Reto Felix

The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley · Marketing

Purpose This paper aims to provide a conceptual understanding of the drivers and outcomes of actor opportunism in the context of the three key actors of the sharing economy – the service provider, the platform and the consumer. Design/methodology/approach The research uses a conceptual approach by drawing on literature from within and outside of m...

Emojis, or pictographs that supplement or replace written language, have become ubiquitous in contemporary communication, including emoji marketing. Drawing on insights from linguistics and sign theory, the current research proposes an emoji marketing framework in which emoji symbolism (symbolic vs. iconic emoji use) affects consumers’ message appr...

Augmented reality (AR) is an emerging concept that impacts many disciplines, such as business, marketing, tourism, gaming, human–computer interaction, and manufacturing. Surprisingly, many scholarly and practical discussions overlook the fundamental primary factors that distinguish AR from other concepts, namely, that it involves a computing device...

Psychological ownership has been linked to various environmental behaviors, but extant research has typically examined a specific environmental element (i.e., a lake or national park) instead of abstract entities as the target of this ownership. The current research investigates how psychological ownership of an abstract entity, namely one's commun...

Recent research has pointed out the importance of appearance similarity as a special instance of homophily. The current paper introduces body mass index (BMI) similarity as a convenient and powerful proxy of perceived appearance homophily in the context of female advertising models by showing process evidence and boundary conditions for the effect...

The Metaverse has the potential to form the next pervasive computing archetype that can transform many aspects of work and life at a societal level. Despite the many forecasted benefits from the metaverse, its negative outcomes have remained relatively unexplored with the majority of views grounded on logical thoughts derived from prior data points...

[UNCORRECTED PROOFS] Augmented reality (AR) integrates virtual content into a consumer's perception of the real world. While academic interest in AR is growing, most prior research has focused on consumer evaluations of AR content and neglected the physical context in which AR content is consumed. Addressing this research gap, two experimental stud...

The initial hype and fanfare from the Meta view of how the metaverse could be brought to life has evolved into an ongoing discussion of not only the metaverse’s impact on users and organisations but also the societal and cultural implications of widespread usage. The potential of consumer interaction with brands within the metaverse has engendered...

Ridesharing services such as Uber and Lyft have been substantially affected by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on social capital theory, the current research investigates how social trust relates to three types of trust in compliance with COVID-19 guidelines and consumers' ridesharing intentions. Analyzing data from two economically and cult...

Experimental research methods have a long history across a number of different disciplines—including consumer research. Although experiments are just one of many alternative research methods, experiments are notable because they are the best way to establish causation. This makes experiments a powerful tool when researchers need to show cause and e...

Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), Mixed Reality, and Extended Reality (often – misleadingly – abbreviated as XR) are commonly used terms to describe how technologies generate or modify reality. However, academics and professionals have been inconsistent in their use of these terms. This has led to conceptual confusion and unclear demarc...

The metaverse has the potential to extend the physical world using augmented and virtual reality technologies allowing users to seamlessly interact within real and simulated environments using avatars and holograms. Virtual environments and immersive games (such as, Second Life, Fortnite, Roblox and VRChat) have been described as antecedents of the...

Understanding winter migration is relevant for marketing managers and consumer researchers, yet research on this important phenomenon remains scarce. Extending literatures on attitude formation and attitudinal spillover, political identity, and consumption of place, the current research shows that more conservative winter migrants from the United S...

Previous research has emphasized the importance of product packaging to consumers’ attitudes and purchase intentions, but empirical studies that explore the specific mechanisms by which packaging color influences marketing‐relevant downstream variables in relation to environmentally friendly products is scarce. The current research addresses this g...

The luxury fashion industry suffers substantial losses due to non‐deceptive counterfeit purchase behavior. This study extends prior research on such behavior by investigating the factors influencing non‐deceptive counterfeit purchase behavior of luxury fashion goods in India, a country that scores high on collectivism and low on indulgence in regar...

Macro-level consumption patterns in ownership-based modernity have been identified as being predominantly passive, individualistic, private, and alienated. However, access-based consumption, the new imperative of what has been termed the sharing economy, is fundamentally changing traditional business models and affords consumers a more flexible and...

Although data privacy is a compelling concern, prior inquiries have found that consumers do not adequately attend to data privacy policies. This research develops a framework delineating the effects of top-down/bottom-up processes and individual consumer differences in the need for cognition (NFC) and perceived control on visual attention to data p...

Augmented Reality (AR) is a promising and growing field in marketing research and practice. Very little is known if, how, and why AR-apps can impact consumers' perception and evaluation of brands. The following research presents and empirically tests a framework that theorizes how consumers perceive and evaluate the benefits and augmentation qualit...

Purpose Although multi-brand loyalty (MBL) in consumer markets has been identified in previous brand loyalty research, empirical studies have not yet explored the facets of its different types. This paper aims to have a deeper understanding of MBL by investigating its different types and facets. Design/methodology/approach This study uses a sequ...

Fuelled by open markets and globalisation, offshoring has become a common business practice for firms in industrialised countries. However, consumer research investigating offshoring in a larger macroeconomic and political context is scant. Using a naturalistic, contextualised approach, the current research investigates how a predominantly working/...

