Packaging always plays a "silent" salesperson role in the sales process of products, especially environmental friendly products, the customer's first impression of product packaging often determines the evaluations of the extent of the greenness of the products.  Based on theories of processing fluency, this research argues that environmental friendly products' packaging characteristics (color, material and with/without environmental claim) will influence consumer's green purchase in­tention.  This research presents three studies that supported the hypotheses and explore how environmental friendly products' packaging characteristics influence consumer's purchase intention, including the mediating role of perceived green value and the moderating role of consumer's environmental cognition.  The experimental results show that changing the packaging charac­teristics of environmental friendly products can make consumers perceive higher green value, improving their green purchase intention.  Specifically, green color is better than red color, fiber material is better than plastic, and with green claims is bet­ter than without green claims.  Meanwhile, the consumer's environmental cognition also plays a significant moderating role.  When the consumer's environmental cognition is high, the impact of these packaging characteristics will be more obvious, but when the consumer's environmental cognition is low, the impact will be relatively weak or even vanish.  The research conclu­sions provides managerial instructions for package strategy of environmental friendly products in green marketing practice.

This research examines the effect of red in the consumption environment on consumer preference for brand image and its underlying mechanism.  Previous studies have shown that red decreases purchase intention.  However, through one preliminary experiment and four experiments, the authors find that red increases consumer preference for competent brands ( but not warm brands) , and competitive spirit plays a mediating role in this effect.  More specifically, red (vs. other colors) activates the concept of dominance, bringing about a desire for dominant status and hence a stronger competitive spirit.  Individuals with a stronger competitive spirit are more eager to express their competence rather than sincerity.  Therefore, they prefer competent brands over brands with sincerity.  This effect will be weakened when consumers make purchases for others ( vs. for themselves) .  Our findings contribute to the relevant literature on brand image preferences, color and competitive spirit, and provide important practical instructions on color selection and design in marketing communication.

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.

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.

 With the development of more than 40 years of the reform and opening-up policy, China's service economy has made historic progress. The GDP of China's tertiary industry's contribution rate to the national economy is more than 50%. Thus, China is marching into the service economy era, and the development direction of China's service economy is gradually changing from high-speed development to high-quality development. With it, the service marketing theory is constantly evolving, and profound changes take place in the background of The Times. This paper aims to review and map the research streamline, provide future insights into service marketing in China in the past 30 years, and depict a panorama of service marketing research in China by applying statistical analysis and literature analysis tool CiteSpace. It shows the critical areas of service marketing research institutions and the leading network of cooperation between scholars. Furthermore, we extract the essential research topics and reveal the main direction by establishing the "creation—delivery—improvement" service value chain.

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.

The rapid development of digital economy has led to a transformation of big data in marketing science. Based on the three dimensions of time, space, and connection, this article uses the "Time-Space-Connection (TSC)" framework of big data from the perspectives of social networks, mobility, and the integration of the two to summarize the research progress of big data marketing in the past decade, gain insights into changes of corporate marketing strategies and consumer behaviors in the context of big data, and discuss the future research directions of big data marketing. In particular, COVID-19 pandemic has changed people’s behaviors and social environment, demonstrated the importance of "space-time-connection" of big data in business transformation and marketing model innovation, and expanded the scope of marketing research from business efficiency to social well-being. In conclusion. the "space-time-connection" framework of big data not only offers a perspective for marketing research in the digital age, but also provides guidance and suggestions for companies to develop new marketing models.

Using anthropomorphic characters ( such as anime characters and virtual idols) as spokespersons is a common strategy in the advertising industry. Still, few scholars pay attention to the impact of consumers' anthropomorphic perceptions on the persuasiveness of spokespersons. Previous researches divided anthropomorphic perceptions into two types: systematic and heuristic. Systematic anthropomorphism is to treat anthropomorphic objects as an individual entity that can generate social interactions , while heuristic anthropomorphism is an implicit effect. Based on these two types of anthropomorphism, this study takes different types of spokespersons ( anthropomorphized/real people) as the stimuli to verify the impact of consumer anthropomorphic tendency on the persuasiveness of different spokespersons. Experimental data show that under the moderation effect of individual anthropomorphic tendencies, consumers' perceptions of the parasocial interaction and positive emotions of the spokespersons have a simultaneous impact on the spokespersons’ persuasiveness. Participants with low anthropomorphic tendencies have significantly higher perceptions of parasocial interactions with real people than anthropomorphized spokespersons ； participants with high anthropomorphic tendencies have significantly higher positive emotions for anthropomorphized spokespersons than humans. The research results complement the existing anthropomorphism marketing research and could help companies choose appropriate anthropomorphic strategies for consumer preferences.

