Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services最新文献

{"title":"Virtual influencers in brand image recovery: A comparative study of younger and older brands after celebrity endorsement crises","authors":"Yuexin Yao,&nbsp;Qihua Liu,&nbsp;Mengqian Guo","doi":"10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104316","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104316","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>On the one hand, the negative publicity of celebrities frequently threatens the image of a series of brands. On the other hand, virtual influencers as emerging alternatives to traditional celebrity endorsers have been popular in advertising initiatives. However, how the use of virtual endorsers after brand celebrity endorsement crises affects the recovery of brand image, particularly across different brand types (younger vs. older brands) has not been explored. Based on image repair theory (IRT) and persuasion knowledge theory (PKT), three studies were conducted to examine the interaction effect of influencer and brand types on brand attitude in the post-crisis context. The results reveal that younger brands using virtual (vs. human) endorsers after endorsement crises can better repair brand image. However, when it comes to older brands, no significant difference is observed between virtual and human influencers in repairing brand image. These effects are fully mediated via perceived manipulative intent (PMI) and perceived brand trustworthiness (PBT). Additionally, it should be noted that the performance of virtual influencers on brand image recovery is different between Western and Eastern cultural contexts. By bridging theoretical insights and practical implications, this research extends the application scenario of virtual influencers and provides new strategies for brand image recovery within the context of celebrity endorser crises.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48399,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services","volume":"86 ","pages":"Article 104316"},"PeriodicalIF":11.0,"publicationDate":"2025-05-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144166509","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":"Strategic configuration of platform functionalities in service-selling Platforms: The role of price position and reputation","authors":"Lingfeng Dong ,&nbsp;Jiaying Wang ,&nbsp;Sin You Tok ,&nbsp;Yu Tu ,&nbsp;Ou Li","doi":"10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104339","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104339","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Retailers are increasingly employing platform functionalities to strengthen their competitive advantage in service-selling platforms. However, there is still a gap in research about how they strategically configure these functionalities to enhance performance. Drawing on configuration theory, we propose a framework that integrates platform functionalities with contingency factors (price position and reputation). Using fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), we analyze data from a leading Chinese service-selling platform to explore how, and under what conditions, platform functionalities enable retailers to improve performance. The results show that retailers should configure platform functionalities based on different conditions of price position and reputation, as these configurations play a crucial role in driving sales performance. Interestingly, this study reveals that retailers can still attain high performance without a high reputation by implementing guarantee-required schemes and solution exemplars. This study not only deepens the understanding of platform functionality configurations, but also challenges the conventional view that reputation is the determining factor for retailers to achieve high performance.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48399,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services","volume":"86 ","pages":"Article 104339"},"PeriodicalIF":11.0,"publicationDate":"2025-05-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144166510","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 interplay of nostalgic ad content types, narrative person, social belonging, and brand identification in shaping masstige brand passion","authors":"Naeem Gul Gilal ,&nbsp;Jian Zhang ,&nbsp;Faheem Gul Gilal ,&nbsp;Waseem Gul Gilal ,&nbsp;Rukhsana Gul Gilal","doi":"10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104333","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104333","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Despite in-feed social ads continuing to surge in global prominence, there is a surprising lack of focus on how brands nostalgically present their advertising language and content strategy. This study aims to investigate whether and how selecting a narrative perspective (first-person vs. third-person) in the ads that link nostalgic content types (personal vs. historical nostalgia) drives consumer passion for masstige brands within the framework of Facebook timeline ads. Based on six experimental studies, our findings confirm that aligning first-person narration with personal nostalgic ad content promisingly boosts consumers' passion for masstige brands, since it strengthens the urge for social belonging. Conversely, third-person narration matched with historical nostalgic ad content drives stronger consumers' passion for masstige brands by eliciting brand identification. Moreover, the results provide strong evidence that a pertinent individual variable (self-monitoring) plays a moderating role in influencing the impact of various alignments on masstige brand passion. Theoretically, this study contributes substantially to the field of advertising language and content strategy, demonstrating how strategic ad content management on social media platforms can strengthen consumers' passion for masstige brands. Managers in the B2C luxury sector will find this research invaluable if they: (i) seek clarity on the impact of in-feed social ads on social media, (ii) aim to leverage narrative-person and nostalgic-content matches to heighten passion for masstige brands but are uncertain which combination to prioritize, and/or (iii) intend to boost consumers' self-expression motivations, such as social belonging and brand identification, yet need guidance on the specific interaction between 2 (narrative person: first vs third) x 2 (nostalgic content: personal vs historical) that best drives consumers’ passion for masstige brands.