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The purpose of this research is to investigate how the green image of a city can affect potential visitors' attitude toward the city in the context of user-generated content.The study adopts a 2 × 2 experimental design in which the greenness of the city image and the social distance between the users and the authors of social media content are examined. The results demonstrate that green image has a significant effect on attitudes toward cities. Moreover, the effects of social media content vary according to the perceived social distance between the author of the post and potential visitors. This study contributes to the literature by assessing the role that social media content plays in place branding and communication. Furthermore, it provides relevant insights on how institutions should enhance the sustainable resources of cities with their environmental policy and encourage the generation of content from various stakeholders to contribute to the development of a city's image.

This paper aims to understand how User Generated Contents (UGC) affect the process of place branding, identifying the main associations of various actors related to London and Florence, both traditionally linked to the fashion industry. In particular, this study focuses on fashion as a city image component that contributes to the construction of the image of London and Florence. This research applies a content analysis of visual information (pictures) and textual information (hashtags) available on social networks (i.e. Instagram), typing the hashtags #London and #Florence, to reconstruct the brand image of these two cities. As the recent literature has argued for brands or products, even for places and cities, it is important to monitor the perceived city brand image resulting from the overall online experience, especially on social media. This paper is one of the first to apply content analysis on Instagram in relation to city branding, where the core of communication is based on images. Therefore, in contrast to previous studies, this work principally focuses on visual communication, as a form of textual paralanguage communication, for the construction of a city image for London and Florence.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to advance the understanding of wine by the glass (WBG) consumption as a new growing trend in wine consumption. To this end, the roles of risk perception, wine involvement and variety seeking are investigated in determining WBG purchase intentions. Design/methodology/approach Two studies based on a scenario-based survey have been conducted. In Study 1 (n=248), the relationship between WBG risk perception and WBG purchase intention mediated by variety seeking is tested. In Study 2 (n=200), the relationship between wine involvement and WBG purchase intention with the mediating role of variety seeking is analysed. Findings Results show that variety seeking plays a key role in determining WBG purchase intentions considering both WBG perceived risk and wine involvement as independent variables. Research limitations/implications The study advances the literature on WBG consumption by enclosing the psychological mechanism (i.e. variety seeking) behind consumers’ WBG purchase intentions. The main limitation of this study lies in it being conducted in a single country (i.e. Italy). Practical implications This paper provides useful guidelines for wine managers. Specifically, variety seeking can attract consumers in new wine-consuming places based on a rich assortment. Moreover, it can present a challenge to wine producers in creating brand loyalty. Originality/value Although WBG is a growing trend in wine consumption, empirical studies are still scant and a deeper comprehension of its antecedents and consequences is needed. By showing variety seeking as the mechanism behind WBG consumption, this study offers a new theoretical explanation of this phenomenon.

The present research focuses on the interplay between two common features of the customer service chatbot experience: gaze direction and anthropomorphism. Although the dominant approach in marketing theory and practice is to make chatbots as human‐like as possible, the current study, built on the humanness‐value‐loyalty model, addresses the chain of effects through which chatbots' nonverbal behaviors affect customers' willingness to disclose personal information and purchase intentions. By means of two experiments that adopt a real chatbot in a simulated shopping environment (i.e., car rental and travel insurance), the present work allows us to understand how to reduce individuals' tendency to see conversational agents as less knowledgeable and empathetic compared with humans. The results show that warmth perceptions are affected by gaze direction, whereas competence perceptions are affected by anthropomorphism. Warmth and competence perceptions are found to be key drivers of consumers’ skepticism toward the chatbot, which, in turn, affects consumers’ trust toward the service provider hosting the chatbot, ultimately leading consumers to be more willing to disclose their personal information and to repatronize the e‐tailer in the future. Building on the Theory of Mind, our results show that perceiving competence from a chatbot makes individuals less skeptical as long as they feel they are good at detecting others’ ultimate intentions.