Can Upward Brand Extensions be an Opportunity for Marketing Managers During the Covid-19 Pandemic and Beyond?

Early COVID-19 research has guided current managerial practice by introducing more products across different product categories as consumers tried to avoid perceived health risks from food shortages, i.e. horizontal brand extensions. For example, Leon, a fast-food restaurant in the UK, introduced a new range of ready meal products. However, when the food supply stabilised, availability may no longer be a concern for consumers. Instead, job losses could be a driver of higher perceived financial risks. Meanwhile, it remains unknown whether the perceived health or financial risks play a more significant role on consumers’ consumptions. Our preliminary survey shows perceived health risks outperform perceived financial risks to positively influence purchase intention during COVID-19. We suggest such a result indicates an opportunity for marketers to consider introducing premium priced products, i.e. upward brand extensions. The risk-as�feelings and signalling theories were used to explain consumer choice under risk may adopt affective heuristic processing, using minimal cognitive efforts to evaluate products. Based on this, consumers are likely to be affected by the salient high-quality and reliable product cue of upward extension signalled by its premium price level, which may attract consumers to purchase when they have high perceived health risks associated with COVID-19. Addressing this, a series of experimental studies confirm that upward brand extensions (versus normal new product introductions) can positively moderate the positive effect between perceived health risks associated with COVID-19 and purchase intention. Such an effect can be mediated by affective heuristic information processing. The results contribute to emergent COVID-19 literature and managerial practice during the pandemic but could also inform post-pandemic thinking around vertical brand extensions

Gaming and luxury fashion: exploring factors driving gamers’ luxury virtual in - game fashion

This study investigates the factors driving gamers’ intention to purchase virtual luxury fashion in online games. The study’s conceptual framework is grounded in the social identity and social capital theory. A total of 468 responses were collected using an online survey from Fortnite players and analyzed using covariance-based structural equation modelling (CB-SEM). The results reveal that avatar identification was positively associated with perceived value, social presence, and intention to purchase virtual luxury fashion. Perceived value and social presence were positively associated with intending to purchase virtual luxury fashion. Brand love strengthened the positive association between the perceived value and social presence on the intention to purchase virtual luxury fashion. This study contributes to the marketing and information systems literature by offering the first insights into virtual luxury fashion in online games. The findings would assist game developers and marketers in better understanding gamer behaviour to capitalize on virtual luxury fashion

Reward - based advertisement in online games: a win for advertisers, developers, and gamers

This study examines factors affecting gamers’ attitude towards reward-based advertisements (RBA) in online games. A conceptual model is developed based on the Ducoffe’s web advertising model and tested using a quantitative design through data collected from 532 online gamers in Fiji. Covariance-based structural equation modelling (CB-SEM) was employed to perform the analysis. Results reveal that informativeness, credibility, entertainment, and incentive positively influence advertisement value. Advertisement value was found to positively influences attitude towards RBA. The moderating factors of perceived competitiveness and gamer envy were found to strengthen the positive association between perceived advertisement value and attitude towards RBA. This study is novel is it is the first exploration of RBA in online gaming. In so doing, this study contributes to both marketing and gaming literature and provides valuable insight for marketers and game developers to influence customers to be more receptive to advertisements in online games

REALISING OUR RIGHTS: How to protect people from alcohol marketing

Exposure to alcohol marketing causes consumption. Alcohol marketing encourages positive attitudes towards alcohol, influences our drinking behaviour and creates a culture where regular alcohol consumption is considered normal and desirable. Someone loses their life to alcohol somewhere in the world every ten seconds and alcohol causes more than 200 diseases and conditions as well as injury and suicide. The contribution of alcohol marketing to this significant burden of harm must be recognised and states must act to protect people from it and ensure their right to health. In September 2020, Alcohol Focus Scotland reconstituted an international expert network on alcohol marketing (‘the Network’) to update its 2017 report on alcohol marketing, Promoting Good Health from Childhood, and inform action by the Scottish Government. The Network ran to June 2022, involving experts in alcohol marketing research, law and policy as they relate to the protection of public health. This report builds on the Network’s first report by: • increasing the scope of the alcohol marketing activities considered; • expanding the populations of interest beyond children and young people to include people with (or at risk of) an alcohol problem and the general population; • utilising an expanded evidence base and hearing directly from people affected by alcohol marketing; • framing the case for statutory regulation of alcohol marketing as a human rights issue; and • presenting recommendations on how countries can best regulate alcohol marketing as well specifying how these can apply in Scotland. A literature review and case study research commissioned to support this work have been published alongside this report

Essays on Online Behavior in Medical Crowdfunding

In the context of medical crowdfunding, this dissertation investigates how individual reactions are diversified as they encounter certain events online. Specifically, this dissertation focuses on the two types of events: the social endorsement cue and the varying physical attractiveness of patients in medical crowdfunding cases. In the first chapter, we examine how the impact of social influence changes in the presence of non-social cues of various strengths in affecting a user’s likelihood to donate. We conduct a large-scale randomized field experiment to find that the impact of social influence depends on its relational informational value in the presence or the absence of alternative credible information sources. The findings of this study suggest that informational social influence dominates normative social influence in this context, contributing to both the literature and the managerial insights by uncovering user behavior in medical crowdfunding and related fields. In the second chapter, we examine the differential impact of physical attractiveness on the two types of prosocial behavior: sharing and donation. Based on the large-scale randomized field experiment, we discover that the impact of physical attractiveness depends on whether the online behavior is private or public, as people behave less restricted in private and behave to manage image in public. The findings of this study contribute to understanding the controversies in the existing research and provide a guideline in building online business strategies.Ph.D

Social Capital Online

"What is ‘social capital’? The enormous positivity surrounding it conceals the instrumental economic rationality underpinning the notion as corporations silently sell consumer data for profit. Status chasing is just one aspect of a process of transforming qualitative aspects of social interactions into quantifiable metrics for easier processing, prediction, and behavioural shaping. A work of critical media studies, Social Capital Online examines the idea within the new ‘network spectacle’ of digital capitalism via the ideas of Marx, Veblen, Debord, Baudrillard and Deleuze. Explaining how such phenomena as online narcissism and aggression arise, Faucher offers a new theoretical understanding of how the spectacularisation of online activity perfectly aligns with the value system of neoliberalism and its data worship. Even so, at the centre of all, lie familiar ideas – alienation and accumulation – new conceptions of which he argues are vital for understanding today’s digital society.