Stephanie Q. Liu

The Ohio State University | OSU · Department of Consumer Sciences

Despite the ubiquitous use of taste-focused and health-focused advertising messages, the existing advertising literature offers little guidance on how the persuasiveness of such messages might be enhanced through design elements such as color. To address this gap, the current research examines a new congruency of a visual design element (i.e., colo...

Many restaurants believe that an aesthetically pleasing food presentation can help attract customers and elevate their evaluations. Yet the effectiveness of expressive aesthetics and the psychological processes associated with its use are not well understood in hospitality research. This study adopts a consumer behavior lens to explore how expressi...

Recent research suggests that not only what is said (i.e., opinions) but also how it is said (i.e., language styles) can affect persuasion. Extending this stream of work, the current research aims to understand how language assertiveness affects online review persuasion. Study 1 explores consumers’ general perceptions of assertive versus nonasserti...

Restaurants post alluring images of their food offerings on social media and online ordering platforms. However, the marketing literature has offered limited guidance on how consumers process and respond to online food images and effective visual design strategies. From a sensory imagery perspective, this research examines color saturation as a mar...

The restaurant industry has witnessed a dramatic rise of service robots. Previous research suggests that humanoid service robots are perceived as social entities and thus might lead to more favorable consumer responses than non-humanoid service robots. However, not all consumers prefer the presence of social entities when eating out. The current re...

Purpose We aimed to identify platform-centric versus multi-party service failure on sharing economy platforms via topic modeling analysis of consumers’ negative online reviews. We also sought to understand consumers’ reactions to these experiences by detecting negative discrete emotions. We then contrasted consumers’ responses to platform-centric...

While the restaurant industry is seeing an unprecedented rise of ethnic restaurants, the existing hospitality literature provides little guidance on how to enhance perceived uniqueness of ethnic menu offerings through visual design. The present research offers an innovative marketing strategy (i.e., using real handwriting in menus) to boost consume...

Purpose Focusing on the corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication context, the present research aims to understand when and why featuring pride versus empathy in a hospitality brand’s social media post can effectively boost consumers’ loyalty intention. Design/methodology/approach Two experimental studies examined the congruence effects...

Purpose – Focusing on the CSR communication context, the present research aims to understand when and why featuring pride versus empathy in a hospitality brand’s social media post can effectively boost consumers’ loyalty intention. Design/methodology/approach – Two experimental studies examined the congruence effects between emotional appeal and s...

Imagine that you are reading online reviews to learn information about a tour package for your vacation. How would linguistic styles (e.g., figurative, assertive, or bragging language) affect your perceptions of online reviews and purchase decisions? Electronic word of mouth (eWOM) has become an important information source that affects customers’...

Solo travel has become one of the fast-growing global travel trends. Given the continued rise of solo travelers, it is important for researchers and practitioners to understand this particular market segment. The current entry discusses solo travelers’ profiles, motivations, constraints, and negotiation strategies. Moreover, we point out that solo...

Today’s hospitality brands often gain a competitive advantage through being cool and employing cutting edge technologies. Virtual Reality (VR) is one of the most novel tools to advertise brands, introduce new products/services, and draw customers. Despite the marketing potential of VR, there is scant research revealing the psychological processes a...

The topic of lifestyle has attracted interest both in service providers and marketing researchers. To better understand lifestyle experience, study 1 adopts a phenomenological approach to conceptualize lifestyle experience that is generated within consumers in a hotel setting. It is discovered that sense of community and culture is the spirit of a...

Recently, biometric data generated by fingerprints, hand geometry, heart rate, voice patterns, facial characteristics and expressions, brain activity and body movement has increased in both volume and prominence. Surprisingly, academic business literature has remained relatively silent on the immense potential of biometric data, as well as on the v...

Drawing on mental simulation theory, this research examines the impact of consumption guidance and, in particular, the use of visual illustration in the design of consumption guidance on consumers’ evaluations of cultural food consumption. Through two consecutive studies, our research shows that photo (vs. art) illustration more effectively boosts...

Tourism managers have a long-held belief that preferential recovery helps mitigate customers’ negative reactions following a service failure. This research investigates the joint effects of recovery type (preferential vs. non-preferential) and status (high vs. low) on customer responses. Five experiments provide converging evidence to show that low...

Purpose The purpose of this investigation is to gain insight into parents' perceptions of benefits vs burdens (value) of educational and healthcare service received for their child with ASD. Parents are the main integrators of long-term educational and healthcare service for their child with ASD. . Design/methodology/approach Design/methodology/ap...

Ethnic cuisines have become increasingly popular among travelers. Given people's demand for authenticity in ethnic dining, this research proposes and examines handwriting as a menu presentation strategy that boosts perceived authenticity of menu offerings and in turn enhances purchase intention. To that end, we utilize a mixed-methods approach and...

Purpose This article examines the new phenomenon of the convergence of platform and pipeline business models. It examines the potential synergies and challenges for platforms to add pipeline components and vice versa for pipeline businesses. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses a conceptual approach that synthesizes and integrates the liter...

