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The purpose of this research is to conduct a literature review on the evolution, antecedents, and outcomes of luxury consumption (LC). To accomplish our goal, we used a combination of bibliometrics and systematic approaches to review 165 articles published between 1998 and 2019. The investigation revealed that the evolution of LC is mostly driven by consumer motivation and is influenced by cultural and psychological variables. Furthermore, we explored the aforementioned antecedents of LC along four major axes. Antecedents related to (1) individual characteristics, (2) brand components, (3) cultural and social values, and (4) organizational strategies. Furthermore, based on the outcomes of LC, we found two categories (individual traits and social values). The chapter concludes by proposing a broader research agenda for the future.

This paper argues for the following sensitizing proposition. At its core, much of consumer behavior that involves brand meanings is an attempt to influence, or symbolically mark, interpersonal relationships.

This paper presents a conceptual argument based on a literature review.

First, I argue that our pervasive concern with other people is a basic genetic component of human beings, and discuss some possible evolutionary pressures that may have led to this result. Then I discuss how this pervasive concern influences consumer behavior related to brand meanings. This discussion is structured around two aspects of social relationships: interpersonal closeness and social status. Relationship closeness is discussed with regard to brand communities, gifts, special possessions and brand love, and the often hidden ways that social relationships permeate everyday consumer behavior. Social status is discussed with reference to materialism. Materialism is sometimes misunderstood as an obsession with physical object, or as occurring when people care more about products than they do about people. In contrast, I argue that materialism is better understood as a style of relating to people.

This paper integrates a range of disparate findings in support of a broadly applicable generalization that nothing matters more to people than other people. This generalization can function as a sensitizing proposition that managers and researchers can bear in mind as they seek to interpret and understand how brand meaning influences consumer behavior.

Studies have shown that within-domain compensatory consumption can successfully repair the damaged self, but other research indicates that it can undermine self-control because such consumption causes self-threat rumination that impairs self-regulatory resources. This paper aims to identify a boundary condition that reconciles and explains these contradictory findings.

The authors conducted three experiments to show that within-domain compensatory consumption undermines self-control, but only in some situations. They test a boundary condition (i.e. type of connections between within-domain products and self-threat domain) for the effects of such consumption on self-threat rumination and self-control.

This paper demonstrates that within-domain (but not across-domain) compensatory consumption induces rumination and reduces subsequent self-control, but only when the product’s connection to the self-threat domain is made explicit through brand names or slogans. When the connection is merely implicit, rumination and self-control deficits are not observed.

Consumers may seek certain products to bolster threatened aspects of their self-concept. Marketing tactics that explicitly highlight connections to such self-aspects can lower a consumer’s self-control resulting in stronger purchase intent, while at the same time hindering the possibility of self-concept repair. Managers need to be wary of ethical concerns.

This research qualifies the existing findings by presenting “type of product connection” as a key determinant of within-domain compensatory consumption’s impact on self-control. Researchers need to be conscious of the type of products (explicitly vs implicitly connected to the self-threat domain) they use in compensatory consumption studies, because this may influence their findings.

Purpose: Drawing on research in crime and media studies, this research examines media images and stereotypes of criminals within the popular television crime drama series Bones. Methodology/approach: All 24 episodes of Season 9 were examined. Through a content analysis offender gender, race, age, offense type, and motive were examined. Findings: This research revealed that most of the images do not reflect the reality of crime and criminals. Gendered and racialized images were revealed. While male minorities’ victimization was more accurately portrayed, White females were cast in the stereotype as the emotional offender and minority females’ criminality was portrayed as similar to male criminals.

Finding an efficient way for enhancing brand reputation by using social media among customers and business partners has long been the main purpose of every business. However, due to micro and macro changes in the business field, strategies to find a way to improve brand reputation with business partners and customers have altered from transaction marketing to newer approaches such as employing a social media platform. However, not all brands make use of social media to enhance their reputation. The present study uses Apple as an example of the one of the best known brands which does not benefit from social media platforms as to the degree expected.

