The fashion industry has been recognized as one of the major industries that contribute to environmental damage. Although fashion companies have started to take some actions aimed at protecting the ...environment, how consumers make purchasing decisions about sustainable fashion products is a lingering question. This research thus investigates the effect of sustainable product attributes (i.e., recycled materials) on consumers’ purchase intention toward luxury and fast fashion products.
Drawing from the social judgment theory, we propose that sustainability leads to higher consumers’ purchase intentions and that this effect is explained by the activation of perceived warmth. Three studies provide support for this assertation. Specifically, sustainable product attributes (i.e., recycled materials) affect positively the purchase intentions and this effect is magnified in the case of fast fashion products (Study 1). Consumers show more positive implicit attitudes when sustainability is paired with luxury than with fast fashion (Study 2). Finally, sustainability activates higher levels of perceived warmth which, in turn, affects consumers’ purchase intentions towards fast fashion products (Study 3). This research provides insightful theoretical implications by enclosing the psychological mechanism (i.e., perceived warmth) behind the relationship between sustainability and consumers’ purchase intentions. The paper also offers actionable levers on how to communicate sustainable initiatives to strengthen the consumer-brand relationship.
•Sustainable attributes lead to higher purchase intentions of fashion products.•The effect of sustainable attributes is magnified in the case of fast fashion products.•Sustainability activates a warm perception toward the fashion brand.•The perception of warmth increases consumers’ purchase intentions.•Consumers implicitly associate luxury with sustainability.
One of the major challenges for the tourism sector is enacting sustainable behaviours. A key strategy for hoteliers is developing persuasive messages, with the goal of encouraging guests' voluntary ...participation in green programmes. Through the lens of prospect theory and construal level theory, the present study investigates to what extent a loss or gain-framed message influences recycling of hotel guests via a field and a laboratory experiment. The field experiment tests the moderating effect of message construal level (concrete or abstract) on the message frame that activate pro-environmental behaviour, while the laboratory study delves further into the mechanism by showing that perceived self-efficacy is the mechanism behind the activation of these behaviours. The findings from both studies suggest that hotel guests are more likely to engage in recycling behaviour when a concrete message is paired with a loss-framed message, because of a greater perceived self-efficacy. These results help to understand the theoretical psychological mechanisms and offer managerial implications for operators on how to engage guests to be active partners in sustainable tourism behaviours.
•Empathy prevents negative reviewing behavior in peer-to-peer settings.•A sequential mixed-method approach improves the generalizability of the findings.•We expand the social dimension of Construal ...Level Theory in the accommodation realm.•We offer actionable levers on how to increase the reliability of reputation systems.
Previous research has found that peer-to-peer platforms have overly positive reviews. Guided by Construal Level Theory, this research investigates the relationship between social distance, empathy, and tourists’ intention to leave negative online reviews. The first study is a qualitative analysis which compares peer-to-peer settings (i.e., Airbnb) to institutional ones (i.e., Booking.com), and explores whether social closeness hinders tourists’ willingness to provide negative online reviews to express their poor experiences. The second and third study are laboratory studies which show that the mechanism behind reviewing biases is the activation of empathy.
This research offers practical implications for both traditional hospitality players, on how to activate empathy, and online platforms operators, on how to increase the reliability of their reputation systems.
This article also launches the Annals of Tourism Research Curated Collection on Peer-to-peer accommodation networks, a special selection of research in this field.
Purpose
There is growing interest in the use of human-like social robots, able to undertake complex tasks whilst building consumer engagement. However, further exploration is needed on the optimal ...level of humanoid appearance for service robots. In particular, the literature is limited with respect to mitigating disconfirmed expectations for robots high in human-likeness. This paper aims to address this gap by testing the effect of robot appearance, disconfirmed expectations and warmth (vs competence) on customers’ responses.
Design/methodology/approach
The study adopts a mixed-method design by presenting a focus group (Study 1) that guides two laboratory experiments (Studies 2 and 3). Studies 2 and 3 test for the moderating effect of warmth (vs competence) and the mediating roles of perceived eeriness and disconfirmed expectations.
Findings
The findings show that a robot high (vs low) in human-likeness leads to higher negative customers’ responses, which is explained by disconfirmed expectations rather than perceived eeriness. However, when customers interact with a warm (vs competent) robot high in human-likeness, this negative effect vanishes.
Research limitations/implications
The paper investigates boundary conditions and underlying mechanisms that affect customers’ experiences. Although the study adopts high realistic experiments, a limitation lies in not measuring customers’ actual behaviours in the field.
Practical implications
This study provides new insights on how the appearance and characteristics of social robots influence the consumers’ experience. By doing so, this study offers managers actionable insights (i.e. enhancing warmth) to lessen the risk of disconfirmed expectations.
Originality/value
The paper offers new explanations as to why human-like robots can generate negative responses from customers. Moving beyond the “uncanny valley” hypothesis, this study shows the key role of disconfirmed expectations in explaining consumers’ negative responses towards humanoid robots. Moreover, it sheds light on the moderating role of warmth (vs competence), which can mitigate such negative effects.
The aim of this paper is to analyze the relationship between fashion events and the territory where they take place, focusing on how this relationship can also affect fashion consumers' behavior. ...History and culture, together with creativity and innovation, represent the distinctive traits of global fashion cities; at the same time, these characteristics are the basis of the fashion industry, which combines past, present and future in a constant state of renewal. On the empirical side, using a qualitative methodology, the research presents a case study, investigating the relationship between the city of Florence and its most important fashion events, Pitti Immagine fairs. Main findings show the distinctive elements of these events, highlighting the strong synergy and the mutual influence between Pitti Immagine fashion events and the territory of Florence. In terms of managerial implications, the authors suggest the existence of a mutual effect between the Florentine city and Pitti Immagine, both in terms of enhancement of the reputation and in terms of influence on fashion consumers' behavior, acting in this territory.
