Consumer research has demonstrated that emotions play an important role in the decisionmaking process. Individuals may use consumption or purchasing as a way to manage their emotions. This research develops a model to help explain the process by which individuals engage in consumption to manage their emotions, and examines the efficacy of an advertisement for a hedonic product that uses affect-laden language to stimulate such a process. Results suggest that favourable emotional responses from an advertisement can lead to positive attitudes towards the advertisement, prefactual thinking in the form of hedonic rationalisations and greater behavioural intentions. Additionally, guilt from consuming and purchasing these hedonic products can be mitigated, which is also associated with greater behavioural intentions. Findings have implications for marketers and advertisers of hedonic products.

Our study examined factors affecting Mexican adolescents' brand recognition and choice of snack products contained in advergames. Recognition tests and snack choice procedures were conducted where three issues were examined: (1) the effect of product and electronic media experience on adolescents' memory; (2) the effect of positive affect (liking) of both product and advergames on adolescents' memory; and (3) exploration of the effect of positive affect, experience and enhanced memory on adolescents' product choice. Multivariate analyses revealed that adolescents who exhibited positive affect toward both advergames and featured food products demonstrated elevated recognition performance. The positive effect of product experience on memory was confirmed. Interestingly, familiarity with videogame consoles enhanced adolescents' brand recognition scores as compared to television watching or computer usage. Among the participants, more than 65% selected snacks promoted on advergames over other snacks. The difference was statistically significant. A positive relationship between liking, enhanced memory and snack choice was found. The findings suggest that promotion of snack brands in advergames has the potential to influence not only adolescents' memory but also choice.

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to create and validate a scale that measures consumer xenocentrism in developing countries, where this phenomenon is furthermost prevalent. This study aimed for the conceptualization, construct development and validation of a new scale labeled X-Scale. The theoretical framework was based on the theories of social comparison, system justification and culture. Design/methodology/approach This study employed a mixed-method and multi-stage research approach to investigate the domain of xenocentrism in the context of consumer behavior and subsequently develop a scale (X-Scale), while assessing its dimensionality, reliability and validity. Qualitative and quantitative techniques were used for the development of the scale. Multi-stage data from five developing countries were collected for validation purposes: Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Ecuador and China. Findings Results indicate that the consumer xenocentrism construct has two dimensions: foreign admiration and domestic rejection. Each dimension is comprised of five items. The reliability tests, the goodness-of-fit measures and the psychometric properties indicate a reliable construct. In addition, this study shows that consumer xenocentrism is a key predictor of consumers’ preferences for foreign brands over domestic ones. Originality/value This is the first empirical study on consumer xenocentrism conducted in several developing countries. The X-Scale developed here is invariant across countries and, therefore, allows for comparison among them.

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