Over the past decade, the advances in the Internet of Things has allowed WiFi infrastructure to track the movement and location of smart devices. This innovative technology is sometimes referred to as wireless analytics or offline / in-store visitor analytics. Similar to an offline or instore version of website analytics, wireless analytics can infer instore shopping behavior from analyzing the dwell time, movement, and behavior of a smart device within a designated vicinity. The study was carried out at an activation area of food trucks at an Australian metropolitan university. Visitor analytics were gathered by using a wireless analytic modem that was configured to ping and pick up wireless signal emitted by smart devices within the radius of the food truck area. Challenging past research on pop-stores, our findings show that novelty of pop-up food trucks may not necessarily predict their success and consumers tend to prefer familiar food trucks at the Australian metropolitan university. In fact, the presence of novel food trucks may encourage consumers to walk-by without any interaction with the food trucks.

Destination Marketing Organisations (DMOs) are facing the dilemma: on one hand, communicating branding messages effectively to target markets all over the world requires abundant resources, while stakeholders within the destination have different (sometimes even conflicting) interests in destination branding on the other. Specifically, residents of a tourism destination have great potential in helping the place by being involved in tourism development and destination branding, due to the development of information technology. To investigate how self-congruity influences residents’ evaluation on the place, as well as their voluntary WOM behaviours, this article proposes self-congruity as a key construct affecting residents’ place satisfaction and expectation, and further influencing residents’ place related behaviours, such as word-of-mouth (WOM). An empirical study was conducted in Ljubljana, Slovenia, with 309 questionnaire collected. Via a structural equation modelling analysis, this study finds that variation of self-congruity in the impacts on place satisfaction and expectation, as well as two types of WOM behaviours, namely one-to-one WOM and one-to-many WOM. This provides evidence to support the standpoint that different WOM are motivated by different factors via different psychological mechanisms. Specifically, (1) actual selfcongruity and place satisfaction (reflecting an evaluation of past of current performance of the place) only affect one-to-one WOM, suggesting that this type of WOM is mainly motivated by one’s current state; (2) ideal self-congruity was found to affect place expectation, suggesting a consistency in the expectation of one’s self image and the place; (3) one-to-many WOM has two indicators of ideal self-congruity and place expectation, implying publishing one’s opinions and thoughts is driven by expectation rather than current state. In general, the results add detailed and in-depth findings on distinguishing the motivations of different types of WOM in WOM literature.

With competition among hotel brands intensifying more than ever before, there has been a burgeoning interest in the hospitality industry on the topic of brand love. However, progress of brand love research in hotel context has been limited and investigation on antecedents of brand love has mainly focused on affective and relational aspects, while neglecting cognitive aspects of brand love. Therefore, the objective of this research was to illuminate the importance of brand love's cognitive aspect by identifying cognitive brand loyalty as a necessary component of brand love in hotel context. In addition, present research suggests that by inducing cognitive engagement among customers, hotel brands can attain cognitive brand loyalty from customers, which in turn derives brand love. To achieve the research objective, a questionnaire with items measuring brand love, cognitive brand loyalty and two aspects of cognitive engagement, cognitive attention and cognitive absorption, was distributed to 300 individuals through Amazon Mechanical Turk. Brand love was measured with scale adapted from Carroll and Ahuvia (2006), cognitive brand loyalty was measured using items introduced by Back and Parks (2003), and cognitive engagement elements were measured using items developed by So, King and Sparks (2014). In analyzing the data, structural equation modeling method was used. The findings of the study indicate that the effect of cognitive brand loyalty on brand love is significant and that the relationship between cognitive attention and cognitive brand loyalty is also positive and significant. However, the relationship between cognitive absorption and cognitive brand loyalty was positive only at a marginally significant level. As a result, the indirect effect of cognitive attention on brand love was positive and significant yet, the indirect effect of cognitive absorption on brand love was insignificant. This study enriches the brand love literature’s spectrum by illuminating the importance of brand love’s cognitive aspect. However, it is important to note that the focus is not necessarily on the cognitive processing or the standards, but on the cognitive engagement experience. In addition, because customers generally process information most heavily during the booking process, present research brings out managerial implications for hotel brands to direct more customers to their own brand website rather than the online-travel-agency( OTA) website. For instance, the results of present research illustrate that price discount or additional amenity are not enough to develop brand love. Rather, hotels should provide loyalty members who book directly through brand sites with more enjoyable, creative, and relevant to self-room shopping experience.

