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.

With the rise of AI commercialization, companies are launching AI products and services to consumers. However, consumers’ evaluation of these AI products and services vary significantly. Unlike previous studies that focused solely on the characteristics of either AI or the user, this study explores the causes and boundary conditions of this phenomenon more comprehensively by constructing a synthesized interaction model of "human-AI technology-task". Five scenario experiments revealed that novice users ( vs. expert users) preferred AI-dominated (vs. AI-assisted) products and services. The reason is that AI-dominated products tend to inspire positive (vs. negative) machine heuristics in novices (vs. experts). This elffect is amplified in contexts with high task complexity, while experts’ negative machine heuristic is weakened in low. These findings provide new insights and directions for understanding the distinctive responses of different users to various AI products, and also offer important guidance on product and service design and outreach strategy for companies.

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.

Price discount is one of the usual promotional strategies used by merchants. Previous scholars focused on the effectiveness of price discount in the context of making decisions for oneself, but failed to deeply study the negative effects and reverse effects of price discount in the gift-giving context of making decisions for others. Based on this, through the design of 1 pre-experiment and 4 formal experiments, the results show that: when buying gifts for others, the gift giver has lower intention to purchase gifts with (vs. without) a discount; social risk perception plays a significant mediating role. This main effect would be robust in situations with greater social distance or higher price information accessibility, but would disappear at closer social distance and would reverse when price information accessibility were low. The findings not only supplement and improve the knowledge structure of gifts and price discounts, but also inform and guide merchants’ pricing of gifts.

Brands frequently develop unique ritualistic elements in product creation and consumption scenarios to boost sales performance. Investigating how to enhance consumers’ ritualistic consumption thus holds crucial marketing implications. While businesses extensively utilize busyness symbols in ritual-based marketing campaigns, an essential question remains unanswered: Can perceived busyness motivate consumers to allocate additional time to non-utilitarian ritualistic consumption? This study systematically examines the impact of consumers’ subjective busyness on ritualistic consumption preferences. Through four experiments, we empirically demonstrate that heightened subjective busyness significantly elevates individuals’ preference for ritualistic consumption. Mechanistically, this effect arises because subjective busyness enhances consumers’ motivation for subjective vitality, which consequently promotes ritualistic consumption. In addition, the above effects are moderated by the beginning temporal landmark, with the positive impact of subjective busyness on ritualistic consumption preference being weaker when primed with beginning landmarks compared with control conditions. This study not only helps to broaden the antecedent research on ritualistic consumption, expands the theoretical mechanism of subjective busyness, but also provides managerial implications for the application of busyness elements and the implementation of brand ritual practices.

The rise of the "China-chic" phenomenon is an inevitable outcome of cultural confidence and national identity in the new era. Based on cultural schema theory, this study systematically examines the influence of the typicality of Chinese cultural resources on consumers’attitudes toward China-chic brands and its underlying mechanisms. The results show that, compared with low-typical Chinese cultural resources, incorporating high-typical Chinese cultural resources into product design significantly enhances consumers’ attitudes toward China-chic brands. This effect is driven by the exhanced perception of the brand's cultural symbolism elicited by high-typicality cultural resources. Furthermore. this study reveals the moderating role of visual imagery. When abstract visual imagery is used to present Chinese cultural resources in China-chic products, the mediating effect of perceived cultural symbolism is weakened. This research not only extends the scope of studies on China-chic and cultural branding but also provides practical insights for China-chic brand managers in formulating cutural marketing strategies to leverage and design Chinese cultural resources effectively.

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.

As a unique attribute of green products different from traditional products, how greenness affects consumers’ willingness to recommend green products is not clear. lt is different from the existing research based on external cues such as business behavior, consumers’ moral cognition of merchants, brand authenticity and consumer characteristics, this study takes self-enhancement/self-protection as the theoretical basis, and uses scenario experiment method to explore the formation mechanism and boundary conditions of the intrinsic attributes of green products affecting consumers’ word-of-mouth recommendation intention. The findings indicate that: (1) there is a significant positive relationship between greennes and consumers' word-of-mouth intention; (2) this effects of greenness are achieved through the mediating role of moral self-image, self-enhancement motivation and self-protection motivation, and self-enhancement motivation and self-protection motivation play the opposite role; (3) consumers’ self-construal type plays a significant moderating role in the influence of moral self-image on self-enhancement motivation and self-protection motivation. Compared with independent self-constructors, the mediating effect of self-enhancement motivation in dependent self-constructors is stronger, and the mediating elfect of self-protection motivation is not significant. In addition, independent self-construal will also leads to a higher wilingness to recommend word-of-mouth recommendation intention. The conclusions of this study not only enrich and improve the relevant research on self-enhancement and self-protection theory, word-of-mouth recommendation and self-construal, but also reveal the psychological perception of consumers for green products, which is helpful for enterprises to cary out word-of-mouth marketing of green products more effectively.

