Sustainability of China's singles day shopping festivals: Exploring the moderating effect of fairness atmospherics on consumers' continuance participation

Abstract

Singles Day Shopping Festival (SDSF) is one of the most influential online sales events in China. As a big production and even a well-known brand, SDSF has its own design, image, performance, and life cycle. Consumer satisfaction and continuous participation play an important role in the sustainable marketing of SDSF. This study empirically examined the antecedents of continuous participation intention by employing both expectation-confirmation theory (ECT) and stimulus-organism-response (SOR) model to reveal that promotion scale and social interaction have positive and significant effects on participants' emotional satisfaction-as-trust and-pleasure, which subsequently lead to continuous participation behaviors. This study investigated participants' perception of fairness atmospherics and its moderating effects on the positive links between promotion scale/social interaction and satisfaction, and the relationships between satisfaction and continuous participation intention. This study suggested that spending more money on jubilant festival buildings will not always exert more influence on participants' satisfaction as expected. Alternatively, creating a good and fair trading environment will reach the same goal and promote the sustainability of SDSFs. More detailed findings and implications are also discussed at the end of the paper.