Persuasive messages are central to interpersonal influence in online communities, where consumers interact mainly through text. We employed a combination of netnography and computer-mediated discourse analysis to investigate how consumers exchange information related to products and brands in an online community. We identified a set of rhetorical strategies used by community members, including setting expectations, claiming expertise, prescribing, and celebrating acquiescence. Consumers employ these rhetorical strategies to influence each other's consumption decisions, report consumption decisions back to the community, and to gauge their influence on each other's choices. We compare this process to traditional types of interpersonal influence and discuss how our findings contribute to advancing the burgeoning literature on interpersonal influence in online contexts.

Previous studies in retailing have suggested that gender influences the way people shop. Women are more affected by store environment elements and more likely to enjoy shopping than men. However, is it possible to reduce these gender effects and to enhance men's shopping outcomes? Drawing on gender and emotions literature, the authors suggest that emotions moderate gender effects on shopping outcomes (i.e. satisfaction, recommendation to others, and return intentions). This study tests the effects of emotions in two conditions: positive emotions (triggered by background music) and neutral emotions (control group, no music). Results demonstrate that positive (vs. neutral) emotions increase shopping satisfaction, recommendations, and return intentions for male consumers, in the same level as female consumers. In addition, the findings indicate that store environment perception mediates the effects of gender and emotions on shopping outcomes.

This paper explores the interactional effect of self-construal and openness to change on global and local brands identification in Brazil. Global brands are constantly expanding in most of the Latin American countries (Alden et al., 1999; Cornel and Drennan, 2004; Strizhakova, et al., 2008). However, consumer values in these countries can have an important impact in the evaluation of those brands. Moreover, self-construal can influence the value-behavior relationship (Oysermann, 2009).First, we conducted a pretest to identify the most representative global and local brands in Brazil. Then, in the main study, 301 undergraduate Brazilian students were surveyed. The scales used were: Openness to change values (Schwartz, 1992); self-construal (Singelis, 1994). Glocal Index is the difference between global and local brand identifications. Higher (vs. lower) scores on Glocal Index indicate global (vs. local) brand identification.In our analysis, a 2(values: low vs. high openness to change) x 2(Self-construal: independent vs. interdependent) ANOVA on brand identification (Glocal Index) revealed the predicted interaction (F(1, 28) = 4.85, p< .05). When an interdependent selfconstrual was salient, high openness to change participants reported more identification with global brands (M = .67) and low openness to change participants with local brands (M = -.77, p<.01). However, when an independent self-construal was salient, participants reported similar brand identification in both high openness to change (M = -.36) and low openness to change values (M = -.44, ns). These findings show that high openness to change participants would identify themselves more with local rather than global brands when independent (vs. interdependent) self-construal is salient. The main effect for openness to change was significant (F(1, 28) = 6.01, p< .05) while self-construal (F(1, 28) = 1.27, ns) did not reach significance.This research provides a deeper understanding of how a specific match in values and self-construal provides can increase local brand identification. Our initial findings indicate the hypothesized moderating role of self-construal on value-behavior relationship. The present research also demonstrates that self-construal salience can increase local brands preference. For instance, high openness to change participants reported more identification with local brands when an independent selfconstrual was salient (p< .05). In addition, we provide further evidence on how self-construal can influence the valuebehavior relationship (Oysermann, 2009). This understanding can contribute to the development of local brand strategies in Brazil.

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