Many firms are striving to improve their environmental positions by presenting their environmental efforts to the public. To do so, they are applying green marketing strategies to help gain ...competitive advantage and appeal to ecologically conscious consumers. However, not all green marketing claims accurately reflect firms’ environmental conduct, and can be viewed as ‘greenwashing’. Greenwashing may not only affect a company’s profitability, but more importantly, result in ethical harm. Therefore, this research extends past greenwashing studies by examining additional influences on and outcomes of perceived greenwashing. To do so, we conducted two studies, an interview study with consumer product and consulting firms, as well as an experiment examining consumers interacting with a company website. For these studies, we used multiple methods, including interviews, questionnaires, and neurophysiological techniques. We found that perceived greenwashing relates not only to environmental and product perceptions, but also to consumers’ happiness while interacting with the website. We also found that website interactivity relates to perceived greenwashing, environmental and product perceptions, and to the amount of interaction with the website. We conclude by discussing managerial and ethical implications for research and practice.
Trust is a crucial issue in online shopping environments, but it is more important in social commerce platforms due to the salient role of peer-generated contents. This article investigates the ...relationship between trust in social commerce and purchase intentions and describes a mechanism to explain this relationship. We propose a main and two alternative models by drawing on three concepts: social commerce information seeking, familiarity with the platform, and social presence. The models clarify the mechanisms through which trust, familiarity, social presence, and social commerce information seeking influence behavioral intentions on social commerce platforms. Findings from a survey of Facebook users indicate that trust in a social networking site (SNS) increases information seeking which in turn increases familiarity with the platform and the sense of social presence. Moreover, familiarity and social presence increase purchases intentions. Findings indicate that the main model fits the data better than the alternative ones. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.
In recent years, advertisers have increasingly been using emoji in their promotional communications. However, little is known about how consumers might react to the use of emoji in advertisements. In ...this paper, we examine the effect of including emoji in advertisements on consumers' purchase intentions. Two empirical investigations (a laboratory experiment and an online study) provide convergent evidence that the presence of emoji leads consumers to experience higher positive affect, which in turn, leads to higher purchase intentions. We also examined the moderating influence of product type (utilitarian vs. hedonic) on the emoji ➔ positive affect ➔ purchase intentions link, finding that emoji are only effective for promoting hedonic products. The findings of our work offer theoretical and managerial implications with respect to why and when emoji are likely to make advertisements more effective.
•Including emoji in ads leads to higher purchase intentions and positive affect.•Higher positive affect mediates the effect of emoji on purchase intentions.•Product type moderates the emoji-positive affect-purchase intentions link.•Emoji are more effective at promoting hedonic products than utilitarian ones.
Service providers’ communication on social media has become a viable method to influence customer purchasing behavior and firm outcomes. Because services are intangible, one of the most pertinent ...challenges is to design text-based social media content to reduce customers’ perceived risk and enhance desired outcomes. According to Emotions as Social Information (EASI) theory, affective expression can positively influence observer’s reactions. Yet, evidence suggests that affective content (i.e., the use of affective words) is less helpful in high-involvement situations, as customers prefer cognitive information to reduce risk. However, four experiments reveal that high-involvement service providers can enhance customers’ purchase intentions by employing affective content in their online communication. This is because affective content signals effort of the provider, reducing perceived risk, and increasing purchase intentions. Results also demonstrate affective content works better for prevention- (vs. promotion) focused customers and for providers with high-quality reputations, indicating the relative primacy of inferential over affective processes when evaluating affective content. Practically, service providers should carefully rebalance their communication to increase affective content in social media posts.
Consumers are increasingly interested to know about the environmental impact (EI) of products and, at the same time, they form attitudes after reading online consumer reviews. Drawing on negativity ...bias, schema congruity theory, and norm‐activation model, we investigate the effects of environmentally framed electronic word‐of‐mouth messages of different valence, on perceived review usefulness, product attitude and purchase intention in products with low versus high EI. Two factorial experiments (positive vs. negative reviews; low vs. high EI) were conducted respectively with a sample of 321 Italian and 250 French consumers. The findings of the two studies show a partial support of the moderating role of product EI, suggesting that products perceived to have a high impact on the environment strengthen the impact of a positive or a negative review carrying environmental messages. The effect of a positive and a negative review is contingent upon the level of consumers' environmental concern. Negative reviews of high impact products are more impactful in contexts in which environmental concerns are high, while positive reviews are more significant when environmental concerns are low. The perceived usefulness of a negative review about high impact products influences consumers' attitude and purchase intention when moral norms are high.
