumers. In existing frameworks and empirical studies, factors that lead to eWOM influence have been categorised into three essential elements equivalent to the three elements of communication processing: source, receiver and message. eWOM requires a more elaborate form of information processing, given the many‐to‐many nature of such communications and that the types of information processing differ between novice and experienced consumers. However, there is no conceptualisation that demonstrates the relationships among the factors of eWOM from this critical information processing perspective. Further, there is limited discourse on the situation and communication channel, although the situation and platform characteristics shape the nature of communication in the digital age. This paper reports insights obtained from an extensive literature review and presents a broader categorisation encompassing the factors of source, receiver, message, situation, task involvement and channel. Research propositions and recommendations for further research into eWOM processing are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the effectiveness of advertising messages that highlight abstract versus concrete goals and of consumer endorsements varying in strength in the context of services with various levels of risk. The results show that, for services of low risk, consumers exposed to concrete goal-oriented messages in advertisements have a more positive ad attitude and purchase intention towards the service if the ad message is accompanied by strong-tie word-of-mouth (e.g., family or friends) versus weak-tie word-of-mouth (e.g., reviews from typical consumers). No such difference is observed if consumers see advertisements with abstract goals. In the case of high-risk services, abstract goals in advertising are more effective when ad messages are accompanied by weak (versus strong)-tie word-of-mouth. By priming consumers to think of low-risk services as having relatively higher risk (and vice versa), we show that the results are not merely driven by the type of service but by the level of perceived risk that consumers associate with the service. We conclude with implications for academics and practitioners. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enzymes and peptide catalysts consist of the same building blocks but require vastly different environments to operate best. Herein, we show that an enzyme and a peptide catalyst can work together in a single reaction vessel to catalyze a two-step cascade reaction with high chemo- and stereoselectivity. Abundant linear alcohols, nitroolefins, an alcohol oxidase, and a tripeptide catalyst provided chiral γ-nitroaldehydes in aqueous buffer. High yields (up to 92 %) and stereoselectivities (up to 98 % ee) were achieved for the cascade through the rational design of the peptide catalyst and the identification of common reaction conditions., (© 2024 The Authors. Angewandte Chemie International Edition published by Wiley-VCH GmbH.)

Consumer purchasing choices are being more influenced by online reviews, and bad online reviews have a greater effect on customers than favourable online reviews. In order to investigate the mechanism by which negative online reviews influence consumer purchase decisions, this paper focuses on two key indicators of negative online reviews: the quality of negative reviews and the quantity of negative reviews. It also introduces consumer product involvement and perceived risk as intermediary variables. SPSS 20.0 and AMOS 23.0 analytic software is used for descriptive, validity, reliability, correlation, and regression analyses of data. The empirical approach is used to verify and update a model or hypothesis. Detrimental Internet reviews had a negative impact on customers' purchase intentions, as well as the perceived risk and product engagement of the recipient's psychological representations, according to this research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of the term affinity has been gradually spreading in several disciplines from multiple viewpoints. Among all these approaches, the concept of consumer affinity, which explains how consumers' positive dispositions toward a particular foreign country affect their purchase decisions of products from that origin, has recently emerged in the marketing discipline. In addition to the scarcity of theoretical and empirical studies on this concept, the marketing literature lacks a systematic review detailing the origin, evolution, and relevance of this notion and the remaining gaps to be investigated in this field. This study aims to examine the complex nature of consumer affinity and the difficulties that arise in its analysis at a conceptual and methodological level to examine its nature, characteristics, dimensionality, and relationship with other variables. To this end, through a systematic review using the PRISMA protocol, this study provides an integrated framework of the existing literature, analyzing the etymological origin and conceptual foundations of consumer affinity, its publication trajectory, and the main contributions to its study. Finally, this paper provides a roadmap for future research based on the convergences, inconsistencies, and knowledge gaps identified in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research aims to evaluate the impact of psychological contract violation, trust, satisfaction, and negative word of mouth on online repurchase intention in an emerging market such as Vietnam. The paper follows a quantitative approach through interviews with 566 consumers in Ho Chi Minh City, the biggest city in Vietnam. