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The concept of cultural branding based on various narratives has been established in the marketing literature, but there is a lack of studies linking this concept with brand-related effects. The aim of this paper is to explore and explain the possible relationships between various brand narratives based on the changing meaning of retirement and brand associations.

The COVID‐19 pandemic has created many challenges for the modern and interconnected world we live in. Global supply chains (GSCs), which until this outbreak, had shown a certain level of responsiveness and reliability in responding to disruptions, were subject to a great test of their resilience. Adopting a qualitative research approach and carrying out in‐depth interviews with several different companies, it is shown that COVID‐19 has caused substantial harm to a variety of industries worldwide, compromising all nodes of their supply chain, from raw material assurance to the delivery of finished goods to consumers. Consequently, the disruption propagation was both from upstream and downstream of the value chain. The results also revealed some mitigation measures adopted and the intention to implement future ones to deal with consequences of potential future disruptions. Aiming to investigate if the pandemic crisis was intensifying deglobalization trends, the study also researched the relationship between supply chain disruptions and their impact on global trade. The analysis pointed to a deacceleration of international trade during the first months of the disease, mainly due to the closure of borders, but after this period, global dynamics started to be re‐established, suggesting that there is not an intensification of deglobalization trends. The study is considered relevant to the literature, as it brings more evidence and diversified viewpoints from various interviewees and industries in a recovering phase of COVID‐19 impacts, as well as to GSCs' decision‐makers since it brings about some managerial insights to better navigate through crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade, luxury consumers have become more aware of the adverse environmental impacts associated with their lifestyles and are transitioning toward more responsible consumption patterns. Circular economy and sustainability business strategies have become crucial for this and have attracted the attention of scholars and brands. This paper aims to assess the current state of research concerning the circular economy and sustainability within luxury fashion consumer behavior. It focuses on relevant studies published in leading peer‐reviewed English‐language journals in business, management, and economics, using keywords such as luxury, consumer, circular economy, and sustainability. This review emphasizes the substantial impact of the 9Rs of the circular economy on luxury fashion consumers while also noticing the lack of consumer‐focused research in the areas of the circular economy and sustainability. It presents a critical and thorough assessment, categorization, and analysis of the emerging literature in this field. The authors propose a deeper and more specific research agenda exploring the relationship between the circular economy, sustainability, and luxury fashion. The paper suggests potential directions for future research, emphasizing the need for theoretical, educational, and communication‐oriented studies to address the distinctive circular economy and sustainability issues within luxury fashion consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feeling or anticipating guilt associated with consumption situations may lead consumers to adjust their behaviors to avoid those unpleasant feelings and better conform to their personal, moral, and social standards. The experience of guilt regarding a consumption situation is influenced by both contextual factors, including marketing communications, and personal traits, namely the individual's proneness to feel guilt related to consumption. While research has examined the influence of contextual variables on guilt, the individual predisposition to feel guilt associated with consumption has received little attention. Understanding individual consumer guilt proneness can assist managers in customizing strategies to diverse guilt responses: recognizing varying susceptibility to guilt enables personalized approaches across the consumer journey, fostering empathetic managerial actions. This understanding can significantly impact consumer satisfaction, loyalty, and the success of marketing strategies. This study conceptualizes and proposes a measure of consumer guilt proneness, the individual tendency to feel guilt regarding transgressive consumption situations. To define the conceptual domain, a literature review is complemented with a qualitative study. Five dimensions corresponding to sources of guilt (health, extravagance, social influence, misevaluation, and ethics and sustainability) create the initial pool of items. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses corroborate the five‐factor measurement model. The final scale demonstrates adequate convergent, discriminant, and nomological validity. Finally, the instrument is cross‐culturally validated in three countries—Portugal, Poland, and Brazil—which not only strengthens the evidence of its validity and reliability but also lends credibility to its broader application in diverse cultural environments, particularly within Western cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, firms started to gamify conversational artificial intelligence (AI) agents, such as chatbots, to improve purchase outcomes. This article explores strategies for incorporating gamification into AI systems by investigating the impact of utilitarian and hedonic motivations facilitated by gamified chatbots on various dimensions of customer engagement (cognitive, emotional, and behavioral), as well as the subsequent effects of these dimensions on customers' purchase behavior. By conducting one cross‐sectional and two experimental studies involving real interactions with gamified chatbots, this research identifies two crucial paths that warrant attention: an optimal path from hedonic motivation to behavioral engagement, resulting in enhanced purchase, and a detrimental path from utilitarian motivation to emotional engagement, which reduces purchase. Furthermore, the research compares the effects of two types of gamified chatbots and reveals that a game‐of‐chance‐based chatbot, as opposed to a knowledge‐sharing gamified chatbot, aligns with the optimal path, leading to higher purchasing while at the same time avoiding that customers feel obligated to play the game. Based on these findings, the article provides actionable insights for eliciting favorable psychological and behavioral responses through gamified AI interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the increasing social perspective in branding research, accompanied by more firms creating brands including environmental issues, no studies so far have investigated whether brand narratives referring to polarizing consumer cultures affect brand-related metrics. We explore the impact of shopping rituals rooted in either materialistic or material-resistant consumer culture on consumer-based brand equity. Our research shows that consumers do not assess brand equity based on the narratives associated to any of the cultures, which suggests that in the case of such contextual sensitive research, a more reflexive approach is needed to explore brands' appeal gained from cultural meanings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]