Weather is closely related to consumer’s daily life. Are users supposed to tip more in the live streaming on sunny days or rainy days? Based on the entertainment lives treaming data on the online livestreaming service platform, this study explores the effect of different weather factors on users’ livestreaming tipping behaviors, and analyzes the moderating effects of live streamer experience and weekends on the relationship between them. The results illustrate that, (1) compared with cloudy days, rainy days have a stronger influence on users’ live tipping behaviors, while sunny days have a weaker influence; (2)the more experienced live streamers are, the stronger the positive effect of rainy weather on tip amounts; (3) on midweek working days, rainy days have a stronger positive influence on tip amounts. Moreover, this research reveals the mediating effect of emotional regulation on the relationship between weather factors and tipping willingness by conducting online experiments. This paper studies the relationship between the environmental characteristics of weather and users’ live tipping and its boundary conditions in the field of marketing. This research enriches the theory of related literature, and extends the application of emotion regulation theory. The conclusions also provide guidance for marketing practitioners and policy makers in the live streaming industry.

Much research has been conducted in recent years on the font and shape characteristics of brand logos, but little research has been conducted on the influence of word spacing in brand logos on brand perception. Based on the perspectives of embodied cognition and spatial metaphor, this study investigates the influence of word spacing in brand logos on perceived brand status and purchase intention through four online experiments and examines the boundary conditions of this influence. The findings show that having wide (vs. narrow) word spacing in brand logos leads to higher perception of brand status and purchase intention. Then, brand familiarity moderates the effect between word spacing in brand logos and perceived brand status, and it is only when brand familiarity is low (vs. high) that consumers rely on word spacing in brand logos to infer brand status. Next, brand type moderates the effect of word spacing in brand logos on purchase intention, only when the brand type is a luxury brand (vs. a generic brand), wide (vs. narrow) word spacing in brand logos would affect purchase intention by enhancing perceived brand status. Our findings not only provide theoretical guidance for corporate brand logo design, but also enrich the existing literature on the field of brand logos research.

The growing use of Artificial Intelligence (Al) in customer service has raised ethical concerns, particularly regarding the disclosure of Al identities, which may reduce customers’ purchase intentions and create a dilemma between ethical practices and profit maximization. While existing research has largely focused on Al's role in addressing customer needs and driving sales, the impact of Al identity disclosure during the customer acquisition phase - such as offering free product trials - remains underexplored. This study investigates the effects of Al identity disclosure during customer acquisition through a field experiment with 5,768 participants. The findings reveal that disclosing Al identities did not significantly affect customer’s willingness to accept the product. However, disclosure led to more concise communication, thereby enhancing sales efficiency. In terms of verbal behavior, disclosing the Al identity decreased customers' willingness to communicate, reduced politeness, and lowered emotional expression, with self-awareness serving as a mediator. When Al identity was not disclosed but the Al displayed high anthropomorphism, customers were more polite and communicative, although their product acceptance did not increase. These results contribute to the understanding of consumer - Al interactions and provide actionable insights for businesses aiming to optimize AI use in customer service.

As pivotal players in the digital industrialization process, data service providers, often small in scale, can empower an extensive client network with customized data solutions, achieving a “small to large" effect. This paper, grounded in resource orchestration theory and co-evolution theory, takes Chongqing Ruiyun Technology Co., Ltd, a “specialized, refined, distinctive, and innovative SME,” as a case study to explore how data service providers empower a client network encompassing supply, channel, and demand sides. The study finds that this process involves three stages: constructing a data network, cultivating target capabilities, and driving a value flywheel. Each stage requires joint actions from data service providers and client enterprises to break through resource constraints, coordinate disputes over rights, and solidify cooperative relationships, thus completing the transformation of data resources into capabilities and fostering spontaneous data capability interactions. The theoretical framework developed in this paper reveals how the enablers and the enabled entities achieve the empowerment effect from “small enterprises” to “large networks” through the mutual cooperation of resource actions and relationship coordination, thus advancing the resource orchestration theory and co-evolution theory in the context of digitalization.

