The effect of web advertising visual design on online purchase intention: An examination across gender

With web advertising growing to be a huge industry, it is important to understand the effectiveness of web advertisement. In this study we investigate the effects of web advertising visual design (WAVD) purchasing intention within the framework of an integrated model. Nine hypotheses were developed and tested on a dataset of 316 observations collected via a questionnaire survey. The results of structural equation modeling (SEM) indicate that while web advertising visual cues influence consumers' purchasing intention through advertising attitudes and brand attitudes, they do not have direct effects on purchasing intention. Further results on the moderating role of gender suggest that web advertising visual cues have direct effect on consumers' purchasing intention for male groups but not for female groups. This study contributes to the understanding the role of visual dimensions in forming online purchase intentions.     

Power of consumers using social media: Examining the influences of brand-related user-generated content on Facebook

This study examined the influences of positive brand-related user-generated content (UGC)¹ shared via Facebook on consumer response. The model tested was derived from the S–O–R consumer response model (Mehrabian & Russell, 1974) that depicts the effects of environmental/informational stimuli on consumer response. Specific research objectives were to investigate whether brand-related UGC acts as a stimulus to activate consumer behavior in relation to brand and examine the processes by which brand-related UGC influences consumer behavior. Using the S–O–R model, brand-related UGC was treated as stimulus, pleasure and arousal as emotional responses, and perceived information quality as cognitive response. Information pass-along, impulse buying, future-purchase intention, and brand engagement were treated as behavioral responses. Participants (n = 533) resided in the U.S. and had a Facebook account. Mock Facebook fan pages including brand-related UGC were developed as visual stimuli and presented via an online self-administered questionnaire. SEM was used to analyze the data. Brand-related UGC activated consumers' emotional and cognitive responses. Emotional and cognitive responses significantly influenced behavioral responses. Positive brand-related UGC exerts a significant influence on brand as it provokes consumers’ eWOM behavior, brand engagement, and potential brand sales.     

Spreading love through fan page liking: A perspective on small scale entrepreneurs

Growing popularity of Facebook has made it a value-adding marketing channel for the small and medium sized businesses. As a marketing medium characterized by low cost and minimum risk it attracts small scale entrepreneurs to utilize this new platform i.e. brand fan page of Facebook as a business communication tool for reaching out to customers. Considering the significance of Facebook as social media marketing platform for businesses and the lack of understanding of this area, the present study investigates whether there exists a significant relationship between brands “liked” on the Facebook fan pages and brand love, word of mouth, and purchase intention from potential buyer perspective. The research was conducted taking five popular small scale entrepreneur backed firms on the basis of the number of likes on their fan pages. Respondents of the survey were followers of fan pages of sampled firms. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was applied using primary data collected from 311 respondents. The study reveals a positive relationship between “liked” brands on Facebook fan-page and brand love. Further, the study finds that liking the fan pages is essentially converted into WOM, and it results into purchase proposition.     

Sharing of Sponsored Advertisements on Social Media: A Uses and Gratifications Perspective

Organisations are increasingly utilising social media to advertise to, and interact with, consumers. Sponsored advertisements embedded into targeted users’ social media feeds appear less invasive than standalone advertisements but, unlike organic postings, incur financial cost. Given that friends’ posts attract most attention, this research employs Uses and Gratifications theory to determine salient motivations for users’ intentions to share sponsored advertisements, framed in the tourism context. Survey data was collected (n?=?487) and analysis revealed altruism, entertainment, socialising, and information seeking to be significant positive drivers of intention to share tourism-related sponsored advertisements on Facebook. Notably, information sharing was found to have a negative effect, while self-expression had no significant effect. In addition, the motivations were not found to significantly differ between males and females. This study contributes to theoretical understanding of users’ intentions to share sponsored advertisements within the social media environment and provides practical recommendations to help tourism marketers maximise reach.     