Consumers' rising interest in organic food has drawn the attention of the academic community. The literature on the topic is growing, but it mostly focuses either on the acceptance of or resistance ...toward organic food. However, marketing scholars argue that the development of more in-depth insights into consumers’ reasoning processes, and especially the roles of values and context-specific reasons are needed. The present study bridges this gap by utilizing the novel behavioral reasoning theory (BRT) framework. Cross-sectional data from 307 consumers and non-consumers from India were collected to investigate associations among attitudes, reasoning, value, and purchase intentions. This research studies the moderating role of food safety concerns and buying involvement. Additionally, the mediating role of reasons and attitudes is examined. The results suggest that value was positively associated with reasons (for and against), whereas attitude and reasons (for) resulted in favorable purchase intentions. Reasons (for and against) fully mediate the association between value and attitude. Furthermore, attitude partially mediates the association of reasons and purchase intentions. The moderation effect was not found for food safety concerns, but a limited effect among studied associations was observed for buying involvement. The findings raise significant implications for marketers and policymakers.
•The study extends innovation resistance theory (IRT) to the online travel agencies (OTAs) context.•Benefits barrier is the strongest inhibitor of purchase intentions.•Privacy and security concerns, ...and vulnerability positively predict intentions.•Visibility moderates the association of benefits barrier and purchase intentions.•Young and old OTA users differ in the association between barriers and purchase intentions.
Online travel agencies (OTAs) are expanding their services to many segments of the travel and tourism industry. While they are beneficial to travelers, OTAs also face a great deal of consumer resistance. However, prior literature has largely focused on travelers’ adoption intentions toward OTAs, scarcely exploring the causes of such resistance. Addressing the gap, this study extends the innovation resistance theory (IRT) to examine the barriers to positive purchase intentions toward OTAs. A mixed method research design with open-ended essays and cross-sectional survey is used to test the proposed model. Findings suggest that benefits barrier is the chief inhibitor of purchase intentions. In comparison, privacy and security concerns and the vulnerability barrier show positive association with intentions. As a moderator, visibility influences the strength of the association between benefits barrier and purchase intentions. Further, the strength of this association differs among young, middle-aged, and old users.
We explore the mechanism through which social media influencers (SMIs) persuade consumers to adopt brands. Guided by the influence framework, we propose and test empirically SMIs’ influence ...mechanism, which occurs in four principal stages: (a) a SMI's influence attempts (showcasing H1: attractive; H2: prestigious; H3 and H4: expert; H5: informative; and H6: interactive Instagram contents); (b) target consumers’ attitudinal response to the influence exercised (evaluating the SMI as a H7: taste and H8: opinion leader); which, in turn, affects (c) the targets’ desire to comply (the desire to mimic); and ultimately (d) their favorable behavioral outcomes (H9: social media word‐of‐mouth and H10: purchase intentions). On the basis of the survey data from 395 respondents, we used structural equation modeling to test our hypotheses and proposed model. We verified the robustness of our results using an ordered probit regression model and analyzed the mediating role of consumers’ desire to mimic SMIs in the influence mechanism. Our results confirm that the five aspects of influencing posts affect consumers’ attitudes positively and significantly, which in turn leads to positive behavioral outcomes through their desire to mimic SMIs. We discuss the results’ important implications for both scholars and practitioners.
•Build and test a conceptual model surrounding the idea of a generous consumer.•Examine the impact of pro-social consumer behaviors on interpersonal generosity.•Several pro-social behaviors help ...predict cause-related purchasing intentions.•Interpersonal generosity mediates pro-social behaviors & purchase intentions.
Cause-related marketing is prevalent in today’s marketing environment. The purpose of this research is to build and test a conceptual model surrounding the idea of a generous consumer – and what may lead a consumer to buy products affiliated with cause-related marketing. To do this, we examine the impact of pro-social consumer behaviors (i.e., social responsibility, empathy, moral reasoning, and self-report altruism (SRA) past helpfulness) on interpersonal generosity. Further, we explore the role of both pro-social consumer behaviors and interpersonal generosity on cause-related purchase intentions. Findings indicate that several pro-social consumer behaviors are predictors of cause-related purchasing intentions. Additionally, it is found that interpersonal generosity mediates other pro-social behaviors in determining consumer receptiveness to cause-related market exchanges.
The objective of the paper is to study the impact that hotel guests reviews posted on consumer-generated websites have on the consumer decision-making process and service expectations.
An ...experimental study has been conducted to test the hypotheses and the research question. 349 young adults were involved in an online survey that asked to imagine searching for a hotel and reading other customers’ reviews of a hypothetical chosen hotel. Three scenarios were created by studying a few comments posted by customers on the main websites used by tourists.
Results show a positive correlation between both hotel purchasing intention and expectations of the customers and valence of the review. On the contrary, the presence of hotel managers’ responses to guests’ reviews has a negative impact on purchasing intentions.
The study enriches the stream of research on word-of-mouth in the hospitality industry and analyses a new operational problem for lodging managers. Hotels should reply to online customer reviews or not?
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