Influencer Marketing: Influentials’ Authenticity, Likeability and Authority in Social Media

Influencer marketing is used to allude to a certain experience or feeling, and with numbers of social media and internet users rising all across the world, the potential influence and usefulness of influencer marketing continues to rise (Ranga & Sharma, 2014). While the choice of influences often follows the conventional persuasion theories, trust theories also play an immense role in determining how believable and ‘influential’ the influencer, their message and by extension the company, is. Upon integrating the trust and persuasion theories, this study developed four propositions. A total of 30 observations with power influencers were extracted by using the phenomenographic interpretive approach (Atwater et al., 2008). This study found that three most influential attributes were authenticity, likeability, and authority. Targeting was emerged as an important factor of effectiveness of the influencer marketing. Moreover, most of influencers were shifted from celebrity to non-celebrity

Cobranding with Pinterest: Expediting Apparel Retail Brand Experience

Cobranding creates points of difference, generates sales from existing markets, and opens opportunities (Lebar, Buehler, Keller, & Sawicka, 2005). Pinterest is an effective cobranding platform for consumer interaction. Bullas (2015) reports 69% of apparel brands have a presence on Pinterest, and 88% of the 70 million Pinterest users purchase a product they pin. Thus, we examined: (a) the impacts of apparel brand reputation and Pinterest usefulness on consumer experiences with apparel brands at Pinterest; (b) the impacts of consumer experiences of apparel brands at Pinterest on loyalty toward apparel brand and Pinterest; and (c) the mediation of consumer experience at Pinterest between apparel brand reputation and apparel band\u27s attitudinal loyalty. Findings suggest cobranding with Pinterest combines the strength of partner brands by increasing value, attracting new customers, and validating the brand among consumers. An effective brand Pinterest page creates important backlinks that expand apparel brand awareness and direct other consumers to the brand website (Walberg, 2015)

S-WOM in WeChat and KakaoTalk: Impacts of E-S-QUAL in Mobile Social Platforms

S-WOM refers to consumer electronic word-of-mouth on mobile social media sites . S-WOM enables consumers to share information at a time and place that are convenient for them, notionally making consumers feel comfortable about sharing their experiences and opinions. Thus, we aim to explore how service quality of mobile apps (E-S-QUAL) facilitates the S-WOM in the two mobile social platforms, and to compare the disparity of its effects on S-WOM model between the WeChat and KakaoTalk. By employing the multi group structural equation modeling, KakaoTalk and WeChat users are willing to distribute S-WOM in their social media platforms based on the facilitation of efficiency and system availability of mobile apps. Interestingly, privacy is of interest in KakaoTalk users while fulfillment for WeChat users. It suggests the practical and theoretical implication of S-WOM model by using E-S-QUAL perceptive

The Function of Dominance and Arousal in Consumer Resonance with Fashion Brand Website and Store

Well-structured brand websites can develop consumer purchase confidence and positive emotions with the brand (Park & Stoel, 2005) and further develop consumer resonances (Huang et al., 2015). The function of emotion conveyed through website attributes has received increasing attention in studying different affective states that drive consumer footprints across channels. As consumers tend to respond their emotions first before logic comes into consideration in their purchase decision (Hunt, 2011), it is timely to examine the function of emotion at a brand website that takes consumer to lead the next call to action. As the function of emotion, Pleasure-Arousal-Dominance (P-A-D) affective state model (Mehrabian & Russell, 1974) suggests that pleasure, arousal and dominance states mediate actual consumer behavior such as desire to affiliate with others in the setting, desire to stay in or escape from the setting, willingness to spend time and money, and to consume. Focusing on arousal and dominance emotional state at a brand website, this study examined which website features induce consumer\u27s emotional state and how the emotional state influences consumer resonance, triggering the intention to purchase at the brand website or the intention to visit the brand store. By employing a total of 220 usable responses, the two steps of structural equation modeling were used to validate measurement model and to test hypotheses using AMOS 20.0. All hypothese were supported which means consumer interaction with a brand website creates emotional ties and further generates consumer resonance with the fashion brand across channels (Thomas, 2001). Product presentation and personalization are key attributes directly generating consumer arousal state, consequently increasing conversion across the fashion brand channels. In addition, privacy/security and searchandising dynamics excel the dominance emotion state, mediating arousal state and finally consumer resonance in store visit and brand website shopping

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival

Country Differences in Determinants of Behavioral Intention towards Sustainable Apparel Products

Increased demands for sustainable apparel products require research to understand better how to encourage sustainable buying behavior effectively, especially in the understudied areas of cross-cultural research. This study, which includes respondents from the UK, US, and China (total n = 711) who completed an online survey, explores determinants of behavioral intention toward sustainable apparel products (SAP). This paper contributes to examine both consumer characteristics (shopping values, consciousness of sustainability, perceived consumer effectiveness, and environmental knowledge) and marketing perspective (evaluation criteria of SAP) determinants for encouraging sustainable apparel consumption behaviors. Significant country differences also emerged, indicating the positive impact on behavioral intention to sustainable apparel products across three countries. Results of structural equation modeling analysis demonstrated there were differences and similarities in the effect of consumers’ characteristic factors and marketing perspective factors on SAP behavioral intention among three countries. The results validate that differentiated marketing strategies in the sustainable apparel industry are required when targeting global consumers to boost sustainable apparel consumption and successfully help to remedy the crisis facing our planet and further generation

Country Differences in Determinants of Behavioral Intention towards Sustainable Apparel Products

Increased demands for sustainable apparel products require research to understand better how to encourage sustainable buying behavior effectively, especially in the understudied areas of cross-cultural research. This study, which includes respondents from the UK, US, and China (total n = 711) who completed an online survey, explores determinants of behavioral intention toward sustainable apparel products (SAP). This paper contributes to examine both consumer characteristics (shopping values, consciousness of sustainability, perceived consumer effectiveness, and environmental knowledge) and marketing perspective (evaluation criteria of SAP) determinants for encouraging sustainable apparel consumption behaviors. Significant country differences also emerged, indicating the positive impact on behavioral intention to sustainable apparel products across three countries. Results of structural equation modeling analysis demonstrated there were differences and similarities in the effect of consumers&rsquo; characteristic factors and marketing perspective factors on SAP behavioral intention among three countries. The results validate that differentiated marketing strategies in the sustainable apparel industry are required when targeting global consumers to boost sustainable apparel consumption and successfully help to remedy the crisis facing our planet and further generation

Socialization on Sustainable Networks: The Case of eBay Green’s Facebook

Given that novel merchandising informatics is seen as a better approach to studying eco-friendly markets, this study aimed to explore consumer socialization of sustainable networks based on the theory of consumer socialization. By employing social network analysis using the NodeXL program, we examined the social class hierarchy, investigated the structure of social agent&ndash;learner relationships, and explored the social learning properties of the eBay Green Team Facebook network. The results indicated that the network has been structured as a &lsquo;tight-crowd network&rsquo; through 76,482 interactions among 1612 actors from 19 clusters. Specifically, the centrality measure revealed the top influentials and their interactions with other eBay Green participants. The semantic analysis discerned the salient words, which implies that consumers gain utility from this network. We concluded that sustainable networks in social media can provide an account of the socialization of consumer attitudes and the role of top influentials in sustaining the relational network