{"title":"The scarcer, the more eager to buy? How does the scarcity of blind box products affect impulse purchase intention","authors":"Xiaoli Tang, Yi Zhang","doi":"10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104567","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104567","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>As an emerging consumption model, blind boxes are characterized by a distinct form of product scarcity in their sales. This study examines the blind box consumption scenario to explore how product scarcity (supply scarcity vs. demand scarcity) influences consumers' impulse buying intentions. Drawing on commodity theory, accessibility-diagnosability theory, and regulatory focus theory, the research is conducted through three experiments. Study 1 identifies the main effect, revealing that product scarcity positively impacts impulse buying intentions, with supply scarcity having a significantly stronger influence than demand scarcity. Study 2 uncovers the mediating mechanism, demonstrating that accessibility-diagnosability fully mediates the relationship between product scarcity and impulse buying intentions. Study 3 investigates the moderating effect, showing that regulatory focus moderates both the impact of product scarcity on impulse buying intentions and the mediating role of accessibility-diagnosability. Specifically, stronger impulse buying intentions are observed under a preventive focus in demand scarcity and a promotional focus in supply scarcity. The findings contribute to the application of scarcity theory in experiential products and offer valuable theoretical insights and practical recommendations for blind box enterprises in developing targeted marketing strategies and industry standards.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48399,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services","volume":"89 ","pages":"Article 104567"},"PeriodicalIF":13.1,"publicationDate":"2025-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145248012","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Yiru Wang , Christina A. Kuchmaner , Xun Xu , Ran Xu
{"title":"Who Gets Heard? Analyzing online restaurant reviews to understand the representation of vulnerable consumers","authors":"Yiru Wang , Christina A. Kuchmaner , Xun Xu , Ran Xu","doi":"10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104566","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104566","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The marketing literature has called for a better understanding of vulnerable consumer behavior as the purchasing power of these segments grows. However, current literature has not systematically examined the online review writing behavior of vulnerable consumer groups, creating a gap in our understanding of how frequently these consumers contribute their voices to influential online brand conversations. This work examines the representativeness of a restaurant's customer base using a custom dataset of online restaurant reviews combined with geospatial data on vulnerable consumers. We find that consumers in households with the elderly and/or disabled, racial/ethnic minorities, or suboptimal living conditions are more likely to write restaurant reviews, while consumers in households with low socioeconomic status are less likely to write reviews. However, only those consumers in suboptimal living conditions put more effort into their reviews. We suggest that these effects are driven by vulnerable consumers' perceived empowerment or lack thereof.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48399,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services","volume":"89 ","pages":"Article 104566"},"PeriodicalIF":13.1,"publicationDate":"2025-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145247987","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Should the doctor smile at me? The impact and mechanism of the service avatar's smile display and realism on the customer's self-disclosure in healthcare consultation services","authors":"Guimei Hu , Tao Xie , Haizhong Wang , Wumei Liu","doi":"10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104563","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104563","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Enhancing customers' self-disclosure is crucial in online medical and health services. Although avatar technology is frequently used in the medical service context, it remains an open question about whether avatar technology can enhance customers' self-disclosure. Using both field experiments and lab experiments, this paper investigates how an avatar's smiling display and avatar realism jointly affect customers' self-disclosure. This paper shows that high-realism avatars displaying (vs. not displaying) smiles in online medical and health services decrease customers' perceived trust in the service provider, and consequently reduce their willingness to self-disclose. Conversely, low-realism avatars displaying (vs. not displaying) smiles enhance customers' perceived enjoyment, and consequently increase their willingness to self-disclose. Theoretically, this paper introduces an innovative adjustment perspective to explain how an avatar's smile and realism jointly affect customers' responses to the medical service. This paper also provides new antecedents of customers' self-disclosure. Practically, it has rich implications for how medical service providers customize (either standardized or personalized) their avatars' images and behaviors.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48399,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services","volume":"89 ","pages":"Article 104563"},"PeriodicalIF":13.1,"publicationDate":"2025-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145247988","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The upside of mind wandering in influencing purchasing intention: A conditional process analysis of the moderating role of temporal distance and mediating effects of memory","authors":"Lin Qiao , Xiangyou Shen","doi":"10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104555","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104555","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Despite the prevalence of mind wandering during product information processing, existing research has predominantly focused on its negative effects, overlooking its potential positive impact on purchase intention. This paper addresses this gap by investigating when and how mind wandering can serve as a marketing resource to enhance purchase intention, specifically examining the interaction between mind wandering and temporal distance on purchase intention and the mediating role of gist and verbatim memory. Using a multi-method approach, we conducted three studies employing secondary sales