Moved by the Masses: A Social Identity Perspective on Inspiration

When and how to share? The role of inspiration

Sharing what we know with others has an important role in facilitating people's social learning and communication across settings. To advance the understanding of when and how people share, the present study examined the role of inspiration, an emotion that contains strong motivational elements, on people's sharing tendencies in three studies. Study 1 showed a positive association between the inspiring level of a given message and its likelihood of being shared. Study 2 replicated the finding with carefully controlling for the effect of positivity of a given message. Study 3 further provided evidence that inspiration shaped how people share. The results showed that participants shared inspiring messages in a more innovative way than when they shared less inspiring messages. The present research has implications for how to promote the sharing process in different settings through the role of inspiration.

Inspiration or risk? How social media marketing of plant-based meat affects young people's purchase intention

As an alternative protein product to animal meat, plant-based meat is considered to play an essential role in improving animal welfare and protecting the environment. However, why do a few consumers choose plant-based meat but others do not? Despite the increasing research on plant-based meat marketing, little is known about the psychological mechanism by which plant-based meat marketing affects consumers' purchasing decisions. We utilize dual-system theory to understand how social media marketing of plant-based meat influences cognitive fluency, customer inspiration, perceived risk, and purchase intention. Four studies (i.e., Studies 1, 2, 3, and 4) show that social media marketing can increase young people's purchase intention of plant-based meat more than traditional marketing. In Studies 1 and 2, increased intensity of social media marketing can enhance young people's cognitive fluency and further promote purchase intention. Study 3 explores how cognitive fluency relates to purchase intention through two psychological mechanisms. We suggest that a higher level of cognitive fluency increases customer inspiration and improves purchase intention. However, a lower level of cognitive fluency reduces purchase intention by increasing perceived risk. Study 4 manipulated members' in-group or out-group status to show a boundary condition for the effect of brand community identity on purchase intention. These studies provide insight into how brand marketers can use social media to promote consumer inspiration and advertising engagement, how managers can offer fluency-increasing mechanisms to ensure a low level of perceived risk, and how enterprise practitioners may want to consider brand community publicity to attract out-group members.