The increase in environmental consciousness around the world since 1970's pushed firms to engage in socially responsible behaviors. The Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has naturally gained attention in the academic and business world (Colvin, 2001; Harrison & Freeman, 1999; Sen & Bhattacharya, 2001; Waddock & Smith, 2000). The reasons for these socially responsible behaviors are not only the external obligations or regulatory compliance but also the firms desire to increase competitiveness, to improve stock market performance (Bansal & Roth, 2000; Drumwright, 1994, 1996; Klassen & Mclaughlin, 1996; Russo & Fouts, 1997; Waddock & Smith, 2000) and to create a positive self‐image among consumers. There have been numerous studies on CSR suggesting a link between social initiatives and consumer's positive product and brand evaluations, brand choice and brand recommendations (Brown & Dacin, 1997; Drumwright, 1994; Handelman & Arnold, 1999; Osterhus, 1997; Sen & Bhattacharya, 2001). Moreover, the consumers are continuing to become more interested in CSR and green product market is fast growing so the use of CSR initiatives by the firms to receive the support of the society and to influence consumer behavior has become quite common. However, these socially responsible steps must also have an effect on corporations' major objective: maximizing the profits.

The purpose of this quantitative study was to assess the relationship between volunteer leadership competencies and stewardship action-taking experiences among Master Gardener (MG) and Master Watershed (MW) volunteers during the COVID-19 pandemic. We collected data from 1196 Penn State Extension MG and MW respondents. The mean summative score for the volunteer stewardship action-taking experience was 2.32 (SD = .79), and volunteer leadership competencies was 3.45 (SD = .60). The results of this study showed a significant moderate association between volunteer stewardship action-taking experiences and volunteer leader competencies (r = .34, p ≤ .001). Volunteer leadership competencies can explain approximately 11 % of the variation in volunteer stewardship action-taking experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. The new knowledge that our research brings can significantly contribute to the practice in leadership teaching and learning of Extension organizations’ volunteers. Future leadership trainings on the enhancement of the MG and MW volunteer leaders’ stewardship action-taking capacity can help contribute to the greater good in their communities in a more confident and efficient manner. Further research should focus on identifying other factors that can affect MG and MW stewardship action-taking experiences, including the impact of the demographics and motivation.

The purpose of this research was to examine the impact of various attitudes and personality characteristics on environmentally‐friendly behaviors, from a locus of control (LOC) perspective. Specifically, we developed and tested a model linking a related construct, environmental locus of control (ELOC), to a series of pro‐environmental behaviors.

The context related to various personal and household behaviors vis‐à‐vis the environment, and the subject pool consisted of a diverse group of urban consumers. A survey was employed to measure various attitudinal and personality variables corresponding to internal/external locus of control, as well as a battery of pro‐environmental behaviors. The research propositions were tested using a structural equation modeling approach.

We found four distinct dimensions of ELOC, two of which relate to an external LOC (“biospheric‐altruism” and “corporate skepticism”) and the other two relate to an internal LOC (“economic motivation” and “individual recycling efforts”). We then linked these four dimensions to a variety of pro‐environmental behaviors. Highly variable patterns were obtained, with different dimensions assuming a greater or lesser impact, or no role at all, depending on the specific behavior under analysis.

Generalizability of the findings is limited due to the sample (urban consumers from one major city), and the method employed (validity of self‐report measures and the non‐experimental nature of the field study).

Our findings highlight the importance of considering the specificity of pro‐environmental behaviors, when assessing the antecedent roles of pro‐environmental attitudes/dispositions, which are in‐and‐of‐themselves, complex and multidimensional.

In this era of environmental degradation, researchers, managers, and public policy makers alike need to consider that pro‐environmental attitudes are composed of multiple dispositional facets, and that the role of these facets is highly context‐specific.

Managers prefer semantic imbeds in brand names, but extant literature has primarily studied fictitious names for their sound-symbolic perceptions. This paper aims to explore sound-symbolic perceptions of products with blended brand names (BBNs), formed with at least one semantic and one nonsemantic component. Unlike most extant literature, this study not only estimates the effect of vowels and consonants individually on product perceptions but also of their combinations. The boundary condition for this effect is examined by classifying products by their categorization and attributes by their abstractness.

Through a within-subject experiment, this paper tested perceptions of products with BBNs having high-/low-frequency sounds. A mixed-design experiment followed with sound frequency, product-level categorization and attributes’ abstractness as predictor variables.

For BBNs, vowel sounds convey brand meaning better than the combinations of vowel and consonant sounds – and these convey brand meaning better than consonant sounds. Differences in consumers’ perceptions of products with BBNs occur when the degree of attributes’ abstractness matches product-level categorization, such as when concrete attributes match subordinate-level categorization.

Brand managers/strategists can communicate product positioning (attribute-based) through BBNs created specifically for product categories and product types.

This research presents a comparative analysis across vowels, consonants and their combinations on consumers’ perceptions of products with BBNs. Manipulation of names’ length and position of the sound-symbolic imbed in the BBN proffered additional contributions. Another novelty is the interaction effect of product categorization levels and attributes’ abstractness on sound-symbolic perception.