This study proposed an alternative model specification to increase accuracy of conceptualization of the definition of customer engagement and provided theoretical justification for the model in specific social media contexts. The proposed model is a formative construct based on theoretical contexts and observational data. The construct comprises six formative first-order dimensions, namely “influencing behaviors,” “participation in activities,” “customer knowledge sharing,” “feedbacks,” “helping other customers,” and “customer-to-customer interaction.” The study findings offer a basis for identifying indicators of distinct dimensions in the proposed construct. Three models with different conceptualization specifications were estimated and subsequently compared using survey data.

Customer engagement (CE) has commonly defined as a psychological state or process that leads to customer loyalty (Brodie, Hollebeek, Juric, & Ilic, 2011). CE research has received increasing attention due to its critical role in luring favorable customer experience and outcomes such as brand trust, affection, and future purchase intention (Harrigan, Evers, Miles, & Daly, 2017; So, King, Sparks, & Wang, 2016). Despite scholars’ continuous efforts in advancing the CE field of study, several limitations remain unaddressed. First, empirical research focuses primarily on antecedents and consequences of CE that are derived from individual dispositions (Harrigan, et al., 2017); thus, customer actual behavioral outcomes of CE are generally unexplored. Second, most, if not all, empirical research investigates the nomological network of CE based on individual-level factors (Khan, Rahman, & Fatma, 2016; So, King, & Sparks, 2014). Such an individual-level approach is important as it builds the necessary foundation of the CE domain of study. Yet, the roles of organizational strategic position are largely ignored, while organizational-level situational factors are rarely considered. This research aims to bridge the aforementioned research gaps by constructing both individual-level dispositions and organizational-level situational factors into an integrated framework. In particular, this research seeks to explore the roles of two organizational strategic initiatives – service environment and brand equity – on customer engagement and its impact on customer behaviors.

