Alena Bermes

Against the background of immense product choice in ecommerce, online retailers use personalized product recommendations to assist consumers in product search and selection. The personalization is based on individual preferences which consumers perceive to be both useful and privacy invasive. Prior research has focused on linear effects a consumer’...

The spread of fake news in social networks has become a major concern for various sectors of society, including retail and service providers, some of whom have suffered from decreasing sales due to misinformation consumers shared online. The current COVID-19 crisis has added to the surrounding hysteria, as fake news during crises can heighten negat...

Social networking services (SNS) have become one of the most popular Internet services globally. Yet, there is also a dark side to SNS use that threatens users’ well-being. Recently, the constant growth in SNS users is diminishing and users are deciding to discontinue using SNS. Thus, research has started to explore the reasons behind discontinuanc...

Based upon the stressor-strain-outcome framework, this study examines why consumers stop disclosing personal information by considering the case of social networking sites. The preliminary results show that disclosure-related stressors induce self-disclosure exhaustion, which results in discontinuous self-disclosure intention. An outlook on further...

Soziale Medien bieten diverse Vorteile. Jedoch werden Verbraucher:innen durch deren Nutzung zugleich auch mit zahlreichen, bisweilen gar gesundheitsgefährdenden Stressfaktoren konfrontiert – ein Phänomen, das als "Technostress" bekannt ist. Dieser Beitrag stellt das Konzept der Verbraucherresilienz vor und veranschaulicht, wie diese als Schutzschil...

Social media have become part of millions of users’ everyday life, leading to the proliferation of the daily stressors associated with them, particularly social media-induced overloads. Therefore, understanding the individual characteristics that enable users to resist such stress factors and ultimately buffer negative follow-up effects, such as ex...

This research investigates the role of consumers’ feelings of anonymity when using Privacy Enhancing Technologies (PET). Grounded in the Social Identity Model of Deindividuation Effects, the results show that consumer anonymity increases social identity and hence group conformity, which in turn positively influences consumers’ trust and satisfactio...

Social media have become part of millions of users’ everyday life, leading to the proliferation of the daily stressors associated with them, particularly social media-induced overloads. Therefore, understanding the individual characteristics that enable users to resist such stress factors and ultimately buffer negative follow-up effects, such as ex...

This research investigates (overlooked) digital stressors and the role of resilience amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and also aims to advance the notion that resilience generally helps combat the challenges in today’s digital environment.

This research examines if consumers feel social pressure to disclose personal information for mobile application usage. Grounded in the theory of self-determination, the results prove that social pressure (being of multifaceted structure including fear of missing out, subjective norms, and image) is positively related to information disclosure inte...

Drawing on psychological resilience theory, this research is the first to define, conceptualize, and test the phenomenon of consumer resilience against the background of today’s digital environment, which confronts consumers with rising psychological conflicts (e.g. fear of missing out). The preliminary results proof consumer resilience’s buffering...

In the time of COVID-19, consumers are not only experiencing a global health emergency, but also an extraordinary influence on every aspect of their daily lives. Numerous (daily) stressors induced by the pandemic endanger consumers’ well-being and incite them to alter their behaviors, generally drawing attention to the multidisciplinary concept of...