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Despite the increasingly common view that online brand community (OBC) members are heterogeneous, knowledge concerning the impact of group heterogeneity on community and brand level outcomes is lacking. In response and drawing from organization research, this paper aims to study the consequences of two types of group heterogeneity (i.e. visible heterogeneity and value heterogeneity) on brand community commitment and brand commitment. The moderating role of tenure in a community is also examined.

A survey of 467 members of OBCs was conducted, and structural equation modeling was used to test hypotheses.

The results show that perceived visible heterogeneity positively affects brand community commitment, whereas perceived value heterogeneity has a negative effect on it. Brand community commitment positively relates to brand commitment; it also mediates the effect of perceived visible heterogeneity and perceived value heterogeneity on brand commitment. Further, the positive effect of visible heterogeneity on brand community commitment is stronger for short-tenure members, but the negative effect of value heterogeneity is stronger for long-tenure members.

The findings suggest that managers should make efforts to foster visible heterogeneity and reduce value heterogeneity. In addition, managers are advised to emphasize the characteristics that carry different appeal for members of different tenure.

This research is one of the first few quantitative studies to examine the influence of brand community heterogeneity on community, and especially brand level outcomes. It extends the literature on the effect of brand community on brands and adds to the emerging heterogeneity view of OBCs.

In an online brand community (OBC), consumers as a group occupy a dominant position, and their horizontal interactions are pivotal for the consumer–brand relationship. However, little is known about the effect of group characteristics on brands. To partially fill this gap, this study examines how group characteristics influence brand loyalty from the perspective of social identity theory. Specifically, by collecting data from an online survey, this paper investigates the effects of group similarity, group receptivity and group involvement on brand loyalty, the mediating role of community identification and the moderating effect of tenure in a community.

Data from 482 brand community members were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The results show that group similarity, group receptivity and group involvement increase brand loyalty; furthermore, the effect is mediated by community identification. Moreover, group receptivity is more effective in fostering community identification of short-tenure members, whereas group similarity plays a more important role for long-tenure members.

This paper enriches the brand community literature from a group perspective and provides implications for how brand communities develop customer loyalty strategies.

The present research aims to construct the brand well-being concept and develop the brand well-being scale.

By interviewing 21 consumers and coding interview text, the authors propose and construct the definition of brand well-being. Using two large sample surveys, the authors develop 11 items for the brand well-being scale.

By interviewing 21 consumers and coding interview text, the authors propose and construct the definition of brand well-being. Using two large sample surveys, the authors develop 11 items for the brand well-being scale.

This research combines the branding theory and positive psychology theory, expands the extant understanding of brand value and provides new insights into optimizing a brand strategy.

This study aims to investigate the effect of the virtual spokesperson type on the consumers' preference for new products. To meet the consumer needs of Generation Z, virtual spokespeople have become new assistants in brand marketing. However, how virtual spokespersons drive consumer preference for new products is minimally understood.

This research conducts three experiments to investigate the influence of virtual spokesperson type on consumers' preference for new products.

The research shows that, for radically new products, competent virtual spokespersons improve consumers' perception of self-efficacy and thus consumers' preference; for incrementally new products, warm virtual spokespersons improve consumers' perception of social connection and thus consumers' willingness to buy.

This study broadens research on brand spokespersons and virtual spokespersons. This research also enriches and expands research on the consideration of new product types in brand spokespersons.

Recent years have witnessed the increasingly fierce competition amongst smartphone brands. Hence, smartphone firms urge to prevent current consumers from switching to maintain market position. Based on the push–pull–mooring (PPM) framework, this study aims to explore the drivers of users' intentions to switch from their current smartphone brands.

Based on previous literature and the characteristics of the smartphone purchase, this study identified one pushing, two pulling and five mooring factors. Online questionnaires were collected to test hypotheses using the structural equation modelling approach. An additional netnography study provides further support to the hypotheses.

