In cryptocurrency markets, credibility may be created before it can be verified. Promotional signals from influencers, online communities, exchanges, and project actors can create an impression of legitimacy before consumers are able to independently assess the quality, risks, or underlying value of the asset. This systematic review examines how promotional activity contributes to this condition and how the literature connects it with ethical concerns, consumer consequences, and governance. Following PRISMA 2020, 54 empirical studies published between 2019 and 2025 were identified through Scopus and analyzed using thematic synthesis. The findings indicate that promotion is distributed across social media, influencers, communities, exchanges, and project actors, making the boundary between marketing, personal opinion, and financial advice difficult to maintain. Ethical problems arise not only from fraud, but also from selective information, hidden incentives, artificial attention, and market signals that give uncertain assets an appearance of legitimacy. Consumer vulnerability is similarly situational. Knowledge and experience may offer some protection, but trust, technological complexity, social influence, and speculative expectations continue to shape judgement. Regulatory and educational responses remain fragmented because responsibility is dispersed across actors and jurisdictions. The review connects these relationships through an ethical marketing cycle that conceptually organizes how ethical concerns may develop across communication, market activity, consumer interpretation, and governance. This perspective extends ethical marketing beyond the accuracy of individual claims and locates responsibility within the structures through which cryptocurrency credibility is produced. The review is limited by its reliance on Scopus and the absence of a formal risk-of-bias assessment of the included studies.
Yaning Zhang, Wei Shao, Mai Nguyen, Kun Zhang ¡ 5 authors
ABSTRACT Destinations are increasingly adopting NonâFungible Tokens (NFTs) as innovative tools for brand communication and visitor engagement in digital tourism contexts. Drawing on Construal Level Theory (CLT), we examine how the anthropomorphic (ANT) design of NFT characters influences tourists' impulsive travel intentions and whether customization strengthens this effect. In two online experiments, we tested a sequential mediation model linking ANT to impulsive travel intention through psychological distance (PD) and perceived playfulness. The results show that highly anthropomorphic NFT characters increase psychological proximity, which subsequently increases impulsive travel intentions. Moreover, customization significantly strengthens this indirect effect. This study extends research on digital destination marketing while offering practical guidance for designing effective NFTâbased tourism strategies.
R. Priyadharsini, Ravikanth Reddy Vadamala, R. Raajalakshmi, K. Raghav Prasad ¡ 5 authors
The rapid transformation of global business environments driven by digitalization, technological advancement, changing consumer expectations, and competitive market dynamics has significantly altered traditional marketing practices and strategic business operations. Organizations operating in highly dynamic economic ecosystems are increasingly recognizing that conventional marketing frameworks alone are insufficient to sustain long-term growth, customer engagement, and market relevance. In this context, innovation-driven marketing models have emerged as a critical strategic approach that integrates creativity, data intelligence, technological innovation, customer-centric design, and adaptive business strategies to enhance organizational competitiveness and sustainable value creation. This research examines the growing significance of innovation-driven marketing models and their influence on consumer behavior, brand positioning, digital engagement, operational efficiency, and business sustainability across modern industries. The study explores how emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data analytics, blockchain, cloud computing, augmented reality, and social media ecosystems are transforming traditional marketing processes into highly personalized, predictive, and experience-oriented systems capable of responding to rapidly evolving market demands. The research further investigates how innovation-oriented marketing strategies support product differentiation, dynamic pricing, omnichannel communication, customer relationship management, and real-time market responsiveness in both online and offline commercial environments. Particular emphasis is placed on the role of innovation in enhancing customer engagement through interactive digital platforms, data-driven personalization, automated communication systems, influencer-based branding strategies, and experiential marketing campaigns. The study also evaluates how organizations leverage innovative business models to improve customer retention, market expansion, and strategic decision-making while simultaneously addressing challenges related to market uncertainty, consumer trust, technological adaptation, and ethical data utilization. A comparative assessment of traditional marketing approaches and innovation-driven marketing frameworks demonstrates that organizations adopting innovation-centric strategies experience stronger consumer loyalty, improved operational agility, enhanced brand visibility, and higher adaptability to changing economic conditions. Additionally, the research highlights the growing importance of sustainability-oriented marketing innovation, where businesses integrate environmental responsibility, social value creation, and ethical consumer engagement into their branding and communication practices. The findings indicate that innovation-driven marketing models not only contribute to commercial profitability but also strengthen organizational resilience and long-term strategic sustainability in highly competitive global markets. The study concludes that future business success increasingly depends on the ability of organizations to continuously innovate their marketing structures, technological capabilities, and customer engagement mechanisms in alignment with digital transformation and evolving consumer expectations. Therefore, innovation-driven marketing represents a transformative strategic paradigm capable of reshaping modern business ecosystems through intelligent, adaptive, and customer-focused value creation models.
Cheuk Hang Au, Po-Hsu Shieh, Vladimir Nurbaev, Kris M. Y. Law ¡ 5 authors
Digital platforms face a fundamental paradox: while expanding service variety is a dominant competitive strategy, it risks inducing a âparadox of choiceâ that confuses and deters users. This tension manifests with extreme clarity in the nascent, high-complexity market of cryptocurrency exchanges, creating a pressing empirical puzzle. To resolve this, we adopt the Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) perspective in a three-stage mixed-method study to investigate how platforms can strategically manage this trade-off. Our qualitative exploration (Study 1) established a capital flow schema called âinflow, roll, and goâ and identified key complexity-reduction mechanisms. A subsequent survey (n = 190, Study 2) validated that perceived innovativeness and scalability are critical stimuli for service variety, which in turn drives user continuance intention. A final survey (n = 140, Study 3) confirmed that users prioritise services that bridge to the traditional financial system, forming a minimal viable structure with a variety of functions. Our meta-inferences make several key contributions, including the resolution of the service variety paradox by introducing a theoretical distinction between value-adding âreal-varietyâ and confusing âpseudo-varietyâ and the development of a strategic roadmap that guides exchanges in navigating the tension between service expansion and user confusion, offering actionable insights for platform strategy in any high-velocity digital market.