Luxurious brands consumption in China is featured by clear conspicuous purposes. This research investigated the phenomenon from the indigenous perspective of social face consciousness. Drawing on Ho’s (1976) framework of gaining versus losing face dynamics, the authors broke down the construct of face consciousness into two dimensions of “desire to gain face” and “fear of losing face”, and developed measurement scales for them. The two scales were then used to examine their effect on conspicuous luxurious brand consumption behavior and found both of them had unique contribution in explaining why Chinese consumers buy luxurious brands.

This paper carries out a research by content analysis on 247 academic papers published in the Journal of Marketing during the year of 2005-2009, with a purpose to describe the subjects, methods and scholars of Western marketing research. The findings are as following: the main subjects that Western marketing research focuses on are consumer behavior, products, brands, marketing general management, industrial marketing, advertising and promotion, services marketing, and network marketing, Among which research on the general marketing management, products, brands, industrial marketing, network marketing have an escalating trend, and adverse on the prices and marketing channels, and the subjects on consumer behavior and services marketing remain to be the focus of marketing research. As for research methods of marketing, quantitative research keeps dominated and are used in such marketing research domain as brand, product and personal selling, the experimental method has been more widely used to study consumer behaviors, prices, advertising and promotion, the qualitative research and mixed research are seldom used, the former is used in industrial marketing, general marketing management, and the latter focus on the subject of marketing theory and philosophy. In addition, there exists a diversified form of cooperation among marketing scholars, which includes scholars’ cooperation in a university, among different universities, between university and business and among different counties.

Based on the psychological compensation mechanism of consumer behavior, the current research examines how social comparison in ability domain influences people’s conspicuous consumption, and explores the possible interventions. Past research regarded conspicuous consumption as a way of signaling social-economic status, which often derived from wealth comparison. Our research proposes that besides wealth comparison, comparison in consumption unrelated domains would also lead to conspicuous consumption. In this mechanism, conspicuous consumption is a way to compensate for the self threat resulted from upward comparison. 2 studies were conducted to confirm our hypothesis. Study 1 indicates that consumers are more likely to spend on conspicuous items after comparing their own academic performance to those better counterparts. Study 2 replicates the result of study 1 using a more general conspicuous consumption measure. Furthermore, we found that the impact of ability comparison on conspicuous consumption diminished if people engaged in a prior self affirmation.

Micro blog becomes an important tool of social marketing，challenging companies’ consumer-brand relationship management. Based on grounded theory，66 representative companies’ posts in Sina are collected，with 1395 company posts and 5959 following posts. A influence mechanism model of company micro blog  interaction tactics on consumer-brand relationship is proposed，then the saturation level of this mechanism is tested. Results show that 1) Companies adopt two types of tactics in micro blog interaction: social interaction and task-oriented interaction; 2) Micro blog interaction arises consumer emotional response and cognition toward specific brand and eventually influences consumer-brand relationship. Consumer emotional response includes pleasure and arousal, brand cognition includes perceived quality, perceived relatedness with companies and  brand resonance; 3) The influence mechanism differs among different consumer knowledge level, industry and brand awareness.

Impulse buying has been the focus of attention in the marketing. With the rise of online shopping, online impulse buying phenomenon becomes increasingly serious. The relevant literature is rarely in an online environment, the impulse buying behavior discussed. This paper explores the impact of the type of product and time pressure on consumer online impulse buying intention; this is a relatively new issue in the domestic marketing academics. In this study, the experimental method was adopted to explore the impact of consumer online impulse buying tendencies, the departure from the type of product and the time pressure. The results show that low-involvement emotional products stimulate consumer online impulse buying tendencies. At the same time, there is an interaction effect between time pressure and product type, that is, under the influence of time pressure, low-involvement emotional products to enhance the consumer online impulse buying tendency is more significant.

Consumers’ willingness to pay is an important part of the market research. Taking organic food for example, this paper analyzed and compared the main data acquisition methods of consumers’ willingness to pay, such as contingent valuation method, choice experiment, conjoint analysis and experimental auctions and the main data processing approaches such as discrete choice model and Tobit model. And then the paper investigated the main factors affecting the consumers’ willingness to pay and did a systematic summary. In the end, the future research emphasis was presented based on the evaluation and analysis of the existing relative research.

Prior research has mainly applied Baron & Kenny’s (1986) procedures of causal step regression in mediation tests. However, in recent years many researchers have questioned the rationality and reliability of Baron & Kenny’s procedures. Based on this background, this paper summarized the most recent mediation test procedure and Bootstrap method, and elaborated principle, procedure and offers a step-by-step instruction for data analysis using Bootstrap. We not only introduce the simple mediation test, but also elaborate the rationales and methods for several complex mediation models such as mediated moderation, moderated mediation, multiple mediators, and serial multiple mediators, including steps of performing the bootstrap analysis with SPSS software, data analysis and results reports. The paper will provide effective, scientific and convenient guidance for domestic scholar.

The authors develop a research model to test the effects of three psychological factors( customer involvement, customer psychological empowerment and customer psychological ownership) on customer engagement, and the impact of customer engagement on customer loyalty. The results show that customer involvement and customer psychological ownership are positively related to customer engagement; however, customer psychological empowerment affects customer engagement indirectly. Customer engagement has direct and positive effect on customer loyalty.

