Although previous literature has identified personal branding as an important concept in marketing, little is understood about the effects of personal brand equity (PBE) during the personnel selection process. To address this research gap, we performed two experimental studies and one field study in the domains of sales and engineering to examine the effect of candidates’ PBE on hiring outcomes through recruiters’ perceptions. This research draws upon signaling theory and an integration of the accessibility-diagnosticity model with the competence-based view of careers and regards PBE as the interpreted outcome of personal branding signals, reflecting how recruiters perceive and evaluate the value conveyed by job candidates. We unveil that candidates’ PBE positively predicts hiring recommendation and that credibility mediates this relationship. Moreover, job hierarchy and objective job qualifications appear to negatively moderate the relationship between candidates’ PBE and hiring recommendation. Our findings also indicate that objective job qualifications negatively interact with candidates’ PBE in predicting their credibility. The present research contributes to personal branding and selection research by offering novel insights into the role of PBE during the interview process, thereby providing guidance for job candidates and practitioners.

When exposed to advertisements, consumers are often suspicious of brand claims. To that end, prior research has explored how individuals evaluate claims to form a judgement under a state of suspicion. Yet, consumer research has not examined how suspicion affects consumers' suspension of their judgement towards the brand. We experimentally investigate the effects of three (low vs. moderate vs. high) levels of consumer suspicion on judgement suspension. Study 1 shows that compared with low or high levels, moderate levels of suspicion lead to significantly higher judgement suspension. Studies 2 and 3 replicate this inverted U-shaped effect for additional brand and product category contexts and unveil that uncertainty towards the brand mediates the effect of suspicion on judgement suspension. In turn, the impact of uncertainty towards the brand on judgement suspension is mediated by product imagery. This research corroborates the effects of suspicion on consumer judgement suspension.

Despite their environmental benefits, products made from recycled materials are not readily adopted. Prior studies focused on improving consumer adoption via product attributes and marketing elements, but the impact of product appearance remains a gap in the literature. This research contributes by investigating how observability of the recycled content, as a product appearance intervention, influences consumer adoption of products made from recycled materials. Building on the integrated conceptual framework for consumer response to the visual domain in product design, the findings from three experiments (n1=162, n2=219, n3=320) demonstrate that observability of the recycled content leads to higher purchase intentions (Studies 1, 2 and 3). The underlying process for this effect is that these observable appearance cues trigger identity signaling (Studies 2 and 3). This effect is stronger when the consumption context is public (Study 3). These findings enable practitioners to enhance adoption of these products through altering their appearance.