Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the factors that drive consumer love toward a brand and the opportunities a consumer’s love create for a brand in India. Design/methodology/approach – A total of 23 in-depth interviews were conducted with consumers. The interview transcripts were analyzed through thematic analysis using qualitative software Nvivo10. Findings – This paper proposes a conceptual model where respect, brand experience, and brand reputation have been identified as factors driving brand love and affective commitment, consumer citizenship behavior, repurchases intention, consumer forgiveness, and attitude toward the extension as outcomes of brand love. Practical implications – Consumers bond with brand helps in mitigating the feelings of transgressions by the brand, and also protects brand from negative word of mouth. Consumers who are in love with a brand show positive attitude toward its extensions. These results provide pointers to brand managers on how to protect and expand the business. Originality/value – The extant brand love research seems to be solely in the western context. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this is the first study of its kind that empirically investigates antecedents and consequences of brand love in India.

PurposeShort-term changes in consumers' shopping behaviour due to the Covid-19 pandemic have been studied, but not the long-term effects. This study fills this gap by exploring the long-term changes in consumers' retail shopping behaviour, due to their experiences of the Covid-19 pandemic.Design/methodology/approachQualitative data were collected from one hundred fifty-nine respondents, and grounded theory approach was applied for interpretation. Gioia thematic analysis method, open coding, and axial coding were used for analysis.FindingsIndividuals who positively approached their experiences during the Covid-19 demonstrated increased pro-sustainable and pro-environmental self-identity, resulting in sustainable consumption and a shift to online shopping. Individuals having overpowering negative experiences demonstrated heightened fear of missing out (FOMO), loss aversion, and rumination. While shopping, they demonstrated herd behaviour and shifted to online shopping.Research limitations/implicationsThis study highlights emotional and psychological mechanisms influencing long-term changes in consumer shopping preferences post Covid-19 pandemic. The generalizability of the findings is limited due to the study's exploratory nature and the sample size.Originality/valueThis study contributes to shopping behaviour literature by uncovering novel constructs of self-identity, loss aversion, FOMO, and rumination as antecedents to long-term shopping behaviour changes post-Covid-19. It provides a new conceptual model of consumers' shopping behaviour, which may be empirically validated.

Purpose -The technology acceptance model (TAM) was developed by Davies et al. to understand the utilitarian benefits of web sites. In recent times, scholars have extended TAM as theoretical underpinning to understand user acceptance of social networking web sites (SNWs) that were hedonic in nature, which seemed inappropriate. The purpose of this paper is to examine the differences in the user acceptance phenomenon of hedonic versus utilitarian SNWs, and highlight that it is essential to provide justice to varying value propositions offered by SNWs. Design/methodology/approach -As the research study was variance based and followed a positivistic paradigm, the authors used survey methodology and collected data through online and offline questionnaires. In total, 181 usable responses were subjected to mediation analysis using structural equation modeling. Findings -The perceived usefulness emerged as a significant mediator in the case of utilitarian SNWs and perceived enjoyment emerged as a significant mediator in the case of hedonic SNWs user acceptance phenomenon. Research limitations/implications -One web site each from hedonic and utilitarian SNWs was considered for the study. Future studies may be conducted by incorporating multiple web sites in each category to further emphasize the findings. Also, future studies might study the user acceptance phenomenon on the theoretical underpinning of the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology, which is much comprehensive than TAM. Practical implications -There seems to be a notion that SNWs need to be hedonic and offer entertainment value proposition to attract large number of users. However, SNWs with valuable utilitarian value propositions built around appreciable ideas would also be accepted by users as an efficient networking tool. Originality/value -Research on user acceptance of SNWs has been focused mostly on hedonic SNWs like Facebook and MySpace, while user acceptance of utilitarian SNWs like LinkedIn and Ryze has remained an unexplored domain.

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PurposeCOVID-19 pandemic-related Government restrictions on the movement of people resulted in consumers moving away from retail outlets. However, sporadic instances of an unexpected surge in retail buying happened across the world immediately after the lifting of such restrictions. This uncommon phenomenon, termed revenge buying, offered an opportunity to revive retail businesses. This paper applies Reactance Theory (RCT) and Self-determination Theory (SDT) to model consumers' revenge buying intentions.Design/methodology/approachData was collected from 384 respondents in India using validated scales. The study used structural equation modelling for model testing.FindingsCOVID-19 restrictions resulted in autonomy need frustration in consumers, which induced psychological reactance and perceived stress. Psychological reactance positively impacted, while perceived stress negatively impacted revenge buying intentions. Thus, revenge buying was observed only when the psychological reactance was more than perceived stress.Research limitations/implicationsThis study, conducted in only one country with a limited convenience sample, limits the generalizability of findings.Originality/valueThis research model the psychological consequences of need frustration to explain the sporadic incidences of revenge buying in retail outlets. Further, it proposes sales recovery strategies for retailers in the immediate post-pandemic market scenarios. Retailers' strategies should focus on alleviating stress and anxiety because of health concerns, highlighting the retail buying experience to stimulate the need to visit the outlet and positioning retail buying as a potential reactance response by consumers.

Case method has been a popular pedagogy in management education. It is a preferred evaluation tool which is inherently subjective in nature. This article compares the results of case-based evaluation in marketing discipline, in announced and unannounced settings, for full-time and part-time management programmes and discusses its implications. The data were collected from the formal evaluation made by a faculty of an Association of MBAs (AMBA) accredited management institute of India. The results suggests that for full-time residential MBA programmes, use of relative marks for grading each component of the evaluation is likely to be a more robust evaluation mechanism than using just the marks or using the consolidated marks for final grading. However, neither surprise quiz nor announced quiz provide any robust and unbiased method of evaluating the performance of the students of part-time non-residential MBA programme as the result are also dependent on variables like work and family, which are extraneous to the student’s interest and proficiency in the subject.

PurposeCOVID-19 disrupted the lives of consumers across the globe, and the retail sector has been one of the hardest hits. The impact of COVID-19 on consumers' retail choice behaviour and retailers' responses has been studied in detail through multiple lenses. Now that the effect of COVID-19 is abating, there is a need to consolidate the learnings during the lifecycle of COVID-19 and set the agenda for research post-COVID-19.Design/methodology/approachScopus database was searched to cull out academic papers published between March 2020 and June 6, 2022, using keywords; shopping behaviour, retailing, consumer behaviour, and retail channel choice along with COVID-19 (171 journals, 357 articles). Bibliometric analysis followed by selective content analysis was conducted.FindingsCOVID-19 was a black swan event that impacted consumers' psychology, leading to reversible and irreversible changes in retail consumer behaviour worldwide. Research on changes in consumer behaviour and consumption patterns has been mapped to the different stages of the COVID-19 lifecycle. Relevant research questions and potential theoretical lenses have been proposed for further studies.Originality/valueThis paper collates, classifies and organizes the extant research in retail from the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. It identifies three retail consumption themes: short-term, long-term reversible and long-term irreversible changes. Research agenda related to the retailer and consumer behaviour is identified; for each of the three categories, facilitating the extraction of pertinent research questions for post-COVID-19 studies.

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