Suchergebnisse

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate masculinity in Chinese social media marketing for global luxury fashion brands through two studies.


Design/methodology/approach
Study 1 compares physical characteristics of males in visually oriented US (Instagram) and Chinese (Weibo) social media posts promoting global luxury fashion magazine brands (e.g. Vogue, Cosmopolitan, GQ and Esquire). Study 2 examines the prevalence of and Chinese consumers' responses (reposts, comments and likes) to different masculinities depicted in luxury fashion brand-sponsored Weibo posts.


Findings
Male portrayals for Chinese audiences feature more characteristics associated with emerging East Asian hybrid masculinities – "Little Fresh Meat" (LFM) and "Old Grilled Meat" (OGM) – than associated with global or regional hegemonic masculinity (i.e. the scholarly Wén and action-oriented Wu). Wén remains common in social media posts for luxury fashion goods, but LFM and OGM engender more consumer responses.


Practical implications
Chinese luxury fashion marketing depicts masculinity more similarly to other East Asian marketing than to Western marketing. Some luxury fashion brands are struggling for acceptance among Chinese youth. Luxury fashion marketers should incorporate hybrid rather than hegemonic masculinities to prompt more favorable responses among Chinese consumers, especially younger female target markets.


Originality/value
Growing female occupational and consumer power and shifting male employment from blue-collar to white-collar jobs have influenced media portrayals of masculinity. Social media marketing for luxury fashion brands demonstrates the prevalence and appeal of hybrid masculinities in China.

In empirical marketing studies, vignettes are increasingly used to develop measurement scales, assess public/organizational policy, and study key variables in judging the decisions or actions of a protagonist. Despite their frequent use, integrated recommendations for creating vignettes are limited. A brief introduction to vignette methods and their previous applications in marketing is provided. This is followed by suggestions for designing vignettes and vignette-based studies based on a review of the literature. The suggestions form a checklist that should help researchers who conduct vignette-based studies to consider all relevant issues and thus obtain valid data.

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to advance the understanding of antecedents and consequences of superstitious beliefs.Design/methodology/approach– From survey data drawn from 206 South Korean and 218 US respondents, structural equation modeling is used to test the posited hypotheses.Findings– To extrinsic superstitious beliefs, both the South Korean and US models support the subjective happiness through self-esteem path and the anthropomorphism path; from these beliefs, both models support the horoscope importance path and the behavioral superstitious beliefs path. Only the US model supports the path from self-esteem to extrinsic superstitious beliefs, and only the South Korean model supports the path from intrinsic religiosity to extrinsic superstitious beliefs.Research limitations/implications– South Korean and US student data may limit generalizability. As effect sizes in this context are established, researchers have a benchmark for future quantitative superstition research.Practical implications– By further understanding antecedents and consequences of superstitious beliefs, marketers are in a better position to appeal to targeted customers. Anthropomorphism and intrinsic religiosity, not fully studied by marketing scholars, show promise as segmentation variables related to consumers' attitudes and behaviors.Social implications– To avoid unethical practice, marketers must limit themselves to innocuous superstition cues.Originality/value– Leaning on experiential consumption theory and the "magical thinking" literature, this study augments the superstition literature by exploring carefully selected yet under-researched determinants and consequences of superstitious beliefs across eastern and western consumer groups.