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48399,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services","volume":"86 ","pages":"Article 104333"},"PeriodicalIF":11.0,"publicationDate":"2025-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144139591","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":"Sincerity or incompetence? The double-edged sword effect of sadness expression in chatbots service failure","authors":"Weida Zhang,&nbsp;Bo Yang,&nbsp;Meifang Yang,&nbsp;Le Xie,&nbsp;Yu Zheng","doi":"10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104325","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104325","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Chatbot service failure is inevitable, it is critical to improve the effectiveness of service recovery to maintain a strong relationship with customers. This study focuses on the unique role of emotional expressions in chatbot service failure and recovery. From the perspective of negative discrete emotions, this study explores the double-edged sword effects and mechanisms of sadness expression on customers' continued usage intention during chatbot service failure. The results show that sadness expression in chatbot service failure is a double-edged sword, which positively enhances customers' continued usage intention through heightened perceived sincerity while suppressing intentions via reduced perceived competence. Specifically, perceived sincerity functions as a positive mediator, whereas perceived competence operates as a negative mediator. Furthermore, the type of relationship between chatbots and customers moderates the double-edged sword effect of sadness expression on customers' continued usage intention. Compared to assistant-type relationships, friend-type relationships amplify the positive impact of sad expressions on customers' perceived sincerity and attenuate their negative effect on customers' perceived competence. Theoretically, this research broadens the understanding of discrete emotional expression efficacy in human-AI communication strategies, offering scholars a dialectical perspective to evaluate the role of emotional cues in human-chatbot interactions. Practically, it provides actionable guidelines for enterprises to improve the emotional recovery measures and optimize the anthropomorphic design of chatbots.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48399,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services","volume":"86 ","pages":"Article 104325"},"PeriodicalIF":11.0,"publicationDate":"2025-05-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144139589","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":"Flash sale or continuing Sale? Examining the timing flow of E-tailers’ promotion effects","authors":"Yiming Zhuang ,&nbsp;Xun Xu","doi":"10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104322","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104322","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Fierce competition in the e-commerce landscape compels retailers to leverage price promotions to boost sales. Most of the existing promotion literature investigated the consequence of promotion effects on increasing sales but did not analyze the process. This study fills this literature gap by discussing the timing flow of e-tailers’ promotion effects. The objective of this research is to examine how the extent of promotion discount affects the promptness and continuity of the promotion effects, moderated by consumer seniority and experience, featured products, and featured channels. We collected data from Woot.com in 2022, a popular United States–based e-tailer that commonly offers discounted products, and used regressions to analyze the data. Our findings suggest that the discount extent affects the promptness and continuity of the promotion effect in a U-shaped way. Therefore, an intermediate discount is optimal to achieve the highest promptness and continuity of the promotion effect. In addition, the timing flow of the promotion effects is moderated by three aspects–consumer, channel, and product. Consumers’ historical purchase behaviors, reflected by their experience, weaken the promptness of promotion effects. Furthermore, consumer experience and the featured channel accelerate the continuity of promotion effects. The featured products weaken the continuity of promotion effects. Our findings yield important managerial implications to guide e-tailers in leveraging appropriate promotional discounts to attract consumers soon and continuously enhance sales. E-tailers should also pay attention to the particular consumer segments and the channel and product features to achieve the best timing flow of the promotion effects.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48399,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services","volume":"86 ","pages":"Article 104322"},"PeriodicalIF":11.0,"publicationDate":"2025-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144115705","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":"Interplay of Imagery: Unveiling the impact of Co-branding anthropomorphized couple imagery on consumer engagement","authors":"Jinlin Meng ,&nbsp;Jing Zhang","doi":"10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104320","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104320","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Leveraging co-branding to engage a broader consumer base has become critical for brands to achieve mutual benefits. Despite the widespread use of anthropomorphized couple imagery in brand collaborations within the Asian market, research on its effectiveness in co-branding remains limited. This study comprises three behavioral studies, including six experiments, that examine the influence of anthropomorphized couple imagery on consumer behavior in co-branding settings. The findings reveal that anthropomorphized couple imagery significantly enhances consumers’ perceptions of brand fit, increases purchase intentions, and stimulates the spread of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM), particularly among consumers with lower real-world intimate relationship satisfaction. Furthermore, the study shows how luxury and mass-market brands use this imagery in collaborations to enhance consumer engagement. This study explores how consumers in Asia respond to anthropomorphized couple imagery, providing brand managers with innovative insights for designing co-branding campaigns.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48399,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services","volume":"86 ","pages":"Article 104320"},"PeriodicalIF":11.0,"publicationDate":"2025-05-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144115704","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":"Decoding internal customer satisfaction in services firms through the lens of ability, motivation and opportunity framework using text mining approaches","authors":"Abhinav Shankar Rathor ,&nbsp;Manish Kumar ,&nbsp;Sreevatsa Bellary","doi":"10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104342","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104342","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>This study explores the key factors driving internal customer satisfaction in service firms by integrating the Ability-Motivation-Opportunity (AMO) framework with advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques. Using employee-generated online reviews as the primary data source, the research examines how high-performance work practices centered on ability, motivation, and opportunity influence satisfaction. The study employs Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) for topic modeling to uncover major themes, which are then aligned with the dimensions of the AMO framework. Sentiment analysis further evaluates the relationships between these themes and satisfaction levels. By focusing on the internal customer perspective, this research addresses a critical gap in the literature, offering insights that extend beyond traditional organizational outcomes. Methodologically, it introduces innovative approaches to capture a more authentic and nuanced understanding of employee sentiments and experiences, which are essential for fostering desirable service delivery behaviors. The study also incorporates emotion analysis to examine the associations between various emotions and the AMO factors, providing deeper insights into how employees emotionally respond to high-performance work practices. The findings highlight that practices such as intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, training and development, recruitment strategies, thoughtful job design, and active employee involvement significantly enhance internal customer satisfaction in service firms. Moreover, the findings from emotion analysis highlight that trust is associated with training and development, fear with knowledge sharing and anger with extrinsic motivation, autonomy and recruitment.