Results show that regret is a push factor that enhances consumers' switching intentions. Moreover, two pull factors, subjective norms and alternative attractiveness positively influence consumers' switching intentions. Finally, switching costs, emotional commitment and brand community engagement are mooring factors that negatively affect brand-switching intention, whereas consumers' variety seeking has a positive effect.

This study enriches the brand switching literature and offers significant implications for customer retention.

The study aims to propose reverse processing solution to improve the performance of strapdown inertial navigation system (SINS) initial alignment and SINS-/global positioning system- (GPS) integrated navigation. The proposed scheme can be well applied in the fields of aircraft and aerospace navigation.

For the SINS alignment phase, a fast initial alignment scheme is proposed: the initial value of reverse filter is determined by the final result of forward filter, and then, the reverse filter is carried out using the stored data. Multiple iterations are performed until the accuracy is satisfied. For the SINS-/GPS-integrated phase, a forward–reverse navigation algorithm is proposed: first, the standard forward filter is used, and then, the reverse filter is carried out using the initial value determined by the forward filter, and the final fusion results are achieved by the weighted smoothing of the forward and reverse filtering results.

The simulation and the actual test results show that in the initial alignment stage, the proposed reverse processing method can obviously shorten the SINS alignment time and improve the alignment accuracy. In the SINS-/GPS-integrated navigation data fusion stage, the proposed forward–reverse data fusion processing can, obviously, improve the performance of the navigation solution.

The proposed reverse processing technology has an important application in improving the accuracy of navigation and evaluating the performance of real-time navigation. The proposed scheme can be not only used for SINS-/GPS-integrated system but also applied to other integrated systems for general aviation aircraft.

Compared with the common forward filtering algorithm, the proposed reverse scheme can not only shorten alignment time and improve alignment accuracy but also improve the performance of the integrated navigation.

By integrating stimulus-organism-response theory and uses and gratifications theory, this study explored the salient gamification factors that satisfy the gratifications of conference attendees in the context of an event gamification mobile app and their relationships with conference engagement, continuance intention and word-of-mouth.

The questionnaire was developed in Qualtrics and administered on a gamification application called Goosechase during an annual hospitality conference. The proposed hypotheses were tested using the partial least square-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The gratifications of social presence, education and entertainment through a gamification mobile app influences attendees’ engagement during the conference while achievement gratification does not. Positive effects of conference engagement on their continuous intention and WOM have been also validated.

By adopting a unique integrated approach that utilizes UGT and S-O-R framework, while considering conference engagement as work-related engagement, this study offers a fresh perspective on gamification apps and discusses its theoretical and practical implications in depth.

Given the severe impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) on bank business activities, this study aims to examine how green brand image and online trust affect customers' continuance intention (CI) under the boundary condition of perceived effectiveness of e-services (PEES).

An extensive review of the green marketing perspective was conducted to identify the incremental contributions of the current study (e.g. extensions of online trust and PEES). The authors used the common questionnaire survey strategy for the data collection while applying the partial least squares technique for further analyses.

Using data from 460 bank customers, the findings indicated that online trust positively mediates the relationship between green brand image and CI under the moderating effect of PEES. At high levels of PEES, online trust exerts strongest effect on customers' CI.

This study responds to the emerging call for understanding the PEES role, under which online trust leads to CI in the context of the global pandemic.

The authors provide bank managers with a helpful extension of green marketing with PEES to manage online trust and customer intention, thereby increasing the managers' strategic effectiveness.

The current study explores the moderating role of PEES that plays in the green brand image, online trust and CI relationships, in responding to the pandemic situation.

Customer segmentation is an important research area that helps organizations to improve their services according to customer needs. With the increased information that shows customer attitudes, it is much easier and also more necessary than before to analyze customer responses on different campaigns. Recency, frequency, and monetary (RFM) analysis allows us to segment customers according to their common features. In this chapter, customer segmentation and RFM analysis are explained first, then a real case application of RFM analysis on customer segmentation for a Fuel company is presented. At the end of the application part, possible strategies for the company are generated.