Sales promotion is a kind of temporary and transient activity in nature. Only provided with a certain restriction can promotions have a positive effect on sales. Qualitative and quantitative studies provide evidences that quantity-limited promotion is more effective than time-limited promotion in influencing consumers’ purchase intentions because of consumer competition, but only when the promotion is organized in a high level of perceived accessibility of purchase opportunity. When a promotion is organized in the condition that consumers perceived the purchase opportunity in a low level of accessibility, consumers would react more positive to time-limited promotion than quantity-limited. In those situations, time-limited promotion is more effective than quantity-limited promotion because consumers perceive higher uncertainty of promotion opportunity in quantity-limited promotion. Moreover, the interaction between types of purchase restrictions and perceived accessibility of purchase opportunity is moderated by consumers’ cognitive closure need.

There exist studies that focus on the possible negative emotion (depression for instance) brought by mere concentration on out-of-stock. Or others solely study on the attractive effect induced by phantom alternative. What effect, positive or negative, will out-of-stock alternative impact on the purchase intention of similar alternative is still without a definite conclusion. This paper holds that there is not a certain positive or negative effect on the similar alternative purchase intention. Also, a dual mediation pathway model and relevant moderator of such influence mechanism are proposed. Our research shows that when offered the out-of-stock alternative, consumers seem to experience the stronger emotion of perceived scarcity and psychological reactance compared with no information offered. The effects of out-of-stock message on consumers’ similar alternative purchase intention mediated by scarcity and psychological reactance separately are opposite (positive versus negative). In addition, the negative effect mediated by psychological reactance is moderated by the occupation levels of cognitive resource. Psychological reactance is a moderated mediator. Whereas, the positive mediating effect of perceived scarcity is not affected.

Based on a imagery perspective, we examine the role of online product presentation’s sensory cues in consumer’s purchase intention through 2 empirical study. Study 1 conducts a 2(text contains sensory cues: yes vs. no)×2(consumer fantasy proneness: high vs. low) between subject experimental method, we find that sensory cues in the text have significant effect on imagery evoked, fantasy proneness regulates the process of influence of sensory cues on imagery evoked, the degree of imagery evoked have a positive effect on consumer’s purchase intention. Study 2 conducts a 2(text contains sensory cues: yes vs. no)×2(product categories: search product vs. experience product) between subject experimental method, we find that imagery evoked under experience product is more effective than search product in increasing purchase intention.

This research investigates the influence of uppercase vs. lowercase lettering logos on perceptions of the brand. Study1 demonstrates that although logos with lower case lettering brand name have an unfavorable influence on brand authority perception, they have a favorable influence on perceived brand friendliness. The former influence is tied to the logo’s perceived potency, while the later influence is tied to its perceived activeness. Study2 demonstrates a fit effect between products (or services) characteristics and logo associations. Specifically, upper case lettering logos are perceived to be more appropriate for products (or services) with high authority, while logos with lower case lettering brand name are perceived to be more appropriate for products (or services) that should be close and friendly to people. In addition, the findings of Study3 reveals that brands with high authority incline towards upper case lettering logos, while brands with high friendly characteristics are more likely to adopt lower case lettering logos.

This study investigates linguistic features in aspects of phonetic, orthographic, semantic, syntactic and rhetoric of 2,600 Chinese brands of 22 different categories of products, and finds that by selecting and polishing linguistic components, Chinese brand name basically implements the brand naming requirements of being short, simple, and distinctive, designating the products or service category and suggesting key attributes and producing inference about key benefits. Based on investigates, this study concludes some trends in Chinese branding. Finally some issue of brand naming study is discussed.

This paper identified the concept of online promotion framing and classified it into negative promotion framing (NPF) and positive promotion framing (PPF) based on framing theory.  We found that the influence of NPF on consumers’ online buying intention was more powerful than that of PPF. The result showed that regulatory focus and product price moderated the effect of online promotion framing. The results are as follows. Compared with NPF, PPF has more influence on Promotion-Focus-Oriented Consumers’ online buying intentions. While compared with PPF, NPF has more influence on Prevention-Focus-Oriented Consumers’ online buying intentions. As to low-priced products, NPF has more influence on consumers’ online buying intention than that of PPF. However, the effect of online promotion framing is not significant for high-priced products.

In social interactions, luxury goods usually work as signal revealing the users’ status. In a market with both authentic luxury and counterfeit goods, how the authenticity of luxury goods is perceived by others is an important issue not only for consumers, but also for producers and the whole society as well. Previous studies more focus on the luxury (or counterfeit) user, who sends out luxury information, to study the motivation of luxury consumption. However, how other consumers recode and interpret the luxury information gets inconsiderable less attention, this issue deciding whether and how the luxury goods user’s social motivation can come true. This article aims to explore how the information of luxury goods is interpreted by other consumers and then become influential. The authors find out that the perception of authenticity of luxury goods is a complicated process in which place scheme, character scheme, incident scheme and product scheme can all influence customers’ perception. Through exploratory and empirical study, this paper formed a theoretical model to explain customers’ perception of authenticity of luxury goods.

As a new participative pricing mechanism, PWYW pricing delegates the whole price determination to consumers. Previous empirical research has showed that PWYW pricing increases sellers’ profits, even when consumers can self-determine the price, which conflicts with the basic assumption of economic man in traditional economics. Thus, some other drivers must play a role when the PWYW price is determined. Based on social preference theory, we study the influences of altruism, fairness, reciprocity, sense of guilt and price consciousness on consumers willingness to pay under PWYW pricing mechanism, the study show that reciprocity, fairness and price consciousness have a positive impact on consumer’s willingness to pay, besides, these impacts are moderated by the way of transactions.