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48399,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services","volume":"86 ","pages":"Article 104342"},"PeriodicalIF":11.0,"publicationDate":"2025-05-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144107321","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":"Enhancing consumer trust in displayed information through digital price tags in retail marketing","authors":"Mark Yi-Cheon Yim (Associate Professor of Marketing) ,&nbsp;Sukki Yoon (Professor of Marketing)","doi":"10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104340","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104340","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Although digital price tags have been widely adopted in many brick-and-mortar retailers, our understanding of their optimal use remains limited. Considering their ability to easily update prices and promotional messages remotely, concerns have emerged regarding consumer trust in the displayed information. This study examines the role of digital price tags in retail marketing, with a particular focus on their effectiveness in building consumer trust in displayed information. To explore this, three online experiments are conducted to investigate strategies for enhancing consumer trust in the use of digital price tags. Studies 1a and 1 b provide evidence that digital price tags are more effective when they align with the attributes of the endorsed product. Specifically, consumers exhibit greater trust in information when digital price tags promote digital products rather than non-digital ones. Study 2 replicates these findings in a different product category, reinforcing the robustness of this effect. Study 3 further explores the strength of consumer trust in price tag information under matched conditions, demonstrating that this alignment acts as a buffer against potential distrust. The study concludes by outlining the theoretical contributions and practical implications for both retail scholars and industry practitioners.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48399,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services","volume":"86 ","pages":"Article 104340"},"PeriodicalIF":11.0,"publicationDate":"2025-05-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144088828","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 drivers and boundaries of consumer switching from full-length to derivative condensed content","authors":"Tin Trung Nguyen ,&nbsp;Ekant Veer ,&nbsp;Paul W. Ballantine","doi":"10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104341","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104341","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The widespread adoption of mobile technology has transformed media consumption habits, giving rise to ‘snack culture’ which is characterised by condensed, easily shareable content formats. Although prior research has introduced the concept of snack culture, the consumer shifts from full-length to derivative condensed content remain unexplored. Drawing on the Push-Pull-Mooring framework and Uses and Gratifications theory, this study investigated factors influencing viewers' switching from traditional moviegoing to consuming movie-condensed (recap) videos. PLS-SEM and fsQCA were complementarily used to analyse data from viewers. Results revealed that perceived conciseness, entertainment value, ubiquity, trendiness of movie-condensed videos, and monetary cost of moviegoing significantly drove positive attitudes toward condensed videos, leading to switching behaviour. Additionally, cinephilia was found to weaken the influence of trendiness on attitude, and switching was genre-dependent. From these findings, this study offers three key contributions. First, it advances snack culture literature by demonstrating the psychological mechanisms underlying media format-switching behaviour, showing how pull factors (entertainment, conciseness, ubiquity, trendiness), a push factor (monetary cost), and a mooring factor (cinephilia) drive the transition to condensed content consumption. Second, it extends media competition literature by revealing how derivative condensed content serves both complementary and substitutive roles through its inherent characteristics. Third, it identifies genre-dependent patterns of substitution, establishing content characteristics as a crucial boundary condition for media displacement effects. These insights highlight the need for entertainment producers to adapt their strategies to evolving consumer preferences.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48399,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services","volume":"86 ","pages":"Article 104341"},"PeriodicalIF":11.0,"publicationDate":"2025-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144088827","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 effectiveness of immersive media in promoting consumer Products: Augmented vs. virtual reality","authors":"Jin-Feng Wu ,&nbsp;Zhen Zhang ,&nbsp;Yinglu Wu ,&nbsp;Xin-Jie Tang","doi":"10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104323","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104323","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>The study investigates the conditions that influence the effectiveness of immersive media in promoting consumer products. Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) technologies create virtual experiences that vary in their levels of realism. According to construal level theory, these differences can affect users’ psychological distance and, thus, their construal levels when viewing ads created using these immersive technologies. This study expands the application of construal level theory by proposing that when immersive media type and advertising appeal are construal congruent, product attitude and purchase intention are enhanced through processing fluency. The experimental study results confirm that AR outperforms VR when rational appeals are used, whereas VR is more effective with emotional appeals. In addition, product involvement moderates the matching effect between immersive media types and advertising appeals: high product involvement strengthens the matching effect between AR media and rational appeals, while low product involvement amplifies the matching effect between VR media and emotional appeals. Corresponding theoretical and managerial implications are provided.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48399,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services","volume":"86 ","pages":"Article 104323"},"PeriodicalIF":11.0,"publicationDate":"2025-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144084004","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}