With the current pandemic, the health-conscious consumer segment, a niche segment, has emerged as a major market for a range of products and services. It is necessary for marketers to identify and profile the health-conscious consumers in the country to devise the right segmentation, targeting, and positioning (STP) strategy and to design a consumer-centric marketing mix. The scales used to measure health consciousness and related concepts are developed and tested in the West and there is no such scale that fits India’s demographic and cultural context. The objective of this study was to conceptualize a reliable health consciousness scale that is relevant to India. This was a quantitative study that was conducted in April–May 2021. Items to be included in the scale were derived based on the review of existing literature and brainstorming among target respondents. Confirmatory factor analysis was used for data reduction. A series of principal component factor analyses using Varimax yielded 12 scale items that loaded onto three factors—health involvement, health responsibility, and health awareness. Scale items were tested for validity and reliability—measures tested include Cronbach’s alpha, composite reliability, discriminant validity, and average variance extracted. SPSS version 20 and AMOS version 20 were used to analyse data. This study yielded a health consciousness scale that can be used to identify health-conscious consumers in India.

Social media platforms help brands connect with their customers online, and a social media -based brand community (SMBBC) enable brand attachments to particular brands. These brand communities enhance consumer relationships, increase customer advocacy, discover customer problems, and generate unique product and marketing ideas. In the context of Social Identity Theory and SOR framework (stimulus-organism-response), the present study explored the influence of customer-centric elements (the four relationships) on an online brand community that affect and provoke members’ conscious brains to get into action. The study further examines the impact of SMMBC on brand trust and brand equity variables (brand awareness, perceived quality, brand association and brand loyalty) and, consequently, on customer response (purchase intention, response to brand extension and willingness to pay a premium). A self-administered online survey was conducted to collect data on all selected brands. The brands were selected using a stratified sampling method, and the stratum used was the number of fans following the brands. The top three brands with the highest fan following from 15 sectors were picked. The study selected 384 final responses after the data screening procedure. SPSS version 26 and AMOS graphics were used for testing hypothesised relationship. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was conducted to ensure that the selected scale items were appropriately loaded, followed by measurement model’s reliability and validity testing using Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). The findings of SEM analysis conclude that customer-centric elements are significant determinants of the online brand community. The results also confirmed that strengthening SMBBC leads to higher brand trust and positively influences all brand equity dimensions. In addition, the research study found that positive brand equity results in favourable consumer responses. This study contributes theoretically to past studies on brand community and customer response, mainly in social media. The findings are helpful for managers to design and manage their online brand communities effectively and to elicit more positive responses.

Movies are getting extremely costly and product placement has become inevitable to accommodate brands to support their budgets. Moreover, brands are demanding return on investment for their placements. This article makes an attempt to evaluate the outcome of brand placements in movies. As Indian audiences are exposed to both Hollywood and Bollywood movies, product placement is rapidly turning into a colossal path for brands to achieve their objectives by placing the brand in a subtle or blatant way. It is reasonable to count on that consumer contrast of brands will genuinely get influenced based on the type of the entertainment event (Bollywood vs. Hollywood) and type of the product placement (subtle vs. blatant). A structural equation model was developed to assess the effect of entertainment event and placement type (PT) on brand attitude (AB) and consequently on purchase intentions (PIs). The study also explores the possibility of mediation and conducted multi-group analysis on event type and PT using AMOS and SPSS. The findings help us to comprehend the event type (Hollywood movie vs. Bollywood movie) and the PT (subtle vs. blatant) that has the most significant impact on AB and subsequently on PI.

Indian online retailing landscape is characterized by a plethora of sellers all trying to attract the same set of target customers, making service quality a critical differentiating factor for the players. This study investigates the influence of process quality, outcome quality and service recovery on customer e-satisfaction, and e-loyalty and also the influence of customer e-satisfaction on e-loyalty. Sample size of this quantitative study was 199, sample unit was youth and sampling method was purposive sampling. The study was conducted in April–May 2019 in Bengaluru. Responses were subjected to SEM, factor analysis, hypothesis testing, direct and indirect effects using AMOS20. Process quality, outcome quality and service recovery were seen to significantly influence customer e-satisfaction with process quality having a greater impact. Service recovery positively influences outcome quality. Customer e-satisfaction was found to significantly influence customer e-loyalty. Process quality and service recovery significantly influence customer e-satisfaction while outcome quality did not have any impact on customer e-loyalty. Process quality seem to have more impact than service recovery and outcome quality on customer e-loyalty. The findings are in line with previous study. However, the influence of service recovery on outcome quality is something new this study has revealed.