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BackgroundYouTube, the online video creation and sharing site, supports both video content viewing and content creation activities. For a minority of people, the time spent engaging with YouTube can be excessive and potentially problematic.MethodThis study analyzed the relationship between content viewing, content creation, and YouTube addiction in a survey of 410 Indian-student YouTube users. It also examined the influence of content, social, technology, and process gratifications on user inclination toward YouTube content viewing and content creation.ResultsThe results demonstrated that content creation in YouTube had a closer relationship with YouTube addiction than content viewing. Furthermore, social gratification was found to have a significant influence on both types of YouTube activities, whereas technology gratification did not significantly influence them. Among all perceived gratifications, content gratification had the highest relationship coefficient value with YouTube content creation inclination. The model fit and variance extracted by the endogenous constructs were good, which further validated the results of the analysis.ConclusionThe study facilitates new ways to explore user gratification in using YouTube and how the channel responds to it.

The initial hype and fanfare from the Meta Platforms 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 organizations but also the societal and cultural implications of widespread usage. The potential of consumer interaction with brands within the metaverse has engendered significant debate within the marketingfocused discourse on the key challenges and transformative opportunities for marketers. Drawing on insights from expert contributors, this study examines the marketing implications of the hypothetical widespread adoption of the metaverse.We identify new research directions and propose a new framework offering valuable contributions for academia, practice, and policy makers. Our future research agenda culminates in a checklist for researchers which clarifies how the metaverse can be beneficial to digital marketing and advertising, branding, services, value creation, and consumer wellbeing.

In 2014, stories appeared in national and international media claiming that the condition of “selfitis” (the obsessive taking of selfies) was to be classed as a mental disorder by the American Psychiatric Association and that the condition could be borderline, acute, or chronic. However, the stories were a hoax but this did not stop empirical research being carried out into the concept. The present study empirically explored the concept and collected data on the existence of selfitis with respect to the three alleged levels (borderline, acute, and chronic) and developed the Selfitis Behavior Scale (SBS). Initially, focus group interviews with 225 Indian university students were carried out to generate potential items for the SBS. The SBS was then validated using 400 Indian university students via exploratory factor analysis (EFA). Six factors were identified in the EFA comprising environmental enhancement, social competition, attention seeking, mood modification, self-confidence, and social conformity. The findings demonstrate that the SBS appears to be a reliable and valid instrument for assessing selfitis but that confirmatory studies are needed to validate the concept more rigorously.

The growth of artificial intelligence (AI) and its applications in business has proliferated in recent years. Businesses have started adopting various technology practices relevant to automation and AI, and research investigating this phenomenon is becoming increasingly important. Taking this as a cue, the present research investigates the effect of human‐to‐machine interaction and human‐to‐human interaction towards cognitive absorption and its subsequent effect on trust, experience, and continuation intention in the context of services. The study built a 3 × 3 factorial design with automated chatbots (machine interaction) and service executives (human interaction) used as a stimulus in the experiment. Data collected from 410 respondents were analyzed using structural equation modeling to test the proposed hypotheses. The findings indicated that human‐to‐machine interaction influences cognitive absorption more positively compared to human‐to‐human interactions. The study results also provide evidence for the role of the trust, experience, and technology continuation intention in a technology background rooted in human‐machine interactions. The present study adds a valuable contribution to the existing literature relevant to human‐to‐machine interaction, cognitive absorption, trust, experience, and continuation intention. The study also provides valuable inputs to technology and marketing managers.

The most important stream of game developers' revenue is arguably via gamer's in-game purchases. Previous literature has identified a number of strong determinants of online purchase intention including values, consumer experience, lifestyle, security, perceived risk, information, and subjective norms and behavioural control. The present study examined the relationship between online mobile gaming addiction and loyalty towards purchase intention of online mobile game in-game apps. The present study comprised 430 students from two major Indian universities who completed a short 28-item survey focusing on three variables (i.e., addiction, loyalty towards online games, and purchase intention towards online mobile in-game features). The results demonstrated that (i) online mobile game addiction shared a significant positive relationship with online mobile game loyalty; (ii) online mobile game addiction had a positive relationship with the purchase of online mobile in-game apps, and (iii) online mobile game loyalty increased game users' intention to purchase online mobile ingame apps. The present study is the first to investigate loyalty and gaming addiction in relation to the purchase of in-game apps. Game developers will always want to facilitate loyalty among its clientele. However, if the engagement strategies used by gaming operators facilitate addiction as a way of increasing purchase intention of online mobile game in-game apps, this raises serious ethical questions which the gaming industry need to address as part of its corporate social responsibility strategy.

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