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.

The implementation of product traceability is an important marketing tool for agricultural enterprises. This study categorizes the timing of its presentation into two dimensions: pre-purchase accessibility and post-purchase accessibility, and explores its impact on consumer purchase intention. Through four formal experiments, we found that: pre-purchase (vs. post-purchase) accessibility of traceability information enhances consumers’ sense of risk control, thereby increasing purchase intention; compared to certified agricultural products, pre-purchase (vs. post-purchase) accessibility of traceability information has a stronger effect on enhancing risk control when consumers are confronted with non-certified products; and for rational consumers, pre-purchase (vs. post-purchase) accessibility of traceability information has a stronger effect on enhancing risk control than for emotional consumers. This study enriches the understanding of the relationship between agricultural product traceability and consumer decision-making, The findings provide theoretical support for agricutural enterprises in selecting the appropriate timing for presenting traceability information and enhancing the value of product traceability.

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.

With the development of digital technologies, the business environment is transforming into a digital ecosystem. Traditional customers, who previously only provided feedback afterwards, are gradually evolving into digital customers as they share usage information in real-time through digital devices during interactions with businesses, This real-time sharing of information enables businesses to dynamically and accurately understand customer needs. A key question for traditional companies is how to leverage digital technologies to develop new capabilities that meet the dynamic and personalized demands of customers,which has become a focal point for both academia and industry. This paper clarifies the concept of customer orientation in the context of the digital economy and identifies four dimensions of digital customer orientation based on existing research: digital customer positioning, interactive value creation, digital platform-based operations, and data-driven decision making. Based on a survey of 378 manufacturing companies, the paper empirically examines the impact of digital marketing capabilities under digital customer orientation on corporate competitive advantage. The findings reveal that: first, the four dimensions of digital customer orientation are key drivers of a company's digital marketing capabilities: second, the formaion of digital marketing capabilities helps companies reduce costs, improve market responsiveness and customization abilities, thus enhancing competitive advantage; and third, the effect of digital marketing capabilities on speed and customization advantages is moderated by market turbulence. This study provides important theoretical and practical insights into how companies can leverage new opportunities and gain competitive advantages in the digital era.

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.

"Inheritance" and "innovation " have always been a dilemma that plagues the development of time-honored brands. This study adopts a double case study method, taking the dormant brand revival process of Tianjin Shanhaiguan Beverage Co., Ltd. and Shandong Hongjitang Pharmaceutical Group Co., Ltd. as the analysis object. Based on authentic value innovation, this study analyzes the process and internal mechanism of Hongjitang and Shanhaiguan dormant brands from dormancy to revival. The research found that: (1) the concept of "Authentic Value lnnovation" is proposed, where "authentic" implies inheritance, and "value innovation" represents the logic of reshaping, and this concept coordinates the dilemmas in the development of time-honored brand names into a single conceptual system; (2) the dormant brand revival mechanism based on authentic value innovation is presented as "brand authentic element identification-brand authentic value innovation-brand asset reshaping". Among them, brand authenticity value innovation includes functional value innovation (quality value innovation), representation value innovation and experience value innovation; (3) the long-dormant brand revival path is an exploratory value innovation gradual revival path, which is manifested as weak cognitive brand assets, while the short-dormant brand revival path is an exploitative value innovation leapfrog revival path, which is manifested as strong cognitive brand assets.

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.

The proactive voice of distributors to upstream manufacturers, can help manufacturers gain insights into customer needs, improve channel policies, and enhance overall channel performance. However, since manufacturers are often unable to require distributors to express their views through the exercise of power, contractual provisions or normative constraints. it is particularly important to explore the antecedents of distributor voice behavior. Based on the sensegiving perspective, this paper examines the effects of channel pressure and network centrality on two types of voice, as well as their boundary conditions. The results indicate that channel pressure of distributor has a U-shaped effect on prohibitive voice and a negative effect on promotive voice. The network centrality of distributor has a positive effect on both promotive and prohibitive voices. Interdependence asymmetry can not only weaken the negative effect of channel pressure on promotive voice, but also strengthen the positive effects of network centrality on both promotive and prohibitive voices.

