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Brand popularity as a descriptive norm has been used as an advertising cue by internet malls. It is based on the assumption that consumers prefer brands with popularity claims because they perceive the popularity claim results from superior quality. However, little research has been done on how popularity cues affect perceived quality in internet shopping contexts. Particularly, the interaction effect between brand popularity and price on the quality perception has never been investigated. This research presents the results of two experiments showing that brand popularity and price have an interaction effect on the estimation of sales, which in turn influences perceived quality. Only when consumers believe that the sales volume is high would the perceived quality increase. This research also analyzes the manner in which brand popularity reduces consumers' perceived risk in purchase decision-making.

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According to socioemotional selectivity theory (SST), aging influences information processing style depending on the time horizon perspective (THP). In detail, older adults who perceived time as limited prefer emotional to factual messages, whereas younger adults who believed time to be expansive show the opposite pattern. When individuals pursue a specific goal, they tend to process goal-relevant information in more detail, which in turn evaluates factual messages positively. We investigated the moderating effect of goal pursuit on the relationship between biological aging and persuasion in October 2016 (Experiment 1). Results showed that both older and younger adults were more favorable toward factual (vs. emotional) messages when they pursue a goal. Experiment 2, conducted in March 2017, examined whether embodied aging affects persuasion. The results indicated that younger adults with embodied aging did not show a similar persuasion pattern with actual older adults, while embodiment studies demonstrated that younger adults with embodied aging act like older adults. That means that only THP changes the angle leading to processing. In the final experiment, conducted in November 2018, younger adults primed with limited THP preferred emotional to factual messages, which was similar to actual older adults’ responses. Moreover, we showed that emotional attachment mediated the effect of message types on the persuasion of younger adults with limited THP.

This research examined how domestic consumers respond to an advertisement using brand popularity in a foreign market. By using structural equation modeling, it shows that the consumers' response can change as a function of three characteristics of brand popularity in a foreign market: (a) expertise of foreign consumers, (b) similarity between domestic consumers and foreign consumers, and (c) animosity to a foreign country. Meanwhile, the similarity effect is found to be stronger for high-preference heterogeneity than low-preference heterogeneity. This research documents the importance of understanding the underlying mechanism to determine the effects of brand popularity in a foreign market on brand attitude and purchase intention.