Purpose Researchers have become increasingly interested in the construct of psychological ownership in recent years. The purpose of this paper is to extend the target of psychological ownership to planet Earth as a whole and investigate its relationship with materialism and pro-environmental behavioral intentions. Design/methodology/approach The...

Although multi-brand loyalty (MBL) in consumer markets has been identified in previous brand loyalty research, empirical studies have not yet explored the facets of its different types. This article seeks a deeper understanding of MBL by investigating its different types and facets. This study uses a sequential, qualitatively-driven mixed method de...

Drawing on dual processing theory (Loewenstein et al. in Decision 2(2):55–81, 2015), this paper investigates how the perceived strength of brand origin (PSBO) influences brand love and the willingness to pay more (WTPM) for luxury brands. Participants for two studies were recruited through the consumer panel of a professional survey service provide...

Research on the relationship between customer coproduction and satisfaction has produced mixed results even after accounting for the role of attribution. This paper extends prior research on boundary conditions and examines the role of customer participation readiness (PR) during encounters that end with service failure. Based on congruence and zon...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of intrinsic religious orientation (IRO) on environmental attitudes (EA) and green product purchases (GPP) in Mexico. Design/methodology/approach – The study uses structural equation modeling to analyze the survey results of 242 consumers from Northern Mexico. Findings – The results...

The evolution of the market orientation (MO) concept toward stakeholder-based corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been recognized recently. Nevertheless, the two variables remain conceptually and operationally different, and very little is known about the relationship between MO and CSR. The current study addresses this question empirically b...

Despite important environmental problems in the urban centers of many emerging economies, marketers and policymakers are currently not adequately equipped with the tools and information to identify important consumer segments in regard to their pro-environmental behaviors. This research presents the findings from an empirical study with 715 Mexican...

Previous research on celebrity endorsement demonstrates that attractive celebrity endorsers can lead to better attitudes toward the ad and brand evaluations. However, this study suggests that an analysis of celebrity endorsement remains incomplete without considering an important initial stage of information processing, visual attention directed to...

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to provide a deeper, constructivist account of multi-brand loyalty. Previous literature has acknowledged the existence of multi-brand loyalty, but described it from a narrow, rational and primarily utilitarian point of view. Design/methodology/approach – The study is based on open-ended, depth interviews....

This article investigates how women in an emerging economy relate the importance of material possessions to the importance they assign to the appearance of their body. The results of two studies demonstrate a very strong and positive relationship between materialism and several measures of body appearance. Study 1 shows strong correlations between...

Purpose The purpose of this research is to contribute to a better understanding of deeper motivations and inhibitors of green consumer behavior in the context of emerging economies. Based on the findings, it aims to provide implications for marketers and policy making. Design/methodology/approach Based on an ethnographic approach, in‐depth intervi...

Improving quality of life for community members has become increasingly important for policy makers and society in general. This article presents the results from a representative sample of citizens from south-western Mexico. Because it is argued that quality of life indexes are formative rather than reflective, an advanced statistical method (part...

Purpose The purpose of this study is to understand consumers' product use, practices, identity, and brand meanings in the context of a brand community dedicated to a mainstream Japanese motorcycle brand. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative research approach was used in the form of netnography (i.e. ethnography adapted to the study of online...

Participants in market research studies are exposed to measurement scales with differing numbers of scale points, ranging from as little as 3 response options to over 20. However, the question whether variations in scale width may influence responses and bias the results remains the subject of ongoing discussion in marketing theory and practice. In...

This qualitative study investigates motivators and inhibitors of environmentally friendly behaviors in the context of an emerging economy. Based on interviews and observation, four dominant themes emerge from the analysis: Social class, generational differences, habits and modernity, and consumer confusion and credibility. Some environmentally-unfr...

Insights from loyalty in personal relationships have hardly been used in order to gain a better understanding of the consumer-brand relationship. This is surprising, considering that loyalty is a fundamental value in many aspects of human life and embraces important relationships such as loyalty to friends, to the family, to the spouse or partner,...

Previous research on expertise has predominantly focused on differences of cognitive constructs such as information processing and decision making. This study adds to previous research by investigating the dimensionality of emotions experts and novices experience in the postpurchase period. Based on factor analysis and Multidimensional Random Coeff...

This study suggests that companies from a sample in an industrialized region in northern Mexico are confident about their level of overall market orientation but that differences in their customer and competitor orientation exist. The authors test market orientation for its relationship to several other variables, such as company size, type of prod...

Techno music is an important part of contemporary youth culture. This study investigates this phenomenon by means of an Internet-based survey. Survey results suggest that the atmosphere at techno music events is generally perceived as friendly and that techno music does not promote aggressive feelings or emotions on the part of participants. Attitu...

Foreign direct investment by Latin American companies in the USA is growing and significant. Yet, the characteristics of and trends in these investments, and the strategies used by these companies to either enter or exit the USA as well as to maintain their presence are little understood. This paper explores and illustrates the entry, maintenance,...

Because of its geographic proximity to the United States and its favored position as a member of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), Mexico has become an emerging player in the global marketplace, and this new position has motivated several Mexican companies to establish businesses in the United States. Attempts have been made to expla...

Management systems are part of virtually every organization. However, so far no systematic effort has been made to distinguish different stages in the adaptive process of management systems according to sophistication criteria. By building on existing theories in the areas of systems control, cybernetics, and general systems theory, this paper deve...