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.

With the rapid development of live streaming industry, live streaming firms try to increase performance by forming users’ payment habits through social network.  This paper collected the live streaming data of nearly 30, 000 users in an online music community.  Based on social presence theory, we tested the impact of the number of strong ties on user's gift-giving decision in user-generated live streaming.  Besides, we studied the moderating effect of audience scale, network centrality of tippers and levels of tipped broadcasters.  When a user engaged in a live streaming, the results show that, ( 1) the number of strong ties has a positive effect on tipping to friends； (2) the increase of the size of live streaming weakens the above effect； (3) when the user has a relatively higher social centrality, the main effect becomes lower； (4) The main effect is more pronounced when the levels of tipped broadcasters become higher.  Overall, this research has significant implications for firms' strategies to facilitate live streaming and achieve competitive advantages.

Prior research has shown that top managers' marketing background significantly affects firm performance.  Meanwhile ,firm performance is also impacted by external stakeholders such as equity investors.  In this way, will the marketing background of investment firm's top management teams ( TMTs) influence the performance of the start-ups being invested?  Based on a data set covering the information of investment firms and the start-ups being invested in China, this research explores the effect of investment firm’s TMTs’ marketing background on start-ups performance.  We find that the percentage of top managers with marketing background in investment firm's TMTs has a positive effect on the investment returns of the start-ups.  Furthermore, this effect is moderated by the industry and development stage of the start-ups.  Specifically, investment firm's TMTs' marketing background has a more pronounced positive effect on the start-ups in emerging industries than those in established industries.  The positive influence of investment firm's TMTs' marketing background is more prominent on start-ups in the A round, compared with start-ups after the B round.  Overall, this research not only broadens the relevant literature on marketing executives and entrepreneural management, but also provides instructions for investment firms, start-ups, and policymakers.

In the research of online reviews, few scholars pay attention to the order bias of online reviews.  Based on previous studies on the effects of the first consumer review on the producfs home page, this article explores the influence of negative reviews on the first page on product sales.  Based on the analysis of 1161 negative reviews on the home pages of 387 Taobao products ,this article finds that the number of the negative reviews' additional reviews on the first page and the negative reviews rate have significant negative impacts on product sales.  The additional review depth and the seller reply depth of the negative  reviews on the first page have positive moderating effects on the relationship between the number of the negative reviews' additional reviews on the first page and product sales.  The additional review depth and the seller reply depth of the negative reviews on the first page have negative moderating effects on the relationship between the negative reviews rate and product sales.  On the one hand, this finding proves the existence of the important influence of the negative reviews' contents on the first page on consumers' purchase decisions.  On the other hand, it expands the research realm of the order bias and the first impression bias of online reviews, providing researchers with a new research direction.

It is essential for enterprises to adjust brand positioning according to the changes of target customers for sustainable development. The growth of instrumental internet products (internet Apps) presents obvious stages.  From providing free tools (to generate more traffic) to becoming a platfbnn, the connotation of instrumental internet products has changed explicitly. Exploring the growth stages and positioning of internet applications in different stages could help us understand the evolution characteristics of internet App brand positioning and provide inspirations for such enterprises to actively adjust brand positioning for sustainable growth. In addition, this paper explores how internet App brands ( bom and developed in the social media context) apply communication strategies to establish brand positioning, which provides a useful reference for enterprises to improve the efficiency of applying social media.  This research was based on the analysis of brand management practice of Youdao dictionary in 2007-2020.  Finally, this study have the following findings: (1) the internet App brand positioning should actively evolve with different stages of enterprise development.  Specifically, the initial period, the developing period and the extension period are suitable for adopting functional positioning, symbolic positioning and emotional positioning respectively and aiming at core customers, peripheral customers and extensive customers respectively to estahlish a brand image in line with the objectives of the brand stage to realize the development path of "tool-content/community-platform" ；  (2) enterprises should set up appropriate communication goals according to different stages of brand positioning, select and match communication tools with the guidance of communication objectives in the social media context, and evaluate communication effects based on communication objectives.  These findings contribute to the adjustment of brand positioning to achieve long-term development and the improvement of social media communication efficiency for the internet Apps.