Purpose Corporate social responsibility (CSR) marketing has become ubiquitous in the hospitality industry. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of donation appeals containing warmth-focused versus competence-focused messages in hospitality CSR marketing. Moreover, we offer an innovative visual design strategy focusing on the ty...

Purpose Corporate social responsibility (CSR) marketing has become ubiquitous in the hospitality industry. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of donation appeals containing warmth-focused versus competence-focused messages in hospitality CSR marketing. Moreover, we offer an innovative visual design strategy focusing on the ty...

According to the National Restaurant Association, ethnic fusion cuisine is identified as a top food trend for the next decade. To that end, it is important for hospitality researchers and practitioners to understand consumer behavior in this fast-growing sector and derive appropriate marketing strategies for fusion restaurant brands. The present re...

Scarcity appeals, highlighting a product or a service is scarce driven by “high demand” or “limited supply,” are ubiquitous in the travel industry. However, the effectiveness of scarcity appeals in persuading consumers might differ from each other. This research investigates the joint effects of scarcity appeal type (demand-framed vs. supply-framed...

Tourists often brag about their exclusive vacations, preferential treatments, and extraordinary adventures on social media. However, the existing digital marketing literature offers little guidance on whether bragging is an effective communication strategy. The current research investigates the joint effect of bragging type (bragging vs. humblebrag...

While the dominant research stream on tourism technologies has investigated the adoption of self-service, mobile, and web-based technologies, the potential of destination marketing through virtual technologies is yet to be fully investigated. Because of limited empirical knowledge about the application of virtual reality (VR) in tourism, this resea...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine peer-to-peer sharing platform business models, their sources of competitive advantage, and the roles, motivations and behaviors of key actors in their ecosystems. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses a conceptual approach that is rooted in the service, tourism and hospitality, and strategy lit...

Purpose While online reviews are of paramount importance in brand evaluations and purchase decisions, the impact of a reviewer’s attractiveness is not well understood. To bridge that gap, this paper aims to explore how physical attractiveness cues through profile photos influence customers’ brand evaluations. Design/methodology/approach The first...

While Apple Pay as a payment method has become increasingly popular in the hospitality industry, there is scant research examining the psychological processes associated with its use. To address this gap, the present research investigates the interplay between payment method (Apple Pay vs. card payment) and service encounter outcome (success vs. fa...

Recently, the restaurant industry has witnessed an unprecedented rise of healthy restaurant brands. However, the existing literature offers little guidance on how to effectively leverage such brands in the marketplace. To address this gap, the current research examines a novel marketing strategy (i.e., using handwritten typeface on menus) that enha...

Although a fast service encounter pace might increase revenues for the service provider, its consequences on customer satisfaction and repatronage can be detrimental. To address this gap, the present study proposes a novel sensory marketing strategy (i.e., using shape cues) to soften customers’ negative reactions to a fast-paced service encounter....

People consume service experiences that combine pleasure and pain (e.g., roller-coaster rides and massage therapy)-but the question of how to market such experiences is not well understood. To address this gap, the present research investigates consumer response to such service offerings as a function of (i) hedonic framing that emphasizes pain ver...

Many ethnic restaurants use authentic-language labels (e.g., “Khao Pad Sapparod”), as opposed to English-language labels (e.g., “Pineapple Fried Rice”), in the menu to make their dishes appeal more authentic. Yet the effectiveness of authentic-language labels is not well understood. To address this gap, the present research examines consumers’ atti...

People express subjectivity and objectivity in everyday communication, yet little is known about how such linguistic content affects persuasion in eWOM. Drawing on the congruity theory and the selectivity model, the present study proposes that the effectiveness of subjectivity/objectivity expressions in an online review is contingent on: (i) whethe...

Social media such as Facebook are a rich source of consumer information; however, how to effectively use such big data remains a question. To that end, marketers need to develop personalized messages to enhance click-through rates and online purchases. This study explores online advertising strategies for an emerging lodging concept—Airbnb. Airbnb...

Purpose Presently, loyalty programs often offer preferential treatment to the firm’s best customers, and recently, service firms started to incorporate corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives into the loyalty reward programs (e.g. Starwood’s “Make A Green Choice”). However, academic research advancing the understanding of the effectivenes...

Hospitality operators spend millions of dollars on store remodeling; however, existing research offers little guidance on how to effectively communicate such investments to consumers. This study examines the joint effects of explanation type (customer-focused vs. brand-focused vs. control) and relationship type (communal vs. exchange) on consumers’...

This research draws on regulatory focus theory to explore how to effectively advertise technology-based hospitality services. In an experiment, we compare four types of service ads: narrative-comparative, narrative-noncomparative, list-comparative, and list-noncomparative. Results reveal that narrative-comparative ads, portraying a superior service...

This study investigates the joint effects of affective commitment, feedback valence, and feedback use on customers’ willingness to give feedback following a service failure. Our findings reveal that customers who have high levels of affective commitment to a service firm exhibit both a strong motivation to help a firm improve its business and a gre...