With the growing usage of the internet and smartphones, social media platforms have become essential marketing and advertising tools in the present times. Marketing practitioners have been invariably using various social media platforms to promote their products and alter consumer attitudes and buying behavior toward their brands. However, planning a compelling and rewarding social media advertising campaign is challenging in a highly cluttered and competitive market scenario. Thus, the present study tries to predict consumer attitude and purchase intentions based on an integrated approach wherein six important antecedents have been identified from the literature: informativeness, hedonic value, interactivity, trustworthiness, perceived relevance, and emotional appeal. The study also explores the moderating role of corporate reputation, privacy concerns, and intrusiveness concerns on the association between social media advertising antecedents and consumer attitude toward social media advertisements. The results of structural equation modeling primarily supported the influences of critical social media antecedents on consumer attitude except trustworthiness. Findings also observed a considerable impact of consumer attitude toward social media advertising on buying intentions. Corporate reputation, privacy concerns, and intrusiveness concerns also play a vital role in moderating the association between some of the social media antecedents and consumer attitudes toward social media advertising. The study offers substantial theoretical and practical contributions in the social media marketing domain.

As social media platforms have evolved to be superfluously prevalent, social media advertising comes out as an appealing avenue for expanding promotion viability. Hence, the study investigates the impact of the identified social media advertising antecedents namely, perceived uniqueness, perceived herd behavior, perceived vividness, and perceived customization on consumer’s attitude toward empathy expression. Furthermore, the impact of consumer’s attitude toward empathy expression on the intention to express empathy and consumer’s brand engagement with the moderating role of intrusiveness were also studied. The results largely supported the influence of all the social media advertising antecedents on consumer’s attitude toward empathy expression except the perceived uniqueness. Intrusiveness acts as a moderator between the attitude and intention to express empathy and attitude and brand engagement. Thus, the study offers a noteworthy contribution by providing the marketing practitioners with a framework for social media advertising to help them utilize their marketing penny in optimal and best rewarding terms.

Expanding expenditures and emphasis on sustainable marketing necessitate additional research to comprehend how to effectively influence sustainable attitudes and behaviour, particularly in the under-researched realms of social media. The role of social media in creating and building attitudes towards sustainable purchasing is vastly underexplored. Based on social learning theory and the theory of planned behaviour, the present study has been endeavoured to investigate the factors that influence consumers’ sustainable purchase attitudes and intentions. With the data sets obtained from three hundred 50 respondents, structural equation modelling (SEM) was employed using AMOS 22.0. From the study findings, it is observed that social media usage, social influence, drive for environmental responsibility, and perceived trust in social media are the major antecedents of consumers’ sustainable purchasing attitudes, which in turn influence their sustainable purchase intentions. It is pertinent for prominent stakeholders, including governments and regulatory agencies, to employ the findings of this study while designing campaigns to encourage individuals to practise sustainable buying behaviour. Fostering sustainable buying behaviour could help mitigate the negative consequences of impulsive purchasing on human beings and the environment. Thus, deciphering the function of social media in promoting sustainable purchasing attitudes makes the current research novel and valuable.

Purpose: There has been considerable discussion about the utilization of social media effectively in tourist research. Still, there is a paucity of information about its usage for ecotourism destination selection. The study aims to determine critical factors influencing travelers' behavioral and electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) intentions to use Instagram reels to select an ecotourism destination.Design/methodology/approach: This study is based on the motivated consumer innovativeness theory and technology acceptance model. Purposive sampling was applied to acquire data from Instagram users. Data were gathered from 445 respondents and 415 valid responses were analyzed using partial least square structural equational modeling.Findings: The findings of the study confirmed the positive impact of perceived ease of use, socially motivated consumer innovativeness and hedonically motivated consumer innovativeness on travelers' attitude except for perceived usefulness. The outcomes also revealed a significant influence of travelers' attitude on behavioral and e-WOM intention.Research limitations/implications: The study's findings were intended to offer insights into traveler behavior to critical players in the tourism sector, including destination marketers, travel companies, the government and policymakers. They must comprehend how useful Instagram is for the tourist industry, which will help them better understand how to attract travelers through Instagram reels to market their destination.Originality/value: The current investigation is the first attempt to investigate the travelers' behavioral and e-WOM intentions to use Instagram reels to select an ecotourism destination.

The present research has been steered by the growing use of social media in every sphere of human interaction, including the marketing and advertising of brands. Hence, this research intends to develop and test a model of social media advertising with perceived ad personalization, ad incentivization, self-brand congruity, and social influence as major predictors for social media user’s attitude. Further, the study explores the influence of social networking sites involvement and social influence on electronic word of mouth intentions. The study also ascertains the impact of user attitude on e-WoM and further e-WoM on purchase intentions. Data was collected using a structured questionnaire from 456 respondents. Two-step structural equation modelling was applied using AMOS 22.0 to analyse the data. The conceptual model is framed on the grounds of a theory of reasoned action and Elaboration likelihood model. The findings reveal that ad personalization, and social influence plays an important role in framing user attitude towards social media ads. Also, SNS involvement and social influence significantly influence the e-WoM intention of the user which further influences the social media user’s purchase intention. Subsequently, this research will give a prescient model to design an effective social media advertising programme in the social media advertising domain.

Purpose: Celebrity endorsement is a preferred marketing communication strategy adopted by business firms. The present study suggests theoretical underpinnings for investigating the effect of celebrity endorsement on individual investors' intentions to invest in the shares of companies. The study integrates marketing communication and behavioural finance theories to understand investor behaviour in the stock market.Design/methodology/approach: The study used a questionnaire based on a conjoint analysis technique. The retail investors from India filled out the questionnaire. The authors developed an orthogonal design to generate retail investors' investment intentions and applied the full-profile conjoint method.Findings: The results reveal that investors prefer to invest in technology-related firms when they employ entertainment celebrities to endorse their products. Investors prefer that entertainment celebrities' personalities match the single brand only they are endorsing. Further, investors choose to invest during corrective market trends in emerging economies, such as India.Originality/value: The study offers practical implications for corporate entities and marketing professionals by analysing retail investors' investment intentions in financial markets.