Sony Corporation first began as an electronics store in Japan in 1946 after World War II (Sony, 2015b). Masaru Ibuka and Akio Morita created the store under the name “Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo,” or “Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation” in English (Sony, 2015b). Ibuka’s primary intent for the electronic store was to be a telecommunications and measuring company (Sony, 2015b).

There is much discussion about the manner in which individuals relate to other brands and the degree with which the relationship resembles that of an interpersonal nature. According to Susan Fournier in her article “Consumers and Their Brands: Developing Relationship Theory in Consumer Research,” there are several criteria that define the existence of an interpersonal like relationship with a brand, the first being that the brand must act as an active member of the relationship in a reciprocal manner.

Online endorsements are defined as when a user of social media chooses to click the “like” button of another user’s status, uploaded picture, or shared stories, typically through the social networking website Facebook. While online endorsements began as a way for users to connect with others in their social networks, brands of various products and services began to allow users to “like” pages of the brand with the incentive of providing fans of these pages with continuous updates in their Facebook news feed (Bernritter, Loermans, Verlegh, & Smit, 2017).

Ambiversion is a personality trait in which an individual scores in the middle of the extraversion and continuum and possesses traits making them distinct from extreme extraverts or introverts. While the trait has received little attention for industrial and organizational psychological research, there is support for the notion that ambiversion may be a more effective trait for occupations such as management and sales position which are generally associated with extraverts.