With the rapid change of society, the frequency of individual role transitions has also increased significantly. Such transitions exert profound impacts on individuals' psychology and behavior. However, existing literature provides limited targeted research on this topic. This study focuses on the impact of role transition, a pivotal life event for consumers, on their product preferences. Based on five experimental studies, it was demonstrated that role transitions can effectively enhance consumers' preferences for high-effort products and the mediating role of perceived role difficulty was tested, while excluded the alternative explanations of self-concept clarity, dialectical thinking, perceived control, desirability concerns, and fresh start mindset. In addition, this study also found that the effect is moderated by the reversibility of role transitions, that is, the effect of role transitions on the purchase intention for high-effort products is weakened (enhanced) when the role transition is temporary (permanent). The research findings expand the relevant research on role transition and provide valuable insights for businesses to identify target audiences and develop differentiated advertising strategies based on role transition context.

Artificial intelligence offers new impetus for the rapid advancement of live-streaming e-commerce. However, in the field of tourism product live-streaming, there is currently a dearth of research pertaining to users’ digital engagement behavior when artificial intelligence is integrated into this domain. Drawing on the new application model of artificial intelligence in live-streaming, this study utilizes tourism product live-streaming data from the Taobao platform to investigate the influence of virtual streamers on users’ digital engagement and its boundaries. The findings are as follows: (1) compared with human streamers, virtual streamers can bring more monetary digital engagement behaviors, but the effect is relatively poor on some non-monetary digital engagement behaviors; (2) the type of tourism products moderates the effect of streamer types on users’ digital engagement behaviors. Virtual streamers possess a competitive advantage in influencing monetary digital engagement behaviors pertaining to transportation, hotel, and ticket products; notably, they exhibit a pronounced impact on the sales of transportation products as compared to hotel and ticket offerings; (3) the impact of virtual streamers on users’ digital engagement behaviors for tourism products exhibits temporal variation, with the most promising prospects for their future application lie in the transportation products live-streaming. This study confirms the impact of artificial intelligence technology on tourism product live-streaming, and provides theoretical support for the virtual streamers layout.

This research,using one secondary data analysis and three experiments,reveals that perceived scarcity reduces consumers'trust in others,which in turn moderates the effect of typeface on product evaluations.The secondary data analyses show that perceived scarcity is negatively related to trust in others.In Study 1,when perceived scarcity is not induced,hand- written typefaces lead to higher product evaluations than machine-wvritten typefaces.However,under conditions of perceived scarcity,hand-written typefaces result in lower product evaluations compared to machine-written typefaces.Study 2 further confirms that perceived scarcity diminishes trust in others,thus moderating the impact of typeface on product evaluations.Fi- nally,Study 3 shows that the product usage context influences this moderating effect:perceived scarcity only moderates the impact of typeface on product evaluations when the advertisement focuses on personal use,but this effect disappears when the emphasis is on sharing the product with family and friends.

Existing research on AI service recovery strategies mostly focuses on the post-service stage. However, due to the lack of human employee involvement, the effectiveness of post-service recovery is hard to determine. Therefore, the issue of AI preventive service recovery and its effectiveness urgently needs to be explored. Based on the Expectation Disconfirmation Theory, this paper investigates the impact of AI preventive recovery on customer satisfaction and its mediating mechanisms, and further reveals the differences in the effectiveness of AI preventive recovery under different failure scenarios. Through three experimental studies, it is found that the presence (vs. absence) of AI preventive recovery can significantly enhance customer satisfaction. Perceived respect and perceived risk play a dual mediating role in this process, where perceived respect has a positive mediating effect, and perceived risk has a negative mediating effect, with the positive mediating effect being stronger than the negative one. In addition, compared with outcome failure, AI preventive recovery significantly improves customer satisfaction in process failure. This paper enriches the theoretical findings on AI service recovery and also provides theoretical guidance for service providers to adopt AI preventive recovery.

Cause-related marketing (CRM) typically refers to the marketing strategy of firms that combines public welfare and marketing, with the dual motives of philanthropy and profitability. This paper constructs a stylized model that two competitive firms implement CRM strategy, and then extends this model to the supply chain context. Additionally, we examine the impacts of firm competition, government subsidy policy, and philanthropic motives on the firms, consumers, and social welfare. Our main results follow. (1) The intensified competition between firms enhances the firms' economic benefits and public welfare, increases the investment of firms in social welfare, and prompts the firms to be willing to take more social responsibility in CRM campaigns. (2) The government subsidy policy can improve social welfare and the firms' investment in public welfare; however, the firms may be aiming at getting government subsidies rather than stemming from the social responsibility they assume. (3) In a supply chain scenario, the consumer surplus is lower despite lower product prices. (4) The firms can achieve a win-win situation of economic and social benefits if they properly retain public welfare motives in CRM campaigns.

