The current research investigates how different attributions of perceived choice difficulty influence consumers’ preference. The authors propose that the metacognitive experience of choice difficulty can be inferred by different reasons. Across two empirical experiments, it’s demonstrated that consumers who attribute the perceived choice difficulty to the importance of choice per se will be more likely to choose the extreme options. However, if the perceived choice difficulty is believed to be induced by the importance of product attributes, consumers will be more likely to choose the compromise option. A discussion of theoretical contributions and managerial implications is included in the end of the paper.

The existing documents put forward that the one of the main characteristics of postmodern consumption is the consumption of signs or symbols, but at the same time, postmodern consumer culture also lead to consumers’ disloyalty to brand or image. This study suggests that whether consumers’ postmodernity (or the nature of postmodern consumer) will reduce their loyalty to brand as symbol depends on the concrete symbolic image of brand. The result shows that not all of positive effects of symbolic brand image (including: personal, social, relational, and collective) on consumers’ loyalty to brand will be weakened because of the nature of postmodern consumer. In fact, the negative effects of postmodernity on loyalty to brand mainly reflects in the interaction effects existed between the nature of postmodern consumer and brand’s relational image; when a brand has personal or social image, due to existing the opposite effects offsetting each other existed between hyperreality and self-fragmentation on loyalty to symbolic brand, the negative effects of postmodernity are not pessimistic as same as existing documents expected; finally, when a brand has collective image, there will be salient positive effect of postmodernity on loyalty to brand.

With transition of marketing science from goods-dominant logic to service-dominant logic, how to value “knowledge and skills” exchange for acquiring core competitive advantage become a hot topic for both academic and practical departments. This study explores the antecedents of frontline employees’ customer need knowledge (CNK) at both team level and the individual level. Using employees and customers’ matched-questionnaires data collected from 36 travel agency outlets in Guangzhou, the authors test the impacts of team learning climate and employee predispositions to adapt (learning goal orientation, service orientation and self-monitoring) on CNK. The results of Multivariate Data Analysis indicate that team learning climate, learning goal orientation, service orientation and self-monitoring are important antecedents to CNK. Implication of the findings, contributions and limitations, and direction for future research are also discussed.

Because of its popularity, impulsive buying has received substantial attention from both academic and business field. A common view about the nature of impulsive buying is that consumers give up long-term benefits in the sake of short-term gratification. Construal Level Theory suggests that when consumers evaluate the purchase from long-term perspective, they exert greater self-control whereas the studies on hyperopia regret indicate that they will be more indulgent in the same situation. Based on self-construal theory, this study proposes that consumers with different self-construal stress different goals when they evaluate the purchase from long-term perspective, which leads to different choice. The study further investigates the mechanism of the impact of self-construal on impulsive consumption.

This study focuses on consumer’s impression management behavior and tests the effect of face loss on consumer’s brand logo preference. The results indicate that consumers that losing their face will more likely prefer to the products with prominent brand logos, and face loss’s effect on prominent brand logo preference is mediated by face consumption intention. Several experiments are conducted to test the above effect in different product types and consumer groups. It suggests that for the products in a category with high potential to signal status and the low self-esteem consumers, face loss has more effect on consumer’s brand logo preference.

This article examines the (in)compatible patterns between the specific positive emotions and country of origin information. Both happiness (self-focused) and peacefulness (other-focused) with positive valence are primed, and America and China as different country of origins are designed in two experiments. In the happy condition rather than in the peaceful condition, stronger purchasing intention and more positive advertisement attitude are evaluated by consumers to the American product compared to the Chinese product. In addition, the moderating role of chronic self-consciousness is found to explain the mechanism behind the compatibility of emotional directions and country of origin information. Implications of the findings are also discussed for increasing the effectiveness of marketing strategy related country of origin and advertising of country image.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate consumer attribution and behavioral intention during product harm crises by examining the interdependencies that exist among their self-congruity as consumers, their attributions of blame, their perceived social distance and finally their purchase intentions towards the affected company. The paper utilizes experimental method and structural equation modeling is used to analyze data. To test the five research hypotheses, questionnaires containing a iPhone product harm crisis scenario of Apple Inc. were distributed to respondents. Respondents were asked to evaluate the scenario of ambiguous product harm crises and answer questions regarding their self-congruity, their attribution of responsibility to the company, their perceived social distance and their purchase intentions. Regression results reveal a significant, negative correlation between attributions of blame, perceived social distance and self-congruity. The results also indicate that the lower the level of perceived social distance is, the lower the level of perceived responsibility is. Moreover, perceived responsibility negatively affects purchase intentions, whereas perceived social distance is found to be negatively connected to purchase intentions. Managerial and theoretical implications based on the results of this paper are discussed.

With the rapid rise of microblogging，enterprise microblogging marketing has become the focus in the theory and practice world. This study develops a scale of enterprise microblogging value，which captures the particular characteristic of the Chinese consumers, and then investigates the effect of the enterprise microblogging value dimensions on the brand loyalty. Empirical analysis reveals that amusement value, convenience value, aesthetic value, and financial value have positive direct effect on Microblogging satisfaction. Financial value is the most important factor to the microblogging loyalty. Amusement value, convenience value, aesthetic value don’t have a direct effect on microblogging loyalty, but have an indirect effect on microblogging loyalty through microblogging satisfaction. Information value has no significant influence on the microblogging satisfaction and loyalty. Microblogging satisfaction significantly affects the microblogging loyalty and brand loyalty. Microblogging loyalty significantly affects the brand loyalty.

Composite need is apt to evoke decision-makers’ variety seeking (VS) because of diversification of multi-users’ desire and social pressure, but customer creativity can inhibit it to some extent. Based on experimental research, this paper find this inhibition effect derives from two sources. One is that the stimulation delivered by VS among fixed brand portfolio to satisfy the composite need is inadequate to achieve the elevated level demanded by creative engagement. The other is positive brand attitude and integrated scope of attention activated by creative engagement draw customers focus on parity of competitive brands and make them more loyal to involved brand in the creative game.