Online Platforms as Consumer Service Channels: Retailer Responses, Audience Power, and Relationship Orientations

Due to the public nature of service interactions in online platforms, it is imperative for fashion retailers to understand consumer audiences who actively search for online information and observe the conversations between complainants and retailers in their apparel product/service evaluations.This research examines how an individual factor (audience power level and relationship orientation) moderates the effect of a contextual factor (retailer response type) on consumer audiences’ service perceptions. Further, the dynamic relationships involved in audiences’ information processing, including perceptions, attitudes, and behavioral responses are examined. Two studies were conducted. Study 1 indicates significant three-way interactions. Specifically, high-power consumer audiences with communal orientations are likely to have more favorable perceptions of warmth-related responses than competence-related responses. However, having an exchange orientation appears to have no effect on consumer audiences’ perceptions, regardless of power level. Study 2 confirms the hypothesized dynamics among audience perceptions of service recovery, satisfaction, attitudes, and WOM intentions

Fair Trade Advertising: What Messages Do Fair Trade Fashion Brands Send to Consumers?

Using content analysis, this study explores what types of approaches and messages are commonly used in fair trade advertising in the fashion business sector from the social marketing advertising perspective. Drawing upon Zharekhina and Kubacki\u27s (2015) framework of social marketing contents, two social marketing approaches (empowerment and patronizing) and the valence of consequence (positive or negative) together with its beneficiary (i.e., company, society, or consumers) were identified. Our results indicated that the empowerment subcategories were far more dominant in the fair trade fashion advertisements than the patronizing tactics. As for consequences, positive consequences were more significantly featured than negative consequences. Especially, society was most commonly mentioned as the beneficiary across both consequences. By analyzing different extant approaches, this study enriches the current understanding of strategic communication techniques and ad messages in fashion fair trade business

Consumer Experiences with Online Consumer Reviews: A Phenomenological Exploration

It is necessary to deepen current understanding about how consumers, recipients of online review messages, perceive and/or experience them for shopping, posing an important question: What does experiencing online consumer reviews mean to consumers? More specifically, are there key themes emerging from consumers’ experiences of online consumer reviews? This research aims to answer these questions by identifying key themes/meanings underlying consumers’ experiences with online consumer reviews for fashion/apparel shopping from the perspective of their users – consumers

User-generated Content across Social Media: An Apparel vs. Service Brand Comparison

As firms attempt to facilitate conversations on social media to connect with and better understand consumers, research evidence is accumulating that consumer-generated content on social media play an important role in consumer brand experience (Gensler et al., 2013; Schivinsk &Dabrowski, 2014); however, an answered question remains: How does variance in brand-related user-generated content (UGC) across social media platforms vary by the type of retail brands? The purpose of this study is to address this question by examining disparity inherent to the brand user-generated content in existing social media channels and compare the disparity between goods and service retail brands as opposed to service retail brands. It is among the first to investigate brand-related user-generated content in social media of apparel retail brands as opposed to service retail brands

The Effect of Retailer Perceived Isomorphism and Performative Action on Legitimacy, Word-Of-Mouth and Purchase Intention

Gaining legitimacy is an integral part of every business that seeks to provide justification for its existence within the society (Cheit, 1964). Organizational legitimacy, as a status granted by a society system (Ashforth & Gibbs, 1990), is defined as the “generalized perception or assumption that the actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or appropriate within a society system” (Suchman, 1995, p. 574)

User Experience in Fashion Brand Pages in Social Networking Sites: Values and Affective Experience of Information Interaction

To enhance a current understanding about brand pages in SNS, this study focuses on user experiences during information interactions in brand pages in SNS and investigates how different values of information interactions in brand pages influence affective experiences, which in turn affect users\u27 experiential states (satisfaction, engagement, cognitive elaboration) and thus their loyalty intention toward brand pages. Four facets of values of interest include two instrumental values (perceived control and usefulness) and two non-instrumental values (perceived enjoyment and connectedness). Data were obtained from 290 adult Koreans who followed fashion brand SNS pages using a self-administered online survey. Our results indicate that users\u27 affective experience during information interaction plays a key role in generating positive user experiences with brand pages in SNS. Specifically, affective experience enhances satisfaction, engaging experience, and cognitive elaboration, thereby increasing loyalty intentions toward the brand page. Additionally, perceived controllability, usefulness, and enjoyment create affective experience

Gender Differences in Consumer-Retailer Relationship Building via Retail Store Attributes

Although the importance of relationship marketing is well understood in marketing in general, research, to date, has been limited to: (1) developing conceptual studies proposing relationship marketing models across different service/retail contexts, (2) examining its outcomes such as satisfaction, commitment, trust, and attitudinal and behavioral loyalty, and (3) testing selected attributes driving customer-company relationship building. Less attention has been paid to consumer-company relationship building via a variety of retail attributes and its moderators. This study aims to enrich the current knowledge by exploring: (1) how a comprehensive set of retail attributes affects consumer-retailer relationship building and (2) if such relationship building process differs by gender

Mapping Consumer Engagement and Brand Impression Management in Instagram: A Decision Tree Approach

The current research explores the relationships between brand impression management and consumer engagement in Instagram. Specifically, two research questions were addressed: How does a brand utilize Instagram for online impression management? And how do consumers respond to it? Pictures posted by a fashion brand on its Instagram account function as a tool for brand impression management (Vilnai-Yavetz & Tifferet, 2015). A total of 100 pictures from a fashion brand Instagram page were coded and analyzed using a decision tree approach. Results revealed that visual elements of pictures on fashion brands\u27 Instagram differentiated consumer engagement behavior with respect to making comments, adding emojis, putting likes, and sharing with others (word-of-mouth)