data (n = 808), randomized controlled experiments (n = 1524), and eye-tracking validation techniques. Results consistently demonstrated that under distal temporal distance, higher levels of mind wandering significantly increased purchase intention, mediated by enhanced gist memory and reduced verbatim memory. This effect was non-significant under proximal temporal distance conditions, where neither high nor low mind wandering significantly affected purchase intention, revealing important boundary conditions for mind wandering's influence on consumer behavior. These findings contribute to theory by repositioning mind wandering from a cognitive liability to a potential marketing asset and extending memory-based decision-making models to attention fluctuation contexts. Practically, the research provides actionable insights for marketers facing consumer attention scarcity. Companies can leverage natural mind wandering patterns by targeting high mind wanderers with distal-framed promotions, emphasizing abstract product benefits for future-oriented purchases, and adapting messaging strategies to consumer attention states. This research opens new avenues for understanding the adaptive functions of mind wandering in consumer decision-making and offers evidence-based strategies for transforming attention challenges into competitive advantages.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48399,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services","volume":"89 ","pages":"Article 104555"},"PeriodicalIF":13.1,"publicationDate":"2025-10-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145248011","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Impulsive socially responsible buying after corporate social responsibility: when and why it happens","authors":"Lu Huang, Zilu Yang, Tong Wu, Fei Jin","doi":"10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104549","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104549","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Companies frequently leverage corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives to elicit positive consumer responses. This research investigates when and how brand power influences consumer responses to CSR, and identifies the consumption binge effect—that is, impulsive socially responsible buying (ISRB) which exceeds practical necessities. These findings diverge from prior research which regards this behaviour as rational. Across four studies, we find that weak brands are more likely to trigger consumers’ ISRB than strong brands when engaging in social responsibility. Moreover, based on the dual processing model of moral judgment, we demonstrate that the underlying mechanisms of empathy and perceived altruism are induced by weak brands. Furthermore, the type of donation moderates this effect. Weak brands induce stronger empathy and perceived altruistic motives when offering monetary donations (vs. brand-owned product donations), thereby driving ISRB. These findings deepen our understanding of consumer responses to CSR and provide actionable implications for companies conducting such initiatives.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48399,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services","volume":"88 ","pages":"Article 104549"},"PeriodicalIF":13.1,"publicationDate":"2025-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145219706","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"How review sentiment influences ratings in Generative AI applications: Insights from VADER and LDA analysis","authors":"Yuebin Meng , Sangchul Park , Geumchul Um","doi":"10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104560","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104560","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Generative AI applications have emerged as a crucial medium for users' daily intelligent interactions with user sentiment tendencies serving as a vital factor influencing product optimization and market competition. The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between the title and review sentiment and rating and its boundary conditions. To this end, this study collected 100,010 user reviews from nine major generative AI applications in the U.S. App Store, using integrated VADER sentiment analysis scores with LDA topic weights. The results showed that the sentiment scores of reviews and titles have a significant positive effect on user ratings, respectively. Moreover, this study verified (1) the negative moderating effect of the review length and title length and that (2) the value-related topics enhance the review sentiment score, while technology-related and functionality-related topics weaken the review sentiment score. These findings provide empirical evidence for product managers and operations teams of generative AI platforms for optimizing their products and securing a competitive edge in the market.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48399,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services","volume":"88 ","pages":"Article 104560"},"PeriodicalIF":13.1,"publicationDate":"2025-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145219707","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Mohammed A. Al-Sharafi , Shehab Abdulhabib Alzaeemi , Mousa Albashrawi , Yogesh K. Dwivedi , Rasha Alahmad , Inyoung Chae
{"title":"A longitudinal consumer feedback analytics approach for theory building and testing: Examining consumer satisfaction and loyalty in buy now, pay later (BNPL) platforms","authors":"Mohammed A. Al-Sharafi , Shehab Abdulhabib Alzaeemi , Mousa Albashrawi , Yogesh K. Dwivedi , Rasha Alahmad , Inyoung Chae","doi":"10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104551","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104551","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study investigates the post-adoption factors influencing consumer satisfaction and loyalty in Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) platforms, with a focus on the culturally specific and religiously regulated context of Saudi Arabia. A longitudinal dataset of 61,631 cleaned and validated bilingual user-generated evaluations from prominent BNPL applications, collected between 2018 and 2025, was analyzed to capture temporal shifts in consumer perceptions. A mixed-methods approach was employed, combining topic modelling, sentiment analysis, and large language models to identify underlying experiential themes and map them to theoretical constructs. Confirmatory analysis using Elastic Net regression and Random Forest, with 80/20 train–test splits, 10-fold cross-validation, and bootstrap resampling, demonstrates that Information Quality and Perceived Security are the strongest predictors of Consumer Satisfaction, while Sharia Compliance functions as a cultural boundary condition and significant driver of Consumer Loyalty. Perceived Financial Risk consistently exerts a detrimental effect on both outcomes. The findings extend retailing and consumer behaviour as well as IS/FinTech literature by incorporating culturally specific constructs and by demonstrating how user-generated content (UGC) analyzed with machine learning, providing unsolicited, ecologically valid, and large-scale insights into post-adoption behaviour. Practical implications highlight the importance of transparency, ethical adherence, and financial clarity in enhancing the BNPL user experience, while also emphasising cost–benefit considerations, regulatory compliance, and consumer segment differences in implementation strategies.