First-time versus repeat tourists: resistance to negative information

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to review the literature regarding negative information’s impact on consumer behavior in the context of tourism services. In addition, this paper empirically examines the likely difference between first-time and repeat tourists in terms of their: resistance to negative information.Design/methodology/approach Using a sample of 539 visitors to Mount Yuelu, a popular tourist destination in China, this study explores the differences between first-time and repeat tourists regarding how destination social responsibility (DSR) and service quality (SQ) influence tourist resistance to negative information.Findings The effect of SQ on resistance to negative information is stronger for repeat tourists than for first-time tourists. In addition, the study identifies that DSR and SQ have a positive impact on tourists’ resistance to negative information. Finally, findings indicate that destination identification partially mediates the relationship between DSR, SQ and tourists’ response to negative information, respectively.Research limitations/implications The findings provide valuable theoretical and empirical insights into the driving factors that influence consumer resistance to negative information.Practical implications The paper brings together DSR, SQ and tourist-destination identification to better understand the impact that visitation frequency (first-time versus repeat tourists) has on how tourists resist negative information about a tourist destination.Social implications Negative information that is generated about a destination may cause the number of future tourism visits to decline. Findings of this paper provide insight as to the framework that can make tourists more resistant to said negative information.Originality/value This study contributes to the services marketing and tourism literature by investigating the degree to which DSR and SQ affect tourist resistance to negative information as mediated by tourist-destination identification and moderated by visiting frequency.

EXPRESS: Bad News? Send an AI. Good News? Send a Human

The present research demonstrates how consumer responses to negative and positive offers are influenced by whether the administering marketing agent is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) or a human. In the case of a product or service offer that is worse than expected, consumers respond better when dealing with an AI agent in the form of increased purchase likelihood and satisfaction. In contrast, for a better than expected offer, consumers respond more positively to a human agent. We demonstrate that AI agents, in comparison to human agents, are perceived to have weaker intentions when administering offers, which accounts for this effect. That is, consumers infer that AI agents lack selfish intentions in the case of an offer that favors the agent and lack benevolent intentions in the case of an offer that favors the customer, thereby dampening the extremity of consumer responses. Moreover, we demonstrate a moderating effect such that marketers may anthropomorphize AI agents to strengthen perceived intentions, providing an avenue to receive due credit from consumers when providing a better offer and mitigate blame when providing a worse offer. Potential ethical concerns with the use of AI to bypass consumer resistance to negative offers are discussed.

The effect of consumer resistance to innovation on innovation adoption: the moderating role of customer loyalty

PurposeThe purpose of the study is to construct a relationship model between the consumer resistance to innovation (CRI) and innovation adoption, and the study selected the customer loyalty as the moderating variable.Design/methodology/approachBased on questionnaire survey and regression model analysis, the study analyses the psychological processes and formation mechanisms that they either resist or adopt innovation by exploring users' attitudes towards smartphone application updates.FindingsThe results showed that innovation resistance negatively affected innovation adoption, and consumers are more likely to adopt innovations simply under the influence of customer loyalty. In addition, the moderating effect of customer loyalty is different in that how the three dimensions of innovation resistance influence innovation adoption. From the perspective of affective response, when consumers become emotionally disgusted with innovative products, loyalty can hardly change their minds. When consumers' resistance to innovation comes more from cognitive evaluation or functioning, loyalty is more likely to change their resistance.Originality/valueThe paper tests mechanism between customer resist the new product and new product adoption and the moderate effect of customer loyalty.

Why have consumers opposed, postponed, and rejected Innovations during a pandemic? A Study of mobile payment Innovations

The highly infectious nature of the COVID-19 virus has made the use of contactless payment methods a health exigency. Yet, consumers are resisting using mobile payments (m-payments) during the pandemic, a confounding behavior that needs to be better understood. The present study explicates this behavior by examining consumer resistance to m-payments during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, it provides more granular findings by measuring three levels of resistance/non-adoption, namely, postponement, opposition, and rejection. In this way, the study adds depth to the literature, which has largely examined resistance at an aggregate level to yield generic findings. Toward this end, the study draws upon the Innovation Resistance Theory (IRT) to propose that usage, value, risk, tradition, and image barriers influence the three levels of resistance/non-adoption differently. An artificial neural network analysis (ANN) of the data collected from 406 non-users of m-payments confirmed that the influence of the five barriers varies for the three levels of resistance/non-adoption. The results further suggest that the usage barrier is the most significant contributor to opposition and rejection intentions toward m-payments, whereas the image barrier is the most influential for postponement intentions. This study thus makes a useful contribution to theory and practice.

