Instagram as a social media platform has gained prominence as the medium of influencer marketing practices targeting consumers of beauty products, yet little is known about source characteristics affecting Instagram opinion leadership resulting in consumers’ purchasing behavior. Thus, this work examines effects of Instagram influencers’ attributes (credibility, attractiveness, innovativeness, and sense of humor) on their perceived opinion leadership and its subsequent impacts on consumers’ behavioral intentions. The research also analyzes complementary moderating effects of parasocial relationship and social identity reinforcing behavioral implications of social media opinion leadership. Empirical results from 202 Instagram followers reveal that credibility, innovativeness, and sense of humor exert positive influence on perceived opinion leadership which subsequently enhances levels of positive word-of-mouth, purchase, and loyalty intentions. Besides, social identity strengthens positive impacts of opinion leadership on consumers’ word-of-mouth and purchase intentions. Thus, the findings not only contribute to the theory of opinion leadership, but have beneficial implications enabling beauty brands to develop effectual social media marketing communication strategies.

Based on the idea of gamified food packaging, the article follows several studies to propose a new integrative framework in gamified gourmet food packaging, lighting a new study area of the interplay of mobile marketing and packaging (as a communication vehicle) in the promotion management literature. We investigate the relationship between the masstige theory perspective on masstige (gourmet) food companies and the effects of gamification, specifically in mobile sales points, in the new extended framework that has been suggested. We propose an integrative framework comprising four key elements. These include consumer engagement with the brand, technological packaging design, consumer happiness, and consumer involvement at mobile point-of-sale. We employ a survey to gather data as part of our research methodology to test nine (9) research hypotheses and the mediating effect of consumer happiness and consumer involvement. The study offers valuable insights into promotions of gamified gourmet food packaging, bringing attention to the intersection of gamification and mobile sales points and how they impact consumer perceptions, intentions, and purchasing decisions.

Brand love and brand loyalty are crucial factors in consumer-brand relationships. However, few studies have examined the impact of social influences on them. Using structural equation modeling, this study investigated the impact of interpersonal influence and celebrity endorser influence on brand love and brand loyalty, the mediating role of brand love between the two social influences and brand loyalty, and finally the moderating roles of gender and consumer age across these relationships. The results suggest that both the social influences have a crucial role in this context and brand love acts as a partial mediator in the association with brand loyalty. Gender did not play the expected moderating role. However, consumers’ age played a significant moderating role in the relationships between social influences and brand love.

In today’s phygital world, the present study demystifies the impact of perceived benefits of Livestream shopping on the purchase intention of users toward fast fashion apparel aligned with theory of planned behavior. The uniqueness of the study is that it presents a novel stance by integrating stimulus-organism-response (SOR) theory and theory of planned behavior (TPB) to propose a comprehensive framework encompassing the relationship between perceptions, attitude and intention in the case of livestream shopping. It also extends the model by incorporating drivers- portal’s quality and influencer’s advice as the moderators to bridge the prevailing gap in literature. Structural equation modeling is applied to analyze the direct and indirect relationships (with attitude as a mediator) in the proposed model followed by evaluating the moderated mediation of portals’ quality and influencers’ advice through SPSS (Hayes, Model 21). Data is collected from 276 respondents using snowball-sampling technique. The novelty of this research lies in its investigation of the mediating role of attitude between perceived benefit of live-stream shopping and intention to purchase, where influencers’ advice was found to have moderated mediation between attitude and intention to buy. On contrast, portals’ quality had no significant moderated mediation effect between perceived benefit and attitude. This study broadens the scope of the application of the SOR model to contribute to the growing body of literature on live stream marketing.

Inconsistent results regarding consumers’ reactions to sponsorship disclosure call for more research into the mechanisms underlying the effects of sponsorship disclosure. Considering the critical role of trust in advertising and marketing, we examined how sponsorship disclosure influenced trust toward the endorser of a product and subsequently affected attitudes toward the endorsed product and intentions to purchase the product. These effects were examined for both influencers and celebrities. The results of an online experiment revealed that sponsorship disclosure increased trust toward the endorser, which in turn led to more positive attitudes toward the endorsed product and increased purchase intentions. However, these effects were significant only for influencers, but not for celebrities. These findings advance our understanding of the mechanisms underlying the effects of sponsorship disclosure and have implications for advertising regulation and social media marketing.

Consumer minimalism has emerged as a significant trend influencing purchasing decisions in the evolving landscape of consumer behavior. However, minimalism is well acknowledged across various disciplines, very limitedly explored in tourism literature, especially in the context of shared services in the tourism industry. Based on this knowledge gap, this study proposes an integrative theoretical framework using the value-attitude-behavior theory and the theory of planned behavior to investigate the impact of minimalism on the purchase behavior of shared services. The data collected from 454 tourists with previous experience using sharing economy-based services implies that consumer minimalism profoundly influences purchase behaviors within shared services. Furthermore, Regional brand identity significantly impacts the relationship between consumer minimalism and behavioral intention. The results add substantially to the existing knowledge in the value-attitude-behavior theory and the Theory of Planned Behavior. The results will also help tourism managers and marketers frame policies to meet tourists’ backgrounds and value systems.

Guided by previous literature on social norms and influencer marketing, we explored the relationship between algorithm-related influencer following norms and influencer marketing effectiveness. To fulfill the research goal, we surveyed 475 qualified Instagram influencer followers who use Instagram, follow at least one influencer on Instagram currently, and have encountered the influencer’s product recommendations. Using PLS-based structural equation modeling, we found that people’s influencer following norms played a significant role in shaping influencer endorsement effectiveness (e.g. influencer following gratifications, perceived influencer characteristics, and effectiveness of influencer product recommendation). Moreover, people’s exposure to the algorithmic social media environment (i.e. suggested and top posts provided by Instagram’s recommendation algorithms) is related to their perceived influencer following norms. We provide implications and future research directions.

Referral reward programs (RRPs), considered as a form of stimulated word-of-mouth (WOM), provide incentives to existing customers to bring in new customers. The research here adds to previous knowledge by exploring the usage of referral codes for high and low-involvement products in three stages of the consumer decision journey, on a sample of 218 consumers analyzed by regression analysis. Results show that components of the Theory of Planned Behavior influence the behavioral intention toward participating in an RRP, with perceived behavioral control having the strongest effect, followed by subjective norm and Attitude. Referral codes have a significant effect on respondents’ behavior; high conformity of high-involvement products and low conformity of low-involvement products was found, with referral programs having a weaker effect on high-involvement products. Customers tend to follow all steps of the traditional consumer journey when buying a high-involvement product; in the case of low involvement products, low conformity was even lower when using a referral code. Low-involvement products at the need recognition stage, and high-involvement products at the active research stage, are the least affected by the RRP. Results provide insights for companies to optimize their marketing strategy through stimulated WOM, and with the usage of RRPs.

This study investigates the effects of reviewers’ comments and rating scores on online buyers purchase motives, employing the ‘stimuli–organism–response’ (S-O-R) framework. The study considers three stimuli, that is, review rating, security and privacy and review content, that impacted consumers’ emotions (organism) toward online buying (response). In total, 400 responses are collected from millennial online buyers using a survey method with a structured research instrument, and structural equation modeling is applied to analyze empirical results. The result reveals that when people have high level of satisfaction and trustworthiness with the online review rating, content and security policy, their online purchase motives are stronger. Moreover, the study also examines the influencers’ role in purchase motives as moderators and reveals that influencers are important determinants in the purchase motive through online purchases. Thus, the results of this study encourage online marketers to focus on customer reviews and rating scores, ultimately designing the consumer organism that leads to online purchases.