Social media brand communities engage consumers and build relationships. This research aims to empirically investigate how consumer engagement in social media brand communities can be used to achieve branding outcomes. Fashion brands are divided into three categories clothing, shoes and bags, and accessories. Data was collected and analyzed using structural equation modeling based on a survey of 475 people who belong to social media brand communities of fashion brands. PLS-SEM was used to test the hypothesis. The study reveals Social Media Brand Engagement of consumers of fashion brands positively influences brand experience, brand image, trust, and loyalty. Furthermore, product type moderates the relationship between Social Media Brand Community Engagement and Brand Experience.

Referral reward programs (RRPs), considered as a form of stimulated word-of-mouth (WOM), provide incentives to existing customers to bring in new customers. The research here adds to previous knowledge by exploring the usage of referral codes for high and low-involvement products in three stages of the consumer decision journey, on a sample of 218 consumers analyzed by regression analysis. Results show that components of the Theory of Planned Behavior influence the behavioral intention toward participating in an RRP, with perceived behavioral control having the strongest effect, followed by subjective norm and Attitude. Referral codes have a significant effect on respondents’ behavior; high conformity of high-involvement products and low conformity of low-involvement products was found, with referral programs having a weaker effect on high-involvement products. Customers tend to follow all steps of the traditional consumer journey when buying a high-involvement product; in the case of low involvement products, low conformity was even lower when using a referral code. Low-involvement products at the need recognition stage, and high-involvement products at the active research stage, are the least affected by the RRP. Results provide insights for companies to optimize their marketing strategy through stimulated WOM, and with the usage of RRPs.

Constraining the time to avail promotional offers is a common practice employed by marketers to encourage sales. This research shows that the use of Limited Time messages in online promotions has a profound impact on consumer’s impulse purchases. Based on reactance theory, the present study employs a 2 (Limited Time message: Present vs. Absent) × 2 (Persuasion knowledge: Low vs. High) online experiment approach that provides evidence of the presence of Fear of Missing Out as a mediating mechanism in predicting the effects of Limited time cues. Moreover, the study reflects that impulse purchases induced by Limited time messages are low when consumers’ have knowledge about retailers’ persuasion tactics. Further, the results reveal that impulse purchases are more for consumers with high (vs. Low) buying impulsiveness. The findings offer insights into the mechanism and conditions that inform consumers’ responses to Limited time messages.

With the growth of social media advertising, marketers lack a comprehensive framework that explains consumers’ engagement intentions toward social media ads. This study employs Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) to test a robust theoretical framework that provides practical implications for improving engagement intentions toward social media advertising. An online panel from Prolific was used for data collection. The results confirm the validity of the framework and demonstrate that five out of seven tested attitudinal antecedent beliefs significantly influence attitudes toward social media advertising. Attitudes and subjective norms have the strongest influence on engagement intentions. Furthermore, the results indicate that social media ads containing product information and perceived entertainment generate the highest attitudes and, consequently, greater engagement with the ads. These findings have practical implications for marketers seeking to improve engagement with their social media advertising campaigns.

In the current environment, consumers increasingly make demands of brands, forcing them to adapt to consumers’ needs. As a consequence, it is important to study the variables that influence customer satisfaction when buying their favorite brands. This study analyzes three constructs as follows: perceived value, customer service and satisfaction. A questionnaire built on validated scales was completed by 1,521 individuals using the PLS-SEM model. The results reveal that perceived value and customer service positively influence brand satisfaction. Thus, perceived value acts as a complementary mediating variable and high levels of customer service directly increase satisfaction.

With the popularity and success of food-related social media content, food marketers have begun utilizing social media influencers to promote their food brands. In particular, mukbang—video broadcasts of individuals eating copious amounts of food—is a prominent genre of public social media food exhibition that can provide opportunities for food-related social media influencer marketing. The present study examines how parasocial interaction (i.e. nonreciprocal interpersonal relationships formed with media personalities) with a mukbang social media influencer impacts advertising effectiveness and information credibility. A total of 404 U.S. participants completed an online survey. Structural equation modeling found that participants’ parasocial interactions with mukbang social media influencers predicted perceived source trustworthiness, perceived source expertise, and credibility of the information regarding the food content posted. Furthermore, influencer source credibility and information credibility positively impacted consumer brand and video attitudes, as well as behavioral intentions to consume the foods featured in the social media content. Study results provide evidence-based implications for food-related social media influencer marketing strategies and insight into the important role of information credibility on eating behaviors of social media consumers.

A mediation model of the interplay between customer-based destination brand equity and destination marketing in domestic tourists’ satisfaction during a prolonged crisis is presented. The cross-sectional deductive study analyses data from n  = 400 South African domestic tourists. The findings clarify destination marketing’s direct positive effect on customer-based destination brand equity and domestic tourist satisfaction. Significantly, customer-based destination brand equity is an explanatory mechanism in destination marketing’s influence on domestic tourists’ satisfaction. This study contributes to the burgeoning but still limited knowledge of the role of destination marketing and destination-oriented brand equity in domestic tourists’ responsive behavior amid crises.

This study aimed to identify the dimensions can help develop a brand’s visual identity to address digital customers’ pain points. An online survey was distributed to 600 digital customers in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Structural equation modeling by the partial least squares method was used for the data analysis. The current study contributed to reaching the most important dimensions of creating a distinctive and unique visual identity, which was represented in the Emotional connection, Mental positioning, Professionalism, Brand eloquence. Marketers can benefit from these results in creating a distinctive and unique visual identity that contributes to overcoming the customer’s pain points, and then reaching the target customers and attracting them to the brand and linking with it, and increasing the sales and profits of the digital organization. also, can benefit from these findings when preparing the marketing strategy to match the components of the organization’s unique and distinctive visual identity.

Retailers offer many in-store promotions to increase sales. In-store price promotions, and especially, multiunit discounts, are common across retail settings. The purpose of this research is to propose and test the impact of a prevalent, but unexamined, multiunit promotional frame (discount with “must buy X”) on consumers’ perceptions of value and purchase intention. We argue that a promotional frame that explicitly mandates the minimum purchase quantity that consumers need to buy to avail of the promotion is perceived unfavorably by consumers. As an alternative to this restrictive promotional frame, we propose the economically equivalent but differently framed promotion (discount with “bundle of X”). Our findings show that, compared to the restrictively framed promotion (“must buy”), a promotion framed as a “bundle” leads to lower promotion-induced reactance, and thereby, higher perceived value, and higher purchase intention. We discuss the theoretical and managerial implications of these findings.

This study employs thematic content analysis to explore how the content source (brand vs. brands in collaboration with celebrities), content type (informative, social, and entertaining), and content format (videos, links, photos, and text) shape customer engagement on Twitter. It also aims to unpack the user-generated content (UGC) patterns and users’ attitudinal and behavioral reactions in response to brand-generated content (BGC). Using 5086 tweets generated by a brand and 4676 brand-related tweets generated by users, the findings demonstrate a significant increase in user engagement with the content generated by brands in collaboration with a celebrity compared to the content generated solely by the brand regardless of the content type. The findings also reveal that social and entertaining content attracts more user engagement than informative content. Users tend to engage more with tweets containing images than tweets containing videos or links. The findings further illustrate that most users’ brand-related content is in the ‘mention’ style, and most users’ comments include negative behavior-related content. Our findings provide marketing managers with actionable insights into monitoring and managing brand-related social media content.