Introduction Brand community influences consumer behavior due to the growing impact of social media in both virtual environment and in real life. Social networks for the brand - it's an opportunity to simply, accessible and round the clock talk about all the important events of its audience within an online brand community. The subject of our research is based on the type of user and the motivations for participating in the online brand community. We investigate how the brand relationship quality and online brand community engagement are related and what consumer motives influence the online brand community engagement. This study represents how brands and consumers make interactions in a virtual environment. Theoretical Development Past research demonstrates that members of brand communities are motivated to join or participate in life of brand communities for various reasons. Some scholars distinguish motives, values, drivers, stimulating the attention, activity, relationship with the online brand community or brand commitment and engagement as well. They include: information or knowledge-seeking motives, entertainment, remuneration, personal identity, integration, social interaction, sense of belonging, level of communication, self-discovery and hedonic benefits (Muntinga, Moorman, & Smit, 2011; Dholakia & Bagozzi, 2004; Yen, Hsu & Huang, 2011; Wang, Fesenmaier, 2004). The benefits gained by consumers through engaging in an OBC are obvious, which were discussed in prior studies (Yen, Hsu & Huang, 2011) such as entertainment, gratification, social – appreciation or learning (Wang, Fesenmaier, 2004). But accordingly to Tseng, Huang & Setiawan (2017) the main initial reasons why people join the online brand community are usually pragmatic, for example, they seek information or entertainment. Tseng, Huang & Setiawan (2017) focus on two pragmatic motives, knowledge- and entertainment seeking motives, that served as the members‟ initial drives to participate in online brand communities. They categorized motivations into pragmatic (functional-related) and symbolic (social-related) motives. In this case, not all of the motives are on the same level. Hennig-Thurau, Gwinner, Walsh (2004) demonstrated that the crucial factor that influence on the interaction of consumers with online brand communities is that consumers are more actively involved in online communities when there are economic incentives (discounts, actions, competitions). Zhou, Zhang et al. (2012) came to a similar conclusion, that companies should provide material assistance and also deliver care and rewards to the brand community as well. Communication can relate to the necessity to receive feedback from the brand on the issues of consumer‟s interest as well as communication with community members, which may be caused by motives such as social – appreciation, creating a status or self-esteem status, sharing personal experience, self-confidence or establishing relationships (Dholakia, Bagozzi, and Pearo 2004). For brands, on the one hand, it is important to understand the motives of the community members, and on the other, to help them achieve their goals. Directly concerned the online brand community allows not only to increase brand awareness, establish brand identity to the consumer's perception, but also promotes the penetration of the brand's personality into the consumer's lifestyle. That is why such serious importance should be paid to the content (filling) of the brand pages: external events, news, which can be popular in the internet environment, or simply congratulates subscribers on holidays (Schau, Muñiz, & Arnould, 2009). Great attention is paid to the diversity of content in the brand communities of well-known cosmetic brands: video lessons, make-up instructions, contests for every new product launch, interesting facts about the brand, beauty memories for instance. In the brand communities of sports goods the content of expert materials about sports and their benefits is used, about the nuances of performing certain exercises, about proper nutrition, about new scientific discoveries concerning sports and health, and even food recipes. But qualitative content is not a frequent phenomenon, as mass borrowings of other people's materials and ideas are most often observed. If the content is really useful and qualitative, then the community will gain tremendous trust from subscribers or active members (Habibi et al., 2014). Motivational content is important for brand promotion as well. For example, motivation is often not enough for people to start a healthy lifestyle. And due to the lack of motivation many consumers throw begun half-way. If the company gives selfconfidence to the community members, then it will become a loyal friend to them and will be able to gain trust, create an emotional connection with them. This variety of content in one account is useful for different categories of subscribers. Therefore it is worth emphasizing that for communities it is important UGC (user generated content). According to Muntinga et al. (2011) the term „user-generated content‟ (UGC) is used for the content produced and uploaded by consumers rather than companies. Schau, Muñiz, & Arnould (2009) demonstrate that companies can encourage the interaction of practices to foster greater customer engagement with the brand in the process of value co-creation. Choi, Ko and Kim (2016) emphasized that value cocreation means that customer emotional, cognitive, and behavioral experiences are the basis of the value, impressions, recognition, and internalization they accord to the brand. Some people like to participate in the creation of content, give some recommendations. Accordinly to Schau, Muñiz, & Arnould (2009) if the firms give consumers the opportunity to construct brand communities and the freedom to modify their products, they will be ready to take the initiative. Different motives, values, brand trust, brand loyalty, brand identification and brand community identification are related. Martínez-López, Anaya, & Molinillo (2017) explain in their study, that members‟ OBC engagement and participation based on their relationships with other members and with the community sponsor (companies/brands). But there are points of view that determine that the relationship between motives and community commitment can be both direct and indirect. Bagozzi & Dholakia (2004), Zhou & Zhang et al. (2012) support the positive influence of brand community identification on brand identification and attachment. Previous studies find that members‟ commitment to a brand community leads to their commitment to the brand (Kim, Choi, Qualls, & Han, 2008) and consequently consumers tend to purchase the same brand consistently (Algesheimer et al., 2005). Positive aspects of the community's influence will lead to positive behavioral intentions, such as consumer recommendations for joining this community to friends and acquaintances (Hennig-Thurau, Gwinner, Walsh, 2004). Therefore electronic positive word-of-mouth‟(eWOM) on social media is significant tool for online consumer-to-consumer interactions both about brands (Muntinga et al., 2011) and about brand communities (Pop & Woratschek, 2017): consumers can generate and spread brand related information to their friends, peers, and others without constraints (Kim & Ko, 2012). The best channel for promotion at any level is a positive experience that a person receives from the use of products, and the desire to share it arises as a consequence. Cooperation with opinion leaders has recently become a priority for many brands. In addition, collaboration with different bloggers allows to establish contact with a wider audience, because in the last few years it is the authors of popular blogs that shape the tastes and preferences of the public. Leaders of opinion help shape the brand's image in the eyes of the widest audience of consumers and, as a result, influence sales. Quite often, when bloggers become brand ambassadors, they take part in advertising campaigns. Research Design In our study we attempt to determine the influence of the type of consumer (innovators, opinion leaders, status seekers, etc.), the motives for participating in the online brand community (entertainment, information search, reward, hedonistic motives, self-expression) on online brand community engagement (interaction), positive WOM online brand community. Therefore, this study particularly addresses the following research questions: 1. What consumer motivations influence the online brand community engagement and the positive WOM online brand community? 2. Does the brand identity influence the online brand community engagement (interaction) and the positive WOM online brand community? 3. What factors influence the promotion activity of brand and online brand community? Our study suggests that consumer motivations (social interaction, knowledge seeking, hedonic motives) and type of consumers (innovators, opinion leaders, status seekers) positive influence on the online brand community engagement and WOM brand community. Accordingly, we have developed the following hypothesis: H1: Hedonic consumer motives influence online brand community engagement positively. Н2: Knowledge seeking consumer motives influence online brand community engagement positively. Н3: Creation UGC consumer motives influence online brand community engagement positively. H4: Opinion leaders influence brand relationship quality positively. H5: Innovativeness (consumer innovators) influence brand relationship quality positively. H6: Brand relationship quality influences e-WOM online brand community positively. Today in Russia, social networks reach 70% of the population (about 87 million people), and many users are active on multiple sites (http://mandmglobal.com/digital-marketing-trends-in-russia-social-networks). 87% of Internet users use social networks, including 51% have accounts in several online communities. Studies by Nielsen show that people increasingly buy online or choose goods and things on social networks, and then buy them offline. Recently most Russian and international fashion, cosmetics, clothing companies have began to use social media actively as a channel of communication with end customers. Data collection took place between March and December 2017. We developed two online questionnaires, using www.esurveycreator.com and conducted research on two topics – interaction with cosmetic and sportswear brand-communities. The popularity of a healthy lifestyle is constantly gaining momentum, and at the same time the number of new sports brands is growing. The survey questionnaires were originally designed in English then translated into Russian using a translation/ backtranslation procedure. All of the constructs used in this study were adapted or modified from extant research and multiple item statements were measured by seven-point Likert type scale. Result and Conclusion A total of 444 respondents from Russia were included in this study: 216 respondents interacted with cosmetic online brand-communities and 228 respondents from sportswear brand-communities. The survey involved young people, as the most active part of social networks users. We found that respondents are mainly subscribed to the community brand in the networks: VK (Vkontakte) and Instagram. Less popular are Facebook and Twitter. Russian social network Vkontakte has the largest audience with a monthly user-base of 82-90 million monthly users (it is most popular with younger users (ages 18-34)), then it is followed by OK, Instagram (about 30-17 mil) and Facebook (21 mil), (http://mandmglobal.com/digital-marketing-trends-in-russia-social-networks). Basically, Instagram is interesting for the audience at the age of 18-24 (36.6%) and 25-34 (34.22%). Older social media users generally prefer the social media site OK (originally Odnoklassniki – “classmates”). OK.ru has over 31.5 million viewers a month, with the majority (69%) being women. (https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/top-8-russian-social-networks- makes-great). A Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA), using AMOS 19.0, was first employed to assess the properties of the constructs. Relevant loadings were significant, and construct reliability values ranged from 0.6 to 0.885. Discriminant validity relies on average variance extracted (all AVEs are at level of 0,5-0,7) and it was supported. The Structural Equation Modelling was conducted for examining the model (fig. 1). Overall model fit indices are satisfactory: RMSEA is = 0.06 (according to Hu & Bentler (1999)), x2/df = 2,9 (Chi-Square=3373, df=1153), CFI =0.87, IFI = 0.819, P-value<0.001. Thus, according to the results of the research, not all hypotheses have been confirmed. We find that hedonic consumer motives, creation UGC consumer motives influence on the online brand community engagement (table 1). Social interaction benefits have significant impact on creation UGC consumer motives (ß=0.96, t=16.86, p<0.001). Knowledge seeking motives has negative influence on the Online brand community engagement (ß= - 0.96, t=-5.086, p<0.001). Finally, our findings reveal that, brand relationship quality has no significant impact on WOM Online Brand Community (ß=0.192, t=3.81, p<0.001), it is not related to the Online Brand Community Engagement. Construct of brand loyalty was completely excluded from the model due to poor findings. Online communities can follow distinctive norms of interaction, contain rituals or general agreements (Jang H., Olfman L., Ko I., Koh J., Kim K., 2008). Accordingly, our further research should include research on the influence of online brand community atmosphere (norms, rituals, traditions) on the intentions to continue to be a member of the community. In addition, we would like to pay more attention to the impact of content types on the intentions of the participants.