This study examines why, and under what conditions, managers of focal brands decide to maintain the alliance with the partner brand when the latter is involved in negative publicity. The literature ...on brand alliances demonstrates the presence of crisis spillover effects on each partner in the case of negative publicity, suggesting dropping the offending brand to avoid any bad associations related to the negative publicity. However, research evidence on such negative effects in the B2B context is scarce. Drawing on attribution theory and reasoning style, this paper shows through two experiments (Study 1, N = 100; Study 2, N = 160) how the high (vs. low) severity of the allied brand's negative publicity activates an internal causal attribution process, which leads managers of focal brands to drop the offending partner. However, when brand managers are characterized by an analytic (vs. holistic) reasoning style, this path is overturned. Adopting a managerial perspective regarding the implications of negative publicity for B2B relationships, this study provides new insights into how the severity of partner brand negative publicity influences managers' decision-making, via casual attribution. The paper thus offers managers actionable guidelines (i.e., enhancing the analytic reasoning style) to reduce the risk of terminating a profitable alliance.
•The severity of the negative publicity involving the partner brand negatively affects managers' decision-making process.•A high (vs. low) severity of the negative publicity activates an internal causal attribution process, which leads to the end (vs. maintenance) of the alliance.•The effect of severity of negative publicity, via internal causal attribution, is magnified in case of a holistic (vs. analytic) reasoning style.
•Empirical study examines implicit attitudes towards compostable bio-based packaging.•Compostable packaging perceived as positive and healthy regardless of food content.•Implicit and explicit ...attitudes predict purchase intentions of compostable packaging.•Health consciousness moderates link between implicit health associations and intention.•Less health-consciousness consumers guided by implicit health-packaging associations.
This paper explores the disjuncture between consumers’ expressed preferences for ecologically benign packaging and their subsequent purchase decisions. We investigate consumers’ attitudes towards compostable bio-based food packaging, in contrast to fossil-based plastic packaging, framing our study within analysis of implicit attitudes. We address a gap in knowledge about the moderating effects of consumers’ reported health consciousness on the relationship between implicit health associations with compostable packaging and subsequent purchase intentions. Specifically, across four studies employing Implicit Associations Tests (IATs), we analyse the relationship between implicit and explicit attitudes, relating packaging associations with consumers’ behavioural intentions. Our findings confirm positive implicit (and explicit) perceptions of compostable bio-based packaging (vs. fossil-based plastic) regardless of the healthiness of the food contained. This is reflected in consumers’ purchase intentions. We build on this to incorporate the effects of consumers’ self-reported health consciousness. We find that low health-conscious consumers are more likely to be guided in their compostable packaging decisions by their unconscious and automatic health-packaging associations, than consumers with high health consciousness. We contribute to policy discussion about effective ways of reducing fossil-based plastic packaging use and note that environmental claims for non-plastic alternatives aimed at consumers with low-health consciousness should make appeals based on health benefits, tapping into implicit attitudes to evoke automatic responses.
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•Customer purchase journey phases affect information disclosure via perceived warmth.•Perceived warmth gradually increases over the customer purchase journey.•Perceived warmth ...mitigates consumers’ privacy concerns.•A field study in an online clothing store provides actual disclosure data.•We offer actionable levers on how retailers can leverage warmth perceptions.
Consumers show increasing levels of concern regarding disclosing information to companies, as retailers’ access to their personal information heightens their feelings of vulnerability. Although customers’ personal information is crucial for targeting actual and potential customers, the extant discussion regarding the determinants of customers’ willingness to disclose personal information is limited. Drawing upon social judgment theory, this study investigates how consumers experience different levels of perceived warmth, which alleviates privacy concerns and, in turn, affects their willingness to disclose personal information during different stages of the online customer purchase journey.
A mixed-method design combining a focus group (Study 1), an online experiment, a field study and a laboratory experiment (Studies 2, 3 and 4) provide a multifaceted representation of this phenomenon. The results show that compared to the prepurchase phase, asking for personal information at the end of the online customer purchase journey (i.e., purchase and postpurchase phases) leads to a higher perception of warmth and lower privacy concerns, thereby increasing customers’ disclosure of personal data. The findings are robust to consumers’ brand familiarity and other relevant sociodemographic variables. This research provides insightful theoretical and practical implications for retailers regarding how to enhance perceived warmth and improve customers’ willingness to disclose personal information.
Policy makers around the world are facing serious challenges in controlling citizens' obesity and healthiness, hence, they devote increased attention to the development of tools that communicate ...easily processable nutrition information. Front‐of‐package nutrition labels are one of such tools and have been used to signal the extent to which food items contain potentially unhealthy ingredients such as sugar or fat. In this research, we focus on sugar cues on three different food categories to investigate their impact on consumer choice. We compare two labels, one already used (traffic‐light) and one never used (sugar teaspoon): sugar teaspoons prove to be more effective than the previously used traffic‐lights in healthy product choices, but only for specific food categories. In two experiments, we find that sugar teaspoon labels indicating sugar content, as opposed to traffic‐light labels, are more effective in signaling sugar levels and thus, in helping consumers making healthier choices. We find that this is particularly relevant for food categories that have a simpler ingredient composition (i.e., whose healthiness relies more heavily on sugar). We finally propose processing fluency as the mechanism for the relation between sugar signals and product choices.
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