The paper aims to investigate the relationship between firm size and organizational actions on adopting social media for corporate reputation management. The sample group of 198 companies is selected with a simple random sample method from the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) listings: Sixty nine companies were from the Fortune 500 listings, seventy one companies from the NYSE midsize capitalization and fifty eight companies from the NYSE small capitalization listings. This study employs cross tabulations and Chi-square analysis, and the Kruskal-Wallis that enables the comparison of three samples that are independent. The results of the study show that (1) large firms have more social media ownership than small firms, (2) large firms respond to social media posts at a greater frequency and quickly than small firms, and (3) firm size is less likely associated with response styles to social media for online reputation management. The results show that reply time and response styles of organizations to social media customers in the 2015 survey has no significant change compared to that of 2011. There appears to be a pervasive lack strategic framework as most firms in the study were found not to be adequately monitoring or leveraging social media communication for their reputation management.

The study aims to articulate a definition of luxury brands, to propose a framework for consumer luxury brand relationships and to provide empirical evidence of the proposed model. The study conducted two surveys in Portugal and the United States in 2009 and 2013 for selected luxury brands. The study employs factor analysis and structural equation modelling techniques to test the hypotheses. The study finds a link between luxury products and consumer’s psychological association represents in a hierarchical order of: cognitive attributes at its base level, extrinsic attributes on a secondary level and intrinsic attributes at the advance level. The findings suggest a concept for luxury brands from three dimensions of: luxury product characteristics, consumer’s psychological characteristics, and consumer’s psychological association with the luxury product. The research was conducted in Portugal and the United States so that there is always a potential criticism concerning the ability to generalize research results to a broader international population. The findings provide a holistic perspective in the understanding of luxury brand constructs and a definition of luxury brands in the way why consumers involve symbolic consumption. The successful application of the findings in a brand setting would be of particular interest to marketers and brand strategists.

The paper explores determinants of corporate adoption of social media and the role of technology acceptance model in the path. This paper assimilates some components of the technology acceptance dimension and social expectation theories to determine corporate intentions to use social media. Six hundred and forty-eight samples collected from hotel staff in Korea are analyzed using factor analysis, structural equation model techniques and one-way analysis of variance. The results show that corporate needs, social expectations, ease of use and usefulness should be viewed as important antecedents explaining the firm’s behavioral intention to use social media. The study also finds that the ease of use and usefulness of the technology acceptance model have positive directional mediation effects in the path diagram.

Since World War II nations have formed alliances for reasons of security and trade. Countries have seen international integration as an appropriate approach to resolving domestic and international political issues, improving their welfare by both transforming their infrastructures and increasing their foreign trade. While the majority of these relationships are straightforward d Turkey’s relationship with the European Union is more complex due to differences in religion and, at times, political ideology from other Union members. As a candidate country Turkey has made advances towards the full membership of the European Union with the customs union being the most significant. The impact of customs union membership is discussed and the effects of the customs union on Turkey’s trade and economy are examined from a perspective of different economic theories.