The conflict market polarizing consumer culture(s) in counter-democracy

At the beginning of the millennium, consumer culture researchers predicted that people would increasingly demand that marketplace actors subscribe to contemporary ethics of liberal democracy. Although their prediction indeed came true, they did not foresee that an algorithm-powered media ecosystem in combination with growing authoritarian movements would soon come to fuel an increasingly polarized political landscape and challenge the very fundament of liberal democracy per se. In this macroscopic, conceptual article, I discuss three assumption-challenging logics—counter-democratic consumer culture, de-dialectical algorithmic manipulation, and growing illiberal consumer resistance—according to which the market increasingly monetizes the conflicts accompanying this polarization and, thereby, reinforces it. I call this new logic a conflict market and illustrate it through three, historically situated and currently conflicting, consumer ideoscapes—the neoblue, the neogreen, and the neobrown—between which consumers engage in marketized conflicts, not in a de-politicizing way, but in an increasingly un-politicizing, de-dialectical, and polarizing way. At the technologically manipulated conflict market, the role of marketers is to monetize politically sensitive topics by creating conflict, knowingly renouncing large groups of consumers, and giving fodder to the political extremes.

Resisting to Game of Thrones: a fannish agonism

PurposeFans have been characterized as specialized consumers who often express disagreements with the entertainment industry's decisions, especially when it comes to the original content of the works that serve as the basis for the development of media products, evidencing a kind of consumer resistance. Under a Foucauldian perspective aligned with the consumer culture theory (CCT), power relations are established in a dynamic of power exercise and resistance to power. Based on this, the authors pose the following research question: how do fans of media products resist the changes made by the entertainment industry in relation to their canons?Design/methodology/approachThe authors adopted the Foucault's genealogy of power as a method, analyzing the comments posted on the Westeros.Org website, the main discussion forum of fans of A Song of Ice and Fire (ASoIaF) book series and Game of Thrones (GoT) TV series.FindingsThe findings reveal ways of resistance in relation to the adaptation of the media text permeated by an entertainment dispositif, which considers the adaptation legitimate, and a fannish dispositif, which criticizes the way this adaptation was made. However, their empirical categories reveal that they are forged not only from singularities but also from overlaps. The authors conclude, therefore, that this process occurs in an agonist way, in which conflicts are fought as a reciprocal incitement revealing a productive and ethical relationship.Originality/valueThe agonism shows how consumers can simultaneously be led to incorporate and resist to discourses and market practices. This demonstrates how resistance is not necessarily a force opposed to another, but a dynamic of reciprocal negotiation.

Practicing mundane consumer resistance in the REKO local food system

Purpose This study aims to answer two research questions, namely, what kinds of mundane resistance practices emerge in the local food system and which spatial, material and social elements catalyse the resistance practices. Design/methodology/approach The study adopts a post-humanist practice approach and focusses on exploring the agentic capacity of socio-material elements to generate resistance practices. The data were generated through a multi-method approach of interviews, field observations and Facebook discussions collected between 2014 and 2017. Findings The empirical context is the rejäl konsumtion local food network in Finland. The analysis presents two types of resisting practices – resisting facelessness and resisting carelessness – which are connected to spatial, material and social elements. Research limitations/implications The study focusses on one local food system, highlighting the socio-material structuring of resistance in this specific cultural setting. Practical implications The practical implications highlight that recognising the socio-material elements provides tools for better engagement of consumer actors with local food systems. Originality/value The study adds to the extant research by interweaving the consumer resistance literature and local food systems discussions with the neo-material approach. The findings present a more nuanced understanding of the ways in which consumer resistance is actualised in a non-recreational, mundane context of consumption. Consequently, the study offers new insights into the agentic socio-material actors structuring the local food system.

Social Downgrading on Consumer Values and Practices: A Transgenerational Perspective

The aim of this research is to measure the influence of social downgrading on consumer values and practices. Intergenerational mobility is defined as a process leading to a change in social status from parents to children. The first part of this paper presents social mobility and emphasises its multi-dimensional character. In particular, we detail the different types of objective and subjective mobility. In the second part, we analyse the symbolic and psychological aspects of the acceptance or rejection of social downgrading. We present the results of an exploratory study based on the life stories of a dozen families. It appears that some downgraded individuals do not accept to give up the lifestyle inherited from their childhood and perceive it as an intimate part of their identity. Others, on the contrary, rebuild new identities and modes of consumption based on a "reappropriation of their declassification". This study provides a better understanding of social downgrading by presenting it as a complex process combining the incorporation of a new social status, transgenerational capital and new forms of consumer resistance.