When companies promote new products on the social media, the name is the first clue for consumers, so these companies attempt to capitalize on the product name to enhance consumer engagement on social media and increase product exposure. Based on the Information Gap Theory, this study examines the inverted U-shaped impact of new product names’ suggestiveness on consumer social media engagement through three lab experiments. The results indicate that, compared to completely descriptive names with high suggestiveness and freestanding arbitrary names with low suggestiveness, the suggestive names with a medium level of suggestiveness are more effective in increasing consumer engagement on social media. Epistemic curiosity explains the internal mechanisms for this effect. Furthermore, consumer expertise plays a moderating role on the core effects, such that these effects hold for consumers with a relatively low level of expertise. We contribute to the literature by exploring the understudied role of product names in the social media marketing area, and provide practitioners with important suggestions for new product naming strategies.

In recent years, the trend of China-chic has been surging and growing. Strategic utilization of spokespersons by China-chic brand managers to promote their brands is a cost-effective marketing strategy. But how should China-chic brands choose the right spokespersons? This article constructs an integrated theoretical framework to explore the virtual spokesperson type and agency-communion orientation consumers on consumer purchase intention and mediation mechanism, proves that two different virtual spokesperson types (expert and attractive) and match with the different agency-communion orientations, and through the self-brand connection they impact on consumer purchase intention. Study 1 manipulates the agency-communion orientation in different ways, and measures participants’ agency-communion orientation using an existing scale. The results of study 1 show that an expert (attractive) virtual spokesperson should enhance consumer purchase intention among agency (communion) -oriented consumers. The results of Study 2 again verified the interaction between virtual spokesmen types and agency-communion orientations, verified the mediating role of self-brand connection, and constructed a complete internal mechanism model. The results of Study 3 showed that the robustness of the results was further improved by eliminating other explanatory mechanisms through simulated scenario experiments. This research contributes to the spokesperson literature as well as agency-communion orientation literature. What’s more, these findings provide a beacon for companies to choose their brands’ spokesperson.

Virtual influencers are increasingly becoming a novel tool in brand promotion. Although numerous studies had examined the marketing effects of virtual influencers, their performance in social-benefit appeal contexts remains underexplored. This study focuses on this specific context to investigate the impact of virtual influencers promoting social-benefit products on consumers’ purchase intentions. Across three experiments, we find that in advertisements with social-benefit appeals, virtual influencers (compared to human influencers) reduce consumers’ purchase intentions, while no significant difference was observed in personal-benefit appeal contexts. Further analysis reveals that this negative effect stems from consumers’ perception of virtual influencers as out-group members, which diminishes their perception of common in-group identity with the virtual endorser. Additionally, the study finds that increasing consumers’ perceived human-virtual being coexistence or employing informational (vs. normative) persuasion strategies can mitigate the negative impact of virtual influencers. This research not only extends the application scope of virtual influencers across different advertising appeal contexts and explores the underlying mechanisms of their effects, but also proposes strategies to enhance the marketing effectiveness of virtual influencers, providing guidance for brand management practice.

Artificially intelligent robots are widely used in various industries due to their superior efficiency. Based on role transformation theory and consumption compensation logic, this thesis explores the influence mechanism and boundary conditions of AI robot roles on employees’ reference for self-improvement products through five experiments. The study shows that there is a significant difference in the effects of AI robot roles (substitute vs. assist) on employees’ self-improvement product preferences, with employees having higher self-improvement product preferences under the substitute role (vs. assist role) condition; role ambiguity and self-identity threat play a continuous mediating effect; implicit personality moderates the effects of AI robot roles on employees’ self-improvement product preferences, compared to incremental theorists, entity theorists have lower preference for self-improvement products in the alternative role condition. This thesis enriches the literature on the impact of intelligent robot roles on employees’ psychological states and their consumption behaviors, and provides practical insights into the management of employees’ mentality and the improvement of self-improvement products’ marketing performance in companies applying artificial intelligence robots.

Space is widely used in visual marketing practice, and they are generally converted to spatial visual cues that people can explore, thus influencing consumer perception and behavior. Adopting methodologies of both Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling and manual coding based on existing literature, this paper systematically discusses four core contents of space: spatial distance, spatial density, white space, and spatial location. It then discusses how each of these dimensions impacts consumer behavior. Additionally, the mechanisms of the impact of space on consumer behavior are explored based on the emotional and cognitive decision-making process. Finally, the paper proposes future research directions for space.

Brand crisis caused by identity discrimination often leads to serious consequences for brands, however, few studies have proposed remedies for identity-discrimination crisis. Based on social identity theory, this study proposes two identity-supporting strategies: supporting the discriminated identity strategy (i.e., brands support the discriminated identity of the discriminated consumers) and supporting the non-discriminated identity strategy (i.e., brands support another non-discriminated identity of the discriminated consumers). Through three experiments, this study examines the effectiveness of these two strategies in remedying the identity discrimination crisis and improving consumers' brand attitude, and examines the impact of consumer types on the effectiveness of these two strategies. The findings suggest that supporting the non-discriminated identity strategy is effective in improving the perceived self-image congruence of discriminated consumers (vs. third-party consumers), and thus their brand attitude. The conclusions enrich the research on response strategies of moral-based brand crisis and provide practical suggestions for marketers to deal with moral-based brand crisis caused by identity discrimination.

This article explores how manufacturing enterprises can achieve customer-enterprise value co-creation starting from the alignment of value propositions from the perspective of customer and enterprise value co-creation. During the research process, software such as SPSS and AMOS were used for validation analysis. Research has found that: (1) The process of value co creation in the manufacturing industry starts with the alignment of value propositions, and both functional and perceived alignment contribute to the development of customer-enterprise value co-creation, providing impetus for value co-creation activities and enhancing the performance of value co-creation between customers and enterprises; (2) The interaction between customer enterprises plays a partial mediating role, while dynamic capabilities play a moderating role in customer-enterprise interaction and customer enterprise value co-creation performance. The research results supplement the shortcomings of quantitative research methods in previous studies on this topic, and provide a more scientific and complete interpretation of the value co creation mechanism of enterprises in the process of service-oriented development.

Abstract With the continuous iteration and innovation of generative AI, the realism of AI-generated model ads is increasingly approaching that of ads featuring real people. AI can even transcend reality, creating models with hyper-realistic physical characteristics. Exploring consumer responses to these types of ads is becoming an important issue. Based on existing literature on AI-generated ads, this study focuses on the effects and mechanisms of models with different degrees of authenticity in AI-generated ads. Through five experiments, this study reveals that the higher authenticity of models in AI-generated ads, the more positive the consumer responses. The mediating effect further indicates that the higher authenticity, the lower eeriness, which in turn leads to more positive advertising attitudes and purchase intentions. The above effect is moderated by AI disclosure, brand type and brand popularity. Specifically, when the brand discloses the AI generation, or when the brand has high popularity, the advantage of lifelike image is significantly reduced; for innovative brand, the advantage is notably enhanced. This study enriches the theoretical research on AI-generated ads and offers valuable management insights for brands to conduct advertising.