Product‐to‐Service Extension: The Impact of Brand Equity on Upscaled Service

A recent trend in the luxury industry shows many companies using brand extension strategies to leverage their assets among competitors. Despite the popularity of brand extensions, limited research has been conducted to determine its effectiveness when using parent product brands in order to introduce new service brands. Thus, the primary purpose of this study is to propose the framework to increase the understanding of luxury brand extensions by focusing on the horizontal category brand extension from product to service. The impact of perceived quality, brand association and brand loyalty of the luxury car brand on consumers’ perception and attitude toward the rental car service brand was observed to differentiate from other research that focuses on brand extension within product categories. A total of 324 samples were collected and analyzed using structural equation modeling with AMOS. The brand association of the parent brand showed a significant impact on the evaluation of the extended service brand. In addition, a high level of the brand association was also found to influence the final purchase decision of the extended service brand. However, this study could not find any significant effect of perceived quality and brand loyalty for the parent product brand on the extended service brand. The framework proposed in this study has merit to increase the understanding of service brand extensions by exploring luxury car brands and luxury rental car brands. In the service brand extension, there was a gap in consumer perception between the product brand and the extended service brand. In order to maximize the positive impact of the parent brand, marketers and retailers should investigate the different roles of the brand equity items.     

An app a day keeps a customer connected: Explicating loyalty to brands and branded applications through the lens of affordance and service-dominant logic

The rise of mobile apps is compelling ambitious companies to rush to market their own branded apps in hopes of building customers’ brand loyalty. By applying service-dominant logic, the lens of affordance, and two brand perceptions (brand competence and brand warmth), this study explores critical determinants of app continuance intention and brand loyalty among app users. Five affordances of branded apps are linked to value-in-use, which contributes both directly and indirectly to the two loyalty-related outcomes, through either brand competence or brand warmth. Data collected from 634 app users support all proposed hypotheses. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Responses to an advergaming campaign on a mobile social networking site: An initial research report

Advergames are a form of branded entertainment that feature advertising messages, logos, and trade characters in a game format. This paper reports a preliminary examination on the effects of an advergame on perceived brand value in a context of mobile social networking sites (SNSs). Drawn upon categorization theory, the study posits that, while mobile SNS engagement stimulates electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) intention among game players, perceived brand-game fit also drives eWOM intention, which in turn positively affects perceived brand value. Furthermore, perceived brand-game fit is contemplated to be a direct driver of perceived brand value. A research model is validated by a large-scale online survey. Using a real promotional campaign for a popular consumer good (Procter & Gamble’s Pringles), the authors create an advergame for one of the most popular mobile SNSs in Japan. The results from structural equation modeling corroborate all hypothesized relationships. This article closes with some theoretical and managerial implications, as well as recognition of important limitations.     

Trust and commitment within a virtual brand community: The mediating role of brand relationship quality

This study seeks to clarify the antecedents and consequences of trust and commitment within the brand fan page context on Facebook, examining a sample of 210 respondents using structural equation modeling. The results highlight the positive effect of economic and hedonic benefits on trust and commitment within the brand fan page. Mediation analysis reveals that trust and commitment developed within the brand fan page will be transformed into positive “word of mouth” for the respective brand if fans have a strong relationship quality with the brand. Further, we found that young and female fans with a high level of engagement, having a strong relationship with the brand, spread positive WOM. Our findings broaden ways for developing relational governance in a firm-initiated virtual brand community by providing new levers and guidance for marketers to build strong customer relationships.     

Performance analysis of keyword advertising campaign using gender-brand effect of search queries

In this research, we analyze the relationship among (1) the performance metrics of a sponsored search campaign, (2) the gender orientation of queries, and (3) the occurrence of branded terms in queries. The aim of this research is to investigate the effectiveness of increased personalization of search engine advertising in order to improve the consumer’s online experience. We segregate keyphrases from a dataset covering thirty-three consecutive months from a major US retailer consisting of 7 million daily records of a real time keyword advertising campaign into three gender categories (male, female and neutral) each with two groups (branded and unbranded) term usage. Using ANOVA, we analyze the effect of gender and brand keyphrases on critical sponsored search performance metrics of impressions, clicks, cost-per-clicks, sales revenue, orders, items purchased and return on advertising. Research findings show that the combination of brand focus with the gender-orientation of keyphrases is a significant factor in predicting sponsored search performance and behavior. There are statistically significant variations in consumer behavior as measured by sponsored search metrics among the gender categories. Specifically, females are more attracted to the use of branded terms than males, perhaps due to the trust and customer loyalty generated by brand image. Our results establishes that positive brand reputation creates dramatic influence on consumer’s loyalty over the brand and hence strongly affects their interests, activities and purchasing behavior in e-commerce environment.     