The digitalization has brought big changes to the economic society, namely, virtualization of market players, digitization of factors of production, dynamization of the production process and platformization of market organizations. These four features of digitalization have further reconstructed the real management world, resulting in disruptive changes of internal and external relationships between organizations, and the underlying logics of production and operation. The nature of marketing is to answer how to solve the interactive relationship between the supplier and the consumer in the best way to realize the value co-creation. Obviously, digital technology is disrupting the traditional interactive relationship, which greatly weakens the effectiveness of the 4P and 4C marketing matrix. Therefore, we are intended to put forward the 4I (Interaction, Interest, Interface, Iteration) framework to reconstruct the marketing matrix in the age of digital intelligence. Finally, we offer some future topics of marketing strategy research and the new development direction of the discipline.

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.

With the advent of the era of "digital economy" , enterprises are more and more willing to invest in advertising in order to further attract consumers' attentions and enhance market share.  How to stimulate consumers' positive purchase  intentions through advertising design? —this is particularly important for brands.  Therefore, based on the construal level theory and from the perspective of information processing fluency, this study explores the influence of the interaction between advertising scene presentation and product type on consumers' purchase intention.  The results show that, for utilitarian products, when they are presented with close shot advertising, it is easier for consumers to generate purchase intention than panorama shot advertising ； for hedonic products, when they are presented with panorama shot advertising, it is easier for consumers to generate purchase intention than close shot advertising.  In addition, the way of advertising appeal has a significant moderating effect. The specific performance is as follows: compared with the prototype appeal, the exemplary appeal used in the close shot advertising of utilitarian products can make consumers' purchase intentions more positive ； compared with the exemplary appeal, the prototype appeal used in the panorama shot advertising of hedonic products can make consumers' purchase intentions more positive.  This study broadens the application of construal level theory in the field of marketing, and the research conclusions have strong practical guiding values for brand designers to creatively design advertising and make advertising strategies.

In the transaction processes via an e-commerce platform, buyers will select not only a seller with high reputation, but also a platform with high reputation. Existing research mainly investigated seller reputation and have achieved some results, but the importance of e-commerce platform reputation is neglected. Although some scholars have discussed this construct theoretically, the lack of valid e-commerce platform reputation measurement scale makes it impossible to quantitatively study its antecedents and consequences, and then further advances are hindered by it. To address this omission, the investigation reports a series of 4 studies, and develops a multidimensional scale consisting of 4 dimensions ( cognitive reputation of platform enterprise, affective reputation of platform enterprise, cognitive reputation of sellers, and affective reputation of sellers) which shows good internal consistency and construct validity in subsequent analyses. This scale reflects unique facets of e-commerce platform by incorporating the value co-creation between platform enterprise and its sellers. It provides a more accurate e- valuation index system for e-commerce platform reputation, a reference for innovation of reputation measurement, and also a requisite instrument for the comparative analysis between different platforms, and finally, new directions for future research a- bout the purchase decision of buyers, operation of sellers, and the development strategy of platforms in the field of e-commerce platform.

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.

The matching of writing direction and product facing direction in advertising can affect the persuasive effect of advertising  and consumers' attentions. Based on knowledge activation theory and matching theory, three eye-tracking experiments with 280 participants were conducted to investigate the effects of text writing direction and product facing direction on advertising effect.  In experiment 1, we found an interaction between the writing direction and the product facing direction.  The persuasion and attention effects were better when the vertical writing direction matched the left-facing product or the horizontal writing direction matched the right-facing product.  Experiments 2 and experiment 3 found that brand or product positioning further interacted with the matching effect above.  Traditional brand or product ads perfbnn better when texts are written vertically with the product facing left, while modem brand or product ads perform better when the texts are written horizontally with the product facing right.  Three experiments confirmed the mediating role of sense - correctness.  The triple interaction between text writing direction, product facing direction, and brand or product positioning provides guidances for the theoretical system of advertising effect and enterprise practices.

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.