In this paper we explore the concept of gamification and its business applications in the Russian companies. Gamification has been introduced in 2003 and since that time it has acquired a wide recognition as an efficient tool to enhance front-office and back-office business processes increasing performance and boosting engagement of the participants. Gamification refers to the use of game elements and designs in non-game environments. As a result customers and employees involved stay more focused and motivated to accomplish the chosen goal. We explore customer engagement practices (gamification) of the Russian companies including application areas, funding and perceived efficiency of these initiatives and their shifts over time. Our analysis is based on two waves of data collection: 2015 and 2018, as the result we outline four groups of practices based on the scope of the gamification techniques used and variety of the business processes involved. Also we provide comparative analysis and observe changes in gamification use over time.

We aim to determine the level of Image Interactivity Technology which can create an optimal engagement on the online consumer’s experience while surfing on hotel websites. Our model includes three personal traits as moderating variables and will be tested through a mixed approach (i.e. experiment, interview and questionnaire).

Introduction The retail environment, which is offering special experience to consumers based on customized consumer lifestyle, creates customer value from voluntary customer engagement. In recent study, it is shown that customer engagement is becoming an important factor which determines the characteristics of customer behavior in the retail and hospitality industries. However, the study of customer engagement has mainly focused on its performance in marketing field ( Hapsari, Clemes, and Dean, 2017; Kumar and Pansari, 2016) and most researches have handled the concept of customer engagement from the perspective of online environment(Shin and Byun, 2016; Jeon, 2016). Theoretical Development This study aims to investigate the psychological motivation for customer engagement and to examine the underlying factors of customer behavior in offline retail environment based on experience economy theory and Self-Determination Theory(SDT). First, this study investigates the relationship between perceived psychological benefits (autonomy, competence, and relatedness) and intrinsic motivation. Also, this study tried to analyze the relationship between intrinsic motivation and customer engagement (conscious participation, enthusiasm, and social interaction). Second, we tried to examine the relationship between customer engagement and customer creation value (functional value, hedonic value, and social value). Thirdly, we suggested the effect of customer creation value on customer purchasing behavior (shopping memories, customer satisfaction, word-of-mouth, and revisit intention). In addition, we attempted to find the mediating effect of the hedonic value between customer engagement and shopping memories; customer engagement and customer satisfaction. Futhermore, we investigated the mediating effect of shopping experience between hedonic value and customer satisfaction. Finally, We discussed the managerial implication for differentiated competitive advantage in the experience-based retail environment. Research Design and Model Testing To test the research hypotheses and our research model, we conducted questionnaire survey from the respondents who have ever been to the major experience-based shopping malls within 6 months. Through the confirmatory factor analysis, reliability and validity of the study constructs were verified. By using the structural equation model, research hypotheses were tested and most research hypotheses were statistically significant and accepted. The final research model also showed the statistical significance with the goodness-of-fit indices. Result and Conclusion As shown in the results of this study, the experience-based retail environment leads to higher customer engagement and increase the customer’s hedonic value and reinforce positive shopping memories. Specifically, the experience-based retail environment is offering psychological benefits and customers enjoy experience itself. During the shopping experience, the customers are motivated for customer engagement. The managerial implications of the study results for the corporate managers in the retail and/or hospitality industries were also discussed.

Hospitality and tourism industries have recognized that engaging with customers via social media is now a critical element of their marketing strategy. Given the high variability of success with which firms have been attracting customer interest online, businesses are clearly struggling to determine exactly the right methods to use the newest technologies. This study presents a predictive model of attributes for online posts that evoke a high level of customer engagement. The contribution to the literature is a unique set of features that have significant impact on customer engagement, using a big-data set to support findings. In accordance with theories originating from Social Belongingness and Brand Community Marketing, findings indicate that appeals to a sense of community belonging have a significant impact on customer engagement in social media. Specifically, communities have idiomatic vocabularies consisting of “activation words” that are especially effective for engaging customers on social media. This has both theoretical implications in that it constitutes a large-scale, real-world confirmation of belongingness hypotheses, and managerial implications in that it suggests best practices for maintaining an online presence.

