Based on online interactions, some interpersonal relationships are shaped online to produce benefits. However, little research paid attention to this new area called E-social capital. The purpose of this article is to investigate the formation mechanism of E-social capital in the context of online brand communities. The qualitative method of netnography is employed to explore the existence of the key constructs in the conceptual model and their relationships, and then the quantitative method of partial least square (PLS) is used to testify the hypotheses with the questionnaires collected from online sports shoes forums. The research findings indicate that: (1) E-social capital is composed of online trust, reciprocity norm, obligations and community identification, which are similar with the dimensions of traditional social capital. It can be considered that the traditional social capital theory is also applied to the online settings; (2) online interaction quality influences E-social capital positively, while social presence and sense of Yuan play partially mediating roles simultaneously between them; (3) informational value and member similarity influence online interaction quality positively; (4) E-social capital influences online brand community commitment positively. The research findings enrich the theories of E-social capital and brand community, and then provide some implications for the practice of brand community marketing.

This research investigates the interactive effects of spatial distance and housing advertising orientation (abstract vs. concrete) on consumer attitude toward the target house. Results of study 1 and 2 reveal that when the target house is spatially close, concrete advertising has a greater impact on consumer attitude than abstract advertising, whereas when the target house is spatially distant, concrete and abstract advertising have no significantly different effects on consumer attitude. Furthermore, the mediating effect of experienced fluency is also investigated in study 2. This implies that the interactive effect of spatial distance and advertising orientation on consumer attitude is mediated by experienced fluency.

This research explores the influence of strangers’ non-interactive presence on consumers’ self-control. Data suggest that, comparing to situations with no one around, a consumer is more likely to fail in self-control when a stranger (or strangers) is present, even if there’s no interaction between them. And the more strangers there are, the more likely consumer’s self-control is going to fail. Moreover, the authors find that, this “stranger presence effect” is mediated by consumers’ impression management inclination and negative mood. And the mediation effect of impression management inclination is further moderated by product type.

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.

Based on attribution theory, this paper empirically analyses the relationship between consumer perception of a firm’s motives for sport sponsorship and purchase intention by using structural equation model. The study reveals that consumer can clearly distinguish egoistic-driven, values-driven, strategic-driven and stakeholder-driven motives of sponsorship. Thereinto, egoistic-driven and stakeholder-driven motives have significantly negative influence on consumers' trust and purchase intention, while values-driven and strategic-driven motives have significantly positive influence on consumers' trust and purchase intention. Further, consumer trust plays a partial mediating role in the impact of a firm’s motives for sports sponsorship on purchase intention. Finally, the paper analyses the impact of consumers’ characteristics and corporate types on consumers’ attribution, and gives some suggestions about sponsoring marketing for the managers.

Based on the literature review about relationships among psychological contract violation, trust and satisfaction, this paper rethinks the relationships among them. Using the empirical study of restaurant，the results show that trust mediates the relationship of consumer psychological contract violation and satisfaction, and this effect is moderated by customers’ beliefs concerning obligations of themselves. The results deepen the existing recognition about consumer psychological contract violation, trust, and satisfaction.

Based on Furstration-Aggression model, justice theory, service environment theory and customer emotion theory, this paper addresses four types of factors which may influence the severity of customer dysfunctional behavior. Through the empirical study, the result shows that procedure unjustice influence the severity of customer dysfunctional behavior via the mediator effect of customer negative emotion, the most significant factors are indicated to be this factor, while distributive unjustice and interactional unjustice show no influence on it. Among environmental factors, confusing signs information and bad behavior of fellow customers influence the severity of customer dysfunctional behavior, fully and partially respectively, via the mediator effect of customer negative emotion. Bad ambient conditions directly influence the severity of customer dysfunctional behavior. Individual factoer do not affect customer dysfunctional behavior according to our results.

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.

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.