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling and a T-Test. The research results suggest a relationship between psychological contract violation, trust, satisfaction, and negative word of mouth on online repurchase intention. The results also show that there are demographic differences such as gender and education level in the relationship between psychological contract violation and online purchase intention, which has not been explored in previous studies. This study will help administrators of e-commerce sites be aware of the important role of buyer's trust, satisfaction and expectations expressed through psychological contract. Besides, it helps remind managers to pay more attention in building and implementing business strategies to avoid mistakes that lead to breach of psychological contract to avoid negative word of mouth and increase online repurchase intentions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigate how word-of-mouth marketing campaign participants select communication partners, content and channel. Rules Theory, which we adopt from the interpersonal communication literature, indicates that socially constructed contextual rules explain participants’ choices. Our analysis suggests that campaign participants are sensitive to the socially constructed contexts within which interaction takes place and adjust their communication choices accordingly. We identify four contexts that account for variance in participants’ choices: episode, relationship, life-script and family narrative. We show that specific communication choices may be obligated, legitimated or prohibited dependent on the activated context. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Daka destinations refer to tagging one's visit to a popular destination by posting on social media. As a novel tourism concept derived from digital media in the post-pandemic era, Daka destinations have become a major option for potential tourists; thus, investigating tourist intentions toward them is of utmost significance to tourism recovery. Based on the viewpoints of information sources of Daka destinations, tourism motivations, and self-construction, this study investigates the research framework of potential tourism intentions through three scenarios. The findings revealed the following: (i) Different information sources have different stimuli for potential tourists, and WeChat Moments exerted a positive impact on tourism intention because of credibility; tourism bloggers from Weibo exert a more significant positive impact on tourism intentions of potential tourists because of professionalism. (ii) Considering the credibility of WeChat Moments, the extrinsic motivation of potential tourists exerted a more significant impact on tourism intentions; regarding professional tourism bloggers, the intrinsic motivation of potential tourists exerted a more significant impact on tourism intention. (iii) Regarding the credibility of WeChat Moments, dependent self-construction potential tourists with extrinsic motivation exerted a more significant impact on tourism intention. Regarding tourism bloggers with high professionalism, independent self-construal potential tourists with intrinsic motivation exerted a more significant impact on tourism intention. This study enriches the research mechanism of the formation path of potential tourists' tourism intention, extends the self-construction theory to the research field of using social media to collect Daka destinations tourism information, and provides a reference to subsequent research on potential tourists' tourism intention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research aims to determine which dimensions of online convenience influence generation z consumers' cognitive and affective attitudes and online impulsive buying behavior. The moderating effect of social media celebrity is also investigated to examine the attitude-behavior gap. A total of 348 responses from Chinese users who followed digital celebrities were received using purposive sampling. Data analysis and hypothesis testing were carried out using SmartPLS, version 3 (partial least squares). The results indicated that relationship convenience, possession convenience, post possession conveniences, transaction convenience, and evaluation convenience have a crucial impact on cognitive and affective attitudes. Similarly, cognitive and affective attitudes are significant and positive predictors of generation z consumers' online impulsive buying behavior. Moreover, empirical results supported the moderating role of social media celebrities that aid marketers in selecting a product endorser. The implications for marketers and policymakers are discussed based on the above research findings. Moreover, future research directions are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: This paper aims to examine the effects of design sources (user design vs. company design) on customers' perceived value (perceived self-improvement and perceived uncertainty) and consequently purchase intention, as well as the moderating effect of brand strength in the context of purchasing utilitarian products. Design/methodology/approach: Two studies were conducted. Study 1 used a laboratory experiment (n = 160) to test the effects of design sources on perceived self-improvement, perceived uncertainty and purchase intention. Study 2 used an online experiment (n = 312) to examine the moderating effect of brand strength. Findings: The results showed that user design is a double-edged sword for companies. Compared with company design, user design is associated with stronger self-improvement and uncertainty as perceived by customers. Perceived self-improvement is positively related to purchase intention, while perceived uncertainty undermines purchase intention. Moreover, for weak brands, perceived self-improvement is significantly stronger in user design than company design, while for strong brands, this relationship is not significant. Originality/value: This paper draws on mental accounting theory to study the perceived benefits and risks of user design of utilitarian products, and highlights the double-edged effects of user design on customers' perceived value and purchase decision. The findings provide more rounded insights on user design of utilitarian products, complementing the one-sided view of customers' positive perceives of user design in unclassified product categories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]