As Internet use has increased, customers have become more active at sharing their travel opinions through social media regarding their experiences with service organizations. Social media has become a ubiquitous tool that enables customers to share their travel experiences. In particular, members of Generation Y are more likely to be active on social media and more likely to share their experiences online. Understanding Generation Y’s online customer engagement preferences on different social media platforms may help to enhance brand loyalty. Customer engagement (CE) has been attracting the attention of both practitioners and academics because it may help to enhance both brand loyalty and purchase decisions. Social media platforms have become a significant communication tool for both customers and service providers, creating an opportunity to engage with customers. Interacting with active customers on the right social media platform can increase direct bookings, building brand loyalty. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to examine Generation Y’s brand loyalty preferences through its members’ engagement with social media. The results of this research will expand understanding of Generation Y customers’ online engagement through social media. This research may also suggest how hotels are able to utilize social media platforms in order to encourage online engagement with Generation Y by building brand loyalty.

The customer engagement construct has been widely investigated in the marketing literature since 2005. Scholars in hospitality and tourism have perceived the importance of this construct and tried to propose both conceptual framework (e.g., So, King, Sparks, & Wang, 2016) and measurement scale to capture this phenomena (e.g., So, King, & Sparks, 2014). However, there is no consensus in many issues such as conceptualization (Dijkmans, Kerkhof, & Beukeboom, 2015) and dimensionality (Romero, 2017). In addition, this construct is relatively new in hospitality and tourism. Hence, the direction for future research and what has been done in the past are indispensable for researchers since it reduces research fragmentations in the future. The study aim is to use existing works in hospitality and tourism literature with the systematic literature review to summarize facts and address the future research. SCOPUS and ISI were employed as the main databases to search and identify the relevant articles. A total of 19 out of 590 documents was identified and selected to analyze and classify based on types of research, country, and journal. In addition, the issues of theoretical background, conceptual framework, conceptualization, dimensionality, statistical analysis, key contributors are summarized respectively. Finally, this study addresses the scope of potential future research in a realm of hospitality and tourism.

Previous research has found that taking photos during travel for the purpose of sharing with others via SNS (social networking sites) induces self-presentational concerns, which can decrease engagement and enjoyment of the experience. However, the previous studies have defined travel engagement and enjoyment too narrowly and failed to consider the heterogeneity in terms of the importance of photo-taking. While some travelers are reluctant photo takers and regard taking photos as a bother, others place more importance on photo-taking than sightseeing, and may therefore find it difficult to enjoy the travel experience without taking photos. To address these deficiencies, we modeled not only negative, but also positive relationships between photo-taking and travel engagement and enjoyment. The results showed that when taking photos, travelers who regard photo-taking as important were more engaged in the experience and enjoyed it more than travelers who regarded photo-taking as less important. Thus, this study provides a theoretical contribution to research on travel engagement.

Marketing research shows that long-term customer-supplier relationships can reduce consequences of service failures in the hospitality industry. In addition to a long-term, continuous relationship, other types of long-term relationships are also conceivable as influencing factors. This raises the question of whether interactions with a company, based on customer engagement during childhood (childhood engagement) can influence the effect of a service failure. Similar to general child experience, it can be assumed that early engagement in the customer relationship can significantly affect later relationship perception. Furthermore, perceived controllability of the failure also plays a role. If the customer attributes responsibility to the company, negative reactions can arise. To examine this questions, an experimental study with 152 participants was performed. A moderating effect of perceived controllability and childhood engagement on repurchase intention as a consequence of disappointment was found. Previous customer engagement and a credible communication can thus prevent the termination of a relationship after a service failure. Contrary, early engagement does not generally prevent a company from customers’ disappointment. The article contributes to marketing research by integrating 1) the customer disappointment, 2) childhood engagement and its consequences for future interactions with the company as well as 3) the transfer of negative emotions from an employee to the company.