Exploring the emotional,aesthetic, and ergonomic facets of innovative product on fashion technology acceptance model

In the realm of popular consumer electronics, it is important for companies to realise consumers' perceptions that can potentially sway the process of choosing and purchasing decision. This paper attempts to explore the emotional, aesthetic, and ergonomic conceptions into the fashion technology model to examine the impact of the consuming public acceptance. The work extends the literature on brand attachment, need for uniqueness theory, fashion theory, TAM, and innovation diffusion theory. Through empirical study, this proposed model is tested with a structural equation modeling approach. Results indicate that brand attachment is a stronger antecedent of ergonomic and aesthetic facets, and aesthetic facet is the vital determinant to acceptance intention. Perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use had no direct impact but still positively correlate to acceptance intention. This study also finds that different groups of technological innovation will vary in their conceptions of the proposed model.     

Understanding brand fan page followers’ discontinuance motivations: A mixed-method study

As companies recognize the effectiveness of social media as a marketing channel, firms are leveraging brand fan pages (BFPs) to foster deeper relationships with their customers. While most extant studies focus on the motivations behind customers’ participation in BFPs, only little is known about the discontinuance behaviors of BFP followers. This study identifies a comprehensive inventory of BFP followers’ unfollowing motivations. By conducting a mixed-method study, the study develops and empirically validates a five-factor scale that measures BFP followers’ discontinuance motivations. The impact of the motivations on BFP users’ unfollowing intention is also examined. Theoretical and practical implications are subsequently discussed.     

Consumer attitudes toward blogger’s sponsored recommendations and purchase intention: The effect of sponsorship type,product type,and brand awareness

Sponsored recommendation blog posts, a form of online consumer review, are blog articles written by bloggers who receive benefits from sponsoring marketers to review and promote products on their personal blog. Because national regulations require that marketer sponsorship must be revealed in the blog post, sponsored recommendation posts can no longer conceal their marketing intent. Consumer’s attitudes toward sponsored recommendation posts are thus a vital issue in assessing the effectiveness of the advertisement. This study uses a 2(sponsorship type) × 2(product type) × 2(brand awareness) experimental design and a total of 613 valid samples to examine consumer attitudes toward sponsored recommendation posts and purchase intention. The results show that when products recommended in blog posts are search goods or have high brand awareness, consumers have highly positive attitudes toward sponsored recommendation posts, which improves purchase intention. The directly-monetary/indirect-monetary benefits received by the bloggers have no significant effect on readership attitudes. Using these features in blog writings appears to improve online readers’ trust toward and the credibility of sponsored recommendation posts and thus can be a vital online marketing tool for marketers.     

The self on the Net: The joint effect of self-construal and public self-consciousness on positive self-presentation in online social networking among South Korean college students

In the present research, two studies examined how self-construal and public self-consciousness jointly influence positive self-presentation in online social networking. Participants’ independent and interdependent self-construals were either measured (Study 1, N = 137) or manipulated with priming (Study 2, N = 120). Public self-consciousness was measured with self-report ratings in both studies. Participants self-reported their tendency (Study 1) and behavioral intention (Study 2) to engage in positive self-presentation on Facebook. Both studies were conducted with college student Facebook users in South Korea. Results from both studies demonstrated no main effect of self-construal but a significant interaction between self-construal and public self-consciousness. Specifically, the negative association between interdependent self-construal and positive self-presentation on Facebook was significant among those low in public self-consciousness; the association became less prominent for those higher in public self-consciousness (Study 1). When self-construal was experimentally manipulated, interdependent self-construal priming, as compared with independent self-construal priming, resulted in lower intention to engage in positive self-presentation, particularly among those low in public self-consciousness (Study 2). The implications of the findings were discussed.     

Key values driving continued interaction on brand pages in social media: An examination across genders

Brand pages in social media provide companies with a competitive marketing tool to create added value for their firms and customers. Past studies suggest that understanding what customers really value in brand pages is the most vital step in promoting their continued interaction, and that the relative impacts of customer values on continued interaction are contingent on individual demographic factors such as gender. However, little research has examined the relationships between customer values and their intention to engage in continued interaction, and how these relationships are moderated by gender, in the context of brand pages. This study identified eight value factors to measure customer values on brand pages, then examined their impacts on customers' continued interaction intention, and studied gender effects on the latter relationship. Our proposed hypotheses are mostly supported by data collected from users of Sina Microblog brand pages and analyzed by partial least squares.     