With the development of information technology, the presentation of brand logos is no longer limited to static images, and animated logos have begun to be used in various commercial contexts. Based on the conceptual metaphor theory, this article investigated the influence of animated logos on marketing effects through three studies. The results found that animated brand logos affect consumers’ assessment of product temporal attributes, with animated (vs. static ) brand logos contributing to consumers’ perceptions that their product's production time is more recent, leading to more favorable product attitudes. However, when internal cues to production time are displayed, the effect of animated (vs. static) brand logos on perceived product production time disappears. Moreover, when the product is expected to be produced longer ago, animated (vs. static ) brand logos lead to more negative product attitudes. This research was the first to validate the effect of animated brand logos on the perception of product temporal attributes, contributing to brand management and logo design.

After a service failure occurs, companies often use apology and compensation to make up for customer losses. However, customers may still find it difficult to calm down in this situation. Although service recovery research has a long history, previous studies lack the discussion of the comfort strategy after service recovery. Based on this, this paper explores the impact and mechanism of metaphorical ( with vs. without) comfort strategy of companies alter service recovery on customer forgiveness behavior intention. The results of four scenario simulation experiments show that metaphorical comfort strategy can better promote customer forgiveness behavior intention than comfort strategy without metaphors, and the degree of creative cognitive reappraisal and relief play a chain mediating role in it. At the same time, responsibility attribution and customer-enterprise relationship quality play a moderating role in its influence process. This paper enriches the theoretical research on the post-service recovery stage of enterprises, helps to deepen the relevant research on the sustained effect of service recovery, and provides guidance for enterprises to effectively optimize service recovery measures.

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.

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.

Based on the relevant studies of channel communication theory and institutional theory, this study explores the influence of informal communication strategies (i. e., interpersonal influence) used by manufacturers on firm performance, and examines the moderating effect of the institutional environment in which manufacturers operate. This study takes the cooperative relationship between manufacturers and distributors as the research context, empirically testing the research hypothesis by collecting first-hand survey data from manufacturers’ channel managers and secondary data. The findings indicates that manufacturers' use of interpersonal influence can enhance firm performance; In the regions with high legal effectiveness, and when the relationship quality between manufacturers and distributors is high, the effect of manufacturers using interpersonal influence to promote firm performance will be enhanced. In the regions deeply influenced by taoism thought, the effect of manufacturers using interpersonal influence to improve firm performance will be weakened. Finally, the theoretical and practical significance of the research results and the future research direction are discussed.

The healthcare industry is in urgent need of transformation to enhance service efficiency and optimize patient experience. However, theoretical research on how to effectively implement the digital transformation of healthcare remains relatively limited. This paper analyzes the development of digital medical industry from three aspects: opportunity, requirement and direction by means of the theory and method of evolutionary game. Specifically, this paper constructs an evolutionary game model of interests among three main parties: the government, hospitals, and patients, and further conducts simulation analysis through numerical simulation. The research results show that the actions of the digital medical industry depend on whether any of the three parties takes proactive actions. If any party acts proactively, it will drive the system toward a stable point of （1，1，1）; otherwise,  if all parties adopt conservative strategies, the system may remain at the stable point of （0，0，0）. Further analysis indicates that major health events are important opportunities for the medical industry to develop and transform digitalIy. The goverment, hospitals, and patients need to timely update their medical concepts and behavioral inertia, and then accelerate the development of a patient-centered digital healthcare ecosystem across the domains of medical services, pharmaceuticals, and healthcare insurance, ultimately boosting awareness and adoption of digital healthcare services. In addition, the quality of digital medical services is an essential foundation for the transformation of the digital medical industry, and the collaborative development between official hospital platforms and third-party medical platforms is a crucial opportunity for the transformation of the digital medical industry. The collaborative integration between hospitals' official platforms and third-party digital healthcare platforms represents a key opportunity in this transition.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.