Based on the theory of entity and the cognitive dual system theory, this study explores the mechanism and boundary conditions of the influence of anchor combination types on consumers' purchase intention. Through three situational experiments, two conclusions are drawn. Firstly, the interaction between the type of anchor combination and the type of product significantly improves consumers' purchase intention. Among them, different types of anchor combination recommend search products and the same type of anchor combination recommend experience products have a significant impact on consumers' purchase intention. Secondly, information processing fluency plays an intermediary role in the interaction effect between anchor combination type and product type. This study not only enriches the theoretical research scope of group anchor combination, but also provides important marketing enlightenment for enterprises to optimize the allocation of live broadcast resources under the background of new technology penetration.

Patents play a key role in enterprise competition. With the emergence of the “Patent Great Wall” , patent litigation has become more and more frequent. Infringed companies take the initiative to initiate patent litigation to defend their rights while transmitting signals of their operations quality to stakeholders. However, no study has yet focused on feedback from enterprise customer groups. This study collected operational and legal data of Chinese listed companies from 2007 to 2020 to explore the signaling effect of enterprises' patent litigation behaviors and their influence mechanism on customer stability. The result revealed that enterprises' proactive patent litigation can effectively enhance customer stability. In addition, signal consistency positively affects the signaling effect, while the intensity of market competition has a negative moderating effect. This study enriches the related research on signaling theory from the perspective of the legal signaling effect. It supplements the analysis of the influencing factors of customer stability and provides a new perspective for the study of enterprises' patent litigation motivation. It also gives some advice on business practices.

As an important situational cue, luck cue has not been fully explored in the current research on live marketing, especially the research on its impact on consumer behavior is still insufficient. Based on the mood-consistent effects theory and the elaboration likelihood model, this paper constructs a research model on the influence of luck cues on consumer stickiness in live streaming rooms, and proposes three research hypotheses, which are verified by three experiments. The results show that luck cues have a positive impact on the customer stickiness of live stream, that is, when consumers are stimulated by luck cues, the stickiness of live stream is higher. Positive emotions and trust play a continuous mediating role between luck cues and consumer stickiness. Anchor type (corporate anchor vs. celebrity anchor) plays a moderating role in the influence of luck cues on consumer engagement. The research results enrich the theory of luck cues and consumer stickiness, and provide guiding practical suggestions for live marketing.

With the rise of subcultures of consumption among Generation Z, for both industry and academia, it has become an important question about which corporation leverages these subcultures to establish and manage relationships with consumers. This research conducts a longitudinal single-case study of Pop Mart to explore the implementation process and underlying mechanisms of a relationship marketing bonding strategy centered on subculture of consumption. The research finds that, driven by different relationship marketing objectives, firms have formulated a relationship marketing bonding strategy in three stages: subculture relationship identification, subculture community relationship reinforcement, and subculture ecosystem relationship enhancement. In these contexts, the subculture of consumption functions as a "pivotal cue", "emotional bonds", and "spiritual pillars", respectively. These strategies are achieved through mechanisms of "cue guiding""relational identification" and "cultural identification and innovation". Furthermore, the company's approach to providing value to consumers has progressively shifted from "one-sided" to "co-creation", offering consumers a more diverse range of economic and emotional values. This research identifies the special cultural and cognitive connections of consumer subcultures, revealing their implementation processes and role as a mechanism for executing a relationship marketing bonding strategy centered on the subculture of consumption. It represents a ground-breaking attempt to integrate subcultures of consumption into relationship marketing bonding strategy research, creating a theoretical bridge for dialogue between the two research fields.

As market competition intensifies and user demands become increasingly personalized,companies are transitioning from merely offering products or services to providing digital and intelligent solutions driven by user needs. However, in the context of differentiated and personalized user demands, how businesses can meet these needs through customized digital and intelligent solutions remains insufficiently explained in theory. This paper, from the perspective of user demand insights, conducts a comparative case study of two digital solution providers, Daxin Home and Little Orange Group, to explore the mechanisms and path characteristics in the development of digital and intelligent solutions. The study finds: first , in the context of differentiated and personalized user needs, companies use digital platforms to gather insights into user demands. Companies conducting algorithmic searches based on functional needs show characteristics of accuracy and immediacy , while heuristic searches based on hedonic needs display characteristics of agility and interactivity. Second, depending on the types of user needs, companies adopt differentiated strategies, either design-driven or process-driven, showing either chain-like or loosely coupled path characteristics. Third, digital and intelligent solutions encompass three core elements:“ product+service+platform, ”which exhibit differentiated synergies and symbiotic relationships. This study provides theoretical support and practical insights into how companies can develop digital and intelligent solutions based on different user demand types via digital platforms.

