Purpose: This research investigates the effects of multidimensional brand experiences (i.e. behavioral, intellectual, affective and sensory) on brand authenticity and brand love from the Asian consumers' perspective.Design/methodology/approach: This research collected primary data from 418 consumers on global brands, and it tested the proposed hypotheses by using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).Findings: The findings indicate that sensory and affective experiences have direct significant impacts on brand love, while intellectual and behavioral experiences have nonsignificant impacts on brand love. Overall, intellectual, behavioral, affective and sensory experiences positively influence brand authenticity, which in turn have substantial positive impacts on brand love.Research limitations/implications: This study investigated consumer behavior in a broader sense, and consumers from 13 Asian countries participated in this research. Future research may collect data on a larger scale from Asian countries to generalize the results.Practical implications: By following brand authenticity as an essential positioning tool and implementing several experiential marketing strategies, global managers can develop brand-loving consumers in Asia.Originality/value: Under the parasol of attribution theory, this research explores the relationships among the multidimensional brand experiences, brand authenticity and brand love from the Asian perspective.

Social media marketing has become one of the most significant growth paths for many businesses in today’s world. However, many companies are still unclear about using social media marketing to get their advantages, particularly in an e-commerce environment. In this background, this study is proposed to examine the effects of social media marketing activities (SMMAs) (interactivity, informativeness, word-of-mouth-WOM, personalization, and trendiness) on relationship quality, such as commitment, trust, and satisfaction in order to predict consumers’ online repurchase intentions in China’s e-commerce environment. This study proposed a theoretical model by using the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) theory. Using a structured questionnaire and purposive sampling, this study examined the responses of 403 consumers through partial least square-structural equation modeling. The findings discovered that SMMAs significantly strengthen the relationship quality factors, such as commitment, trust, and satisfaction, which in turn positively increase consumer online repurchase intentions in China’s e-commerce industry. This is novel research that contributes to the S-O-R theory and provides several managerial guidelines that assist managers in improving their business performance in the e-commerce industry. This research also highlighted some limitations.

Purpose: In the modern era, brand authenticity is one of the most powerful positioning strategies for sustainable business growth. This study investigated the impacts of perceived brand authenticity dimensions (i.e., quality commitment, heritage, sincerity) on brand love to predict Generation Y's behavior from the Asian context.Design/methodology/approach: This is new empirical research that tested the proposed hypotheses through PLS-SEM, as PLS is the most robust technique for predicting consumer behavior. Importantly, consumers (of Generation Y) from five Asian countries contributed to this study, and data collected from 427 Asian millennials on global brands.Findings: The results analysis revealed that perceived brand authenticity dimensions significantly impacted brand love, which positively affected Asian millennials' behavioral outcomes (i.e., continuous purchase intention and price premium).Research limitations/implications: This study investigated dimensions of perceived brand authenticity to predict Asian millennials' behavioral outcomes in a broader perspective. Future researchers may investigate a specific culture with a larger sample size to predict millennials behavior.Practical implications: This study has several implications that guide the global managers of several service and manufacturing industries to develop various positioning and relationship strategies for global brands to target Asian markets effectively.Originality/value: Using attribution theory, this is the first novel research study that empirically discussed the dimensions of perceived brand authenticity, brand love, and Asian millennials' behavior toward global brands.

Purpose: This study investigated the role of brand experience dimensions (behavioral, intellectual, sensory and affective) to predict consumer loyalty (repurchase intention (RPI), word of mouth (WOM) and willingness to pay more (WPM)) through the mediating role of perceived brand authenticity (PBA) in the global branding context.Design/methodology/approach: A total of 422 consumers participated in this study and provided feedback on top authentic global brands after completing a self-administered online survey. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to conduct the data analysis.Findings: This study discovered that brand experience dimensions positively influenced PBA (predominantly sensory and intellectual experiences), which significantly predicted consumer loyalty (RPI, WOM and WPM).Research limitations/implications: This research uncovered some limitations that can be used to investigate new research possibilities. From a theoretical standpoint, this study offers new insights into brand experience dimensions (BEDs), PBA and consumer loyalty in order to develop consumer-brand relationships.Practical implications: This study offered several managerial recommendations. By considering brand authenticity as a positioning tool, global managers can effectively develop and implement various experiential marketing strategies to develop long-term relationships with consumers to attain their loyalty.Originality/value: This is a new study that uses Fournier's relationship theory to investigate BEDs on PBA to predict consumer loyalty in the context of authentic global brands.

Purpose: The study aims to investigate the impact of perceived brand localness (PBL) and perceived brand globalness (PBG) on brand authenticity (BA) to predict consumers' attitudes toward local and global brands in two Asian markets. Further, the study examines the moderating role of uncertainty avoidance (UA) after controlling the effects of brand familiarity (BF) in Asian markets (China and Pakistan).Design/methodology/approach: In accordance with the non-probability technique and through an online survey, the study collected 1,880 responses (on local and global brands) from China and Pakistan. Partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) is the most robust technique applied to examine the proposed hypotheses in the Asian environment.Findings: After controlling the effects of BF, the findings revealed that PBL and PBG positively influenced consumers' perceptions of BA, which had a significant impact on consumers' brand attitudes toward both local and global brands in Asian markets. Further, the research identified that BA was an essential mediator from the Asian perspective. The interaction effects of UA and PBL on BA were discovered positively significant in Pakistan, whereas the effects of UA and PBG on BA were found negatively significant in Pakistan and had no effects in China.Research limitations/implications: The research focused on two Asian countries (China and Pakistan). However, future researchers may collect additional data from other Asian countries in order to generalize the findings in all Asian markets.Practical implications: The research assists local and global managers in designing and implementing various targeting, positioning and segmentation strategies for successfully managing businesses in Asian markets.Originality/value: The novel research is based on signaling theory that contributes to the local and global branding domains from the Asian perspective (China and Pakistan).

This study explores the reasons (for and against) the adoption of AI in the hospitality industry among Pakistani customers. The hypothesis was tested using the sample obtained from Pakistani hospitality customers. The data is collected via an online survey and analyzed with the structural equation modeling and PROCESS macro. The study results indicate that cultural values positively associate reasons for, attitudes, and intentions to adopt. Moreover, the results prove that attitude mediates the relationship between reasons (for and against) and intention to adopt AI services in hospitality. Furthermore, the finding shows that customer emotional intelligence has no moderation effect on attitude and intention to adopt AI services. This study highlights technological complexity and safety concerns are the most significant barriers in the studied context. Further, addressing reason against (technological complexity and safety concerns) may allow policymakers to lessen the present customer attitude-intention gap by tackling the factors that cause customers to resist adopting AI services in hospitality. In this respect, marketers should develop a marketing campaign strategy focusing on the benefits of the adoption of AI services in comparison to employee service. This is the first empirical study examining cultural values, reasons (for and against) attitudes, their relationship with intentions, and moderating role of an attractive, important, yet ignored variable, customer emotional intelligence. This study confirms that the behavioral reasoning theory can better describe the customers' adoption behavior of AI services in the hospitality sector.