Assessing flow experience in social networking site based brand communities

The sustenance of the Social Networking Site (SNS)-based brand communities relies on user retention and their active participation. Therefore, understanding the intrinsic aspects of user behavior in such communities is important for devising strategies to ensure user retention and active participation. Especially, information about the elements that induce flow experiences—the intrinsically enjoyable and immersive experiences—of users in SNS has become important for organizations that host online communities. In our empirical study, we chose to focus especially on SNS-based brand communities, as they are increasingly interesting from an organization-community interaction perspective, but they lack the instruments needed for measuring user experience. The present study addresses this gap by developing an instrument aimed at measuring the user’s flow experience on SNS-based brand communities. A cross-sectional survey with 577 Facebook brand community users was carried out. The findings show that enjoyment, concentration, and social interaction are the components that constitute a user’s flow experience. In addition to providing a valuable tool for business practitioners, the developed instrument offers several theoretical and practical implications for improving user experience of social media.     

Brand followers’ retweeting behavior on Twitter: How brand relationships influence brand electronic word-of-mouth

Twitter, the popular microblogging site, has received increasing attention as a unique communication tool that facilitates electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM). To gain greater insight into this potential, this study investigates how consumers’ relationships with brands influence their engagement in retweeting brand messages on Twitter. Data from a survey of 315 Korean consumers who currently follow brands on Twitter show that those who retweet brand messages outscore those who do not on brand identification, brand trust, community commitment, community membership intention, Twitter usage frequency, and total number of postings.     

The effects of social media based brand communities on brand community markers,value creation practices,brand trust and brand loyalty

Social media based brand communities are communities initiated on the platform of social media. In this article, we explore whether brand communities based on social media (a special type of online brand communities) have positive effects on the main community elements and value creation practices in the communities as well as on brand trust and brand loyalty. A survey based empirical study with 441 respondents was conducted. The results of structural equation modeling show that brand communities established on social media have positive effects on community markers (i.e., shared consciousness, shared rituals and traditions, and obligations to society), which have positive effects on value creation practices (i.e., social networking, community engagement, impressions management, and brand use). Such communities could enhance brand loyalty through brand use and impression management practices. We show that brand trust has a full mediating role in converting value creation practices into brand loyalty. Implications for practice and future research opportunities are discussed.     

Mobile social commerce: The booster for brand loyalty?

In view of the deficiencies in current literature, this study seeks to examine if mobile social commerce continuance usage influences brand loyalty among customers, and assessed the inhibitor role of privacy concern in mobile social commerce usage intention. Privacy concern was measured by using concern for social media information privacy (CFSMIP). Therefore, this study proposes and empirically validated a model that combines CFSMIP, brand loyalty, and Expectation Confirmation Model, in the Asian context. The results suggested that users' CFSMIP does not inhibit them from the continuous usage of mobile social commerce, and influences their perceived usefulness on mobile social commerce positively. Moreover, all the paths in the baseline model of Expectation Confirmation Model have been reconfirmed in this study. Besides, users' continuance usage and satisfaction on mobile social commerce are proven to be boosters for brand loyalty. Relevant managerial implications are then discussed.     

Role of social media community in strengthening trust and loyalty for a university

As the increasing internationalization of higher education creates competition among the universities, many institutions are making use of social media communities to attract and retain students. We surveyed 206 users of a university Facebook page to investigate how it may be related to their identification with the university community and the university brand. We further investigate how this identification is associated with the trust and loyalty to the institution and is likely to be linked to positive behaviors such as promoting the university to their peers as an active member of the university community. Our results show that the perceived strength of the Facebook community is related to the identification with the university community and the university brand which in turn are related to trust and loyalty. Higher loyalty is linked to citizenship behaviors such as increased contribution to the educational process labeled in-role behaviors and providing positive word of mouth about the university labeled extra-role behaviors. With the challenges of a diverse and global student body which is expected to continue increasing, universities can benefit from use of social media in developing identity, loyalty and trust.     

Empirical investigation on factors influencing the behavioral intention to use Facebook

There continues to be a gap in understanding of what makes an individual engage in Facebook use. This is the primary research question of this study. Social network research is a good place to begin. Hence, this research aims to investigate factors influencing the behavioral intention to use Facebook. Cross-sectional data were collected from 200 respondents through a survey. Data were then analyzed by means of multiple regression analysis. The findings verified the research hypotheses and confirmed that perceived enjoyment, perceived ease of use, and perceived usefulness all impact attitude toward continuance intention of Facebook. This paper provides some insights into how practitioners could better develop Facebook site and enhances understanding of users?? perception toward Facebook. Facebook developer should evaluate ways to improve perceptions of their sites on these dimensions. Facebook group should add more game zones and interesting features to boost up the number of Facebook users so that Facebook can maintain or achieve a higher position in social networking sites compared to others. Implications for research and practice are discussed.