Firms increasingly leverage product customization to bolster consumer satisfaction. However, this strategic pursuit frequently encounters a trade-off between process satisfaction and outcome satisfaction—a phenomenon conceptualized as the “customization paradox”. This paradox creates a strategic dilemma for manufacturers when determining optimal customization strategies. This study constructs a conceptual model integrating online customization strategies (by-attribute vs. by-alternative) and consumer satisfaction to empirically validate the existence of this paradox. Furthermore, the research explores the mitigating role of Artificial Intelligence Recommendation Systems (AIRS) in alleviating the deleterious effects of the paradox. Utilizing a multi-method approach comprising one natural experiment and two scenario-based experiments, the findings reveal that the customization paradox is prevalent across both customization strategies. Crucially, AIRS significantly mitigate the strategic dilemma, with intelligent recommendations exhibiting superior efficacy compared to virtual assistant recommendations. Additionally, the study identifies distinct variations in the effectiveness of virtual expert versus virtual friend recommendation personas in addressing the paradox. By deconstructing the mechanisms of the customization paradox and identifying actionable pathways for resolution, this research provides robust theoretical insights and practical frameworks for online vendors to optimize the design of customization interfaces.

In the age of digital intelligence, the ease of access to information has prompted retailers to place more emphasis on customer engagement in online networks to build richer consumer experiences. Social density, a crucial atmospheric element of consumer experience, has transcended the boundaries of traditional physical spaces to become an easily retrievable and evaluable information dimension in online environments, profoundly influencing consumer decision-making processes. Based on this, this study aims to deeply analyze how consumers understand and recognize social density in the current era background, and then reveal their potential psychological processing mechanism. According to attribution theory, this research analyzes the online review data through machine learning, and combines two situational experiments to find that social density information and attribution patterns have interactive effects on consumers’ patronage intention. Specifically, high social density (vs. low social density) information increases consumer willingness to patronize when external attribution occurs. When internal attributions or no other informational cues are provided, high social density (vs. low social density) information will reduce consumers’ patronage intention. Perceived prominence mediates this process. These findings not only provide strategic guidance for companies in service processes and communication perspectives, but also expand academic discussions on social density.

This study focuses on star-rated chain hotels in China as a research example to establish a critical linkage between corporate dynamic competition and consumer-side responses. It examines the impact of multimarket contact on consumer satisfaction, along with the moderating effects of strategic distances, specifically capacity, quality, and location distances. The primary findings reveal that: first, multimarket contact between corporates reduces consumer satisfaction; second, the congruence of capacity distance attenuates this negative relationship; third, differentiation in quality and location distances mitigates the adverse association between multimarket contact and consumer satisfaction; fourth, the dispersion of capacity distance, quality distance, and location distance collectively weakens the negative correlation between multimarket contact and consumer satisfaction. These findings contribute to strategic management literature by elucidating the consumer-facing implications of competitive dynamics in service industries.

Social comparison advertising is a marketing communication strategy commonly used by enterprises. This study mainly discusses the matching effect between, and the potential mechanism under the advertising strategy and consumers’ different self-awareness states. Four experiments show that: (1) when consumers experience the state of objective self-awareness (OSA), downward (vs. upward) social comparison ads work better by lessening people’s self-threat perception; (2) when consumers experience the state of subjective self-awareness (SSA), upward (vs. downward) social comparison ads produce better advertising effects by stimulating people’s greater motivation for self-improvement. The current research advances knowledge of how consumers in different self-awareness states respond to social comparison advertising and carries important implications for marketers and policymakers to optimize advertising strategies.

In marketing channels, the unethical pro-organizational behavior of manufacturers’ salespeople can negatively impact channel partners and even the entire channel system. However, research on the antecedents and consequences of such behavior remains limited. Drawing on the individual ethical decision-making model and attribution theory, this study constructs a conceptual model to examine the antecedents of unethical pro-organizational behavior among manufacturers’ salespeople and its impact on distributors’ trust. We empirically tested the hypotheses by collecting primary survey data from matched triads of manufacturer sales managers, manufacturer salespersons, and distributor managers. This study finds that deontological factors-manufacturer ethical values and relational norms-can mitigate unethical pro-organizational behavior, while teleological factors-manufacturer outcome control and relative dependence-respectively promote and inhibit such behavior. Such unethical behavior by salespeople reduces distributors’ trust in the manufacturer, and distributors’ attribution moderates this negative effect. Finally, this study concludes with an analysis of the theoretical significance of the research and its practical implications for channel management practices.