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48399,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services","volume":"88 ","pages":"Article 104551"},"PeriodicalIF":13.1,"publicationDate":"2025-10-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145219709","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The dark side of AI adoption: A study of innovation resistance, job dissatisfaction, and workplace complaints in the franchised retail sector","authors":"Jhong-Min Yang, Ken-Chang Hsu","doi":"10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104562","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104562","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study investigates the relationships among innovation resistance, job dissatisfaction, and various types of workplace complaints in the context of mandatory technology adoption. Our survey of 366 employees at a Taiwanese franchised convenience store brand reveals a crucial finding: contrary to prevailing assumptions, perceived innovation barriers (value, risk, tradition, and image) significantly and directly impact job dissatisfaction. Furthermore, a post-hoc mediation analysis shows that job dissatisfaction acts as a vital link, channeling the effects of these barriers into productive, venting, and malicious complaints. This research makes two key contributions by empirically refining Innovation Resistance Theory for mandatory settings and providing a new, context-specific complaint typology. Our findings offer valuable managerial insights, underscoring the importance of proactively managing perceived barriers and effectively addressing employee dissatisfaction to transform negative feedback into a catalyst for organizational improvement.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48399,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services","volume":"88 ","pages":"Article 104562"},"PeriodicalIF":13.1,"publicationDate":"2025-10-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145219708","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Syed Ramiz ul Hassan , Tariq Iqbal Khan , Mahnaz Mansoor , Raja Ahmed Jamil
{"title":"From attraction to aversion and back: examining brand hate, love, and retention","authors":"Syed Ramiz ul Hassan , Tariq Iqbal Khan , Mahnaz Mansoor , Raja Ahmed Jamil","doi":"10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104554","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104554","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study investigates psychological ownership, brand uniqueness, hedonic pleasure, and brand passion as antecedents of brand love (BL). Additionally, the study explores the mediating role of brand hate (BH) and the moderating effects of brand obsession and opposition loyalty on BL. Finally, the study examines brand retention (BR) as an outcome of BL. Four studies were conducted to test proposed relationships, and data were analyzed using partial least squares structural equations modelling (PLS-SEM) through SmartPLS 4. The findings of Study 1 showed that the antecedents (except psychological ownership) positively influenced BL. Furthermore, it was found that BH negatively predicts BL, and it also mediates the relationship between antecedents (except psychological ownership) and BL. Study 3 found the moderating effects of brand obsession and opposition loyalty between BH and BL. Finally, Study 4 confirmed the positive influence of BL on BH. The findings highlight how positive emotional antecedents can offset the effects of BH and sustain BH, even in emotionally ambivalent brand relationships. These results provide actionable insights for brand managers, emphasizing the importance of leveraging positive emotional connectors while mitigating negative consumer sentiments.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48399,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services","volume":"88 ","pages":"Article 104554"},"PeriodicalIF":13.1,"publicationDate":"2025-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145219641","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Advancing retail and service strategies: AI-driven consumer behavior prediction, gamification, and ethical marketing","authors":"Minh Tung Tran","doi":"10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104558","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104558","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study addresses the research gap in understanding the combined effects of AI-driven predictive analytics on consumer personalization accuracy, engagement via gamification, and ethical governance in retailing and consumer services. The objective is to examine how predictive analytics enhances personalization and ROI, how gamification drives engagement, and how ethical challenges (e.g., privacy, bias) can be governed responsibly. Employing a convergent mixed-methods design, the study combines quantitative analysis of consumer data (n = 3900) with multi-case studies of Spotify, Netflix, and Amazon. Findings reveal that AI significantly improves personalization (<strong>β</strong> = 0.42, p < 0.001) and campaign ROI (<strong>R<sup>2</sup></strong> = 0.18), while gamification increases engagement by satisfying psychological needs. Ethical risk mitigation through frameworks such as the EU AI Act is demonstrated. Practical implications highlight actionable strategies for ethical AI adoption. Limitations include reliance on secondary qualitative sources and non-probability sampling; future research should explore probability samples and cross-cultural validation. This research contributes an integrated technical, psychological, and ethical framework, advancing theory on consumer trust and responsible innovation in retailing and consumer services.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48399,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services","volume":"88 ","pages":"Article 104558"},"PeriodicalIF":13.1,"publicationDate":"2025-10-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"145219639","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}