A predominantly positive view is shown in engagement literature in terms of positive actor engagement (PNE) expressions and outcomes. However, business practices indicate that the understanding of actors being negatively engaged is important. Yet a few studies in marketing, which attempt to conceptualise negative actor engagement (NAE), do not have a consensus as for whether NE and PE are reciprocal or NE is a distinct construct with a different nomological network and process. The purpose of this study is to conceptualise and operationalise NAE. Built on Li et al.’s (2018) conceptualisation of actor engagement valence, this paper follows Churchill’s (1979) methods of scale development and operationalises the construct of NAE. By developing and validating a NAE scale in specific online learning servcie platforms, we address this identified literature gap. Specifically, this study derives four NAE dimensions, including annoyance, anxiety, futitlity and failed expectation, which we proceed to validate within a nomological net of conceptual relationships in relation to the engagement behaviours (learning, sharing and endorsing). We conclude with an overview of key managerial and scholarly implications arising from this research. This marks the first study in the marketing discipline to operationalise NAE.

For better understanding user behavior, especially exploring what factors would motivate user engagement in sharing economy and whether there are some differences between people behaviors in sharing economy and conventional economy, this research developed a conceptual framework of user engagement (UE) in sharing economy on the basis of customer engagement and related literature and tested it through empirical analysis.

The power of social media is colossal considering that the number of worldwide users is expected to grow even more in the future reaching 2.95 billion by 2020. Because of the apparent customer engagement in these platforms, companies spend on average 11% of marketing budgets on social media and this expenditure is expected to grow to 19% over the next five years (CMO Survey, 2017). However, the main challenge the companies are facing is how to convert the social media investments into effective marketing and contribution to company’s performance. The customer engagement (CE) in social media catches a strong attention from scholars (Brodie et al., 2013) as well as experts of online marketing (Dessart, Veloutsou, & Morgan-Thomas, 2016). Even though there is a significant progress in the conceptual (Van Doorn et al., 2010) and empirical (Brodie et al., 2013) analysis of CE, its clear understanding remains still insufficient. Customer engagement’s definition requires more attention as there is inconsistency in the terms because of a lack of agreement on the terminology (van Doorn et al., 2010). Noticeable differences exist concerning also the measurement of CE and what exactly this phenomenon encompasses (Dessart et al., 2016). Particularly, the empirical studies show incongruity in the number and the nature of the dimensions (Sprott et al., 2009; Brodie et al., 2013). To investigate the complex and emergent occurrence of CE in social media, this research endorses a managerial-oriented approach using rich qualitative data from three different sources covering a variety of views for different social media platforms (41 companies/24 advertising/communication agencies, and 10 research/consulting firms). The results illustrate the gaps among customer engagement’s conceptions, the customer engagement dimensionality, and the metrics of social media performance beyond customer engagement.

In today’s highly dynamic tourism and hospitality environment, the role of customer engagement (CE) in customer experience and value is receiving increasing attention from practitioners and academics (Harrigan, Evers, Miles, & Daly, 2017). Despite this interest, scholarly analysis into the concept and its associated elements has been limited to date. For these reasons, the objective of this study is to present a science mapping approach to analysing the thematic evolution of customer engagement, specifically in the tourism/hospitality and marketing industries. The study applies a bibliometric approach combining co-citation analysis with co-word analysis to reveal and visualize the evolution of customer engagement in the hospitality and tourism areas. Specifically, authors use the SciMat software in order to discover the most important research themes and its conceptual evolution. This technique returns a set of clusters, which can be understood as conglomerates of different scientific aspects. They allow researchers the analysis of the research topics’ dynamic evolution by measuring continuance across consecutive sub-periods. Authors followed the ranking of hospitality and tourism journals considered by Gursoy and Sandstrom (2016) and, the marketing journal ranking developed by Hunt Reimann and Schilke (2009) as criteria for journal selection process. This study has considered the Web of Science (WoS) as the main academic database for collecting research contributions. Findings indicate symptoms of a research field in constant evolution that has not yet reached a stage of maturity. Initially, customer engagement was seen as an important element, but its examination was scarce and has gradually come to be recognized as a key goal within organizations to serve as a basis for the development of various study models. The results obtained from this study will enable future authors studying customer engagement to focus their studies more effectively.

As information technology advanced, customers’ service consumption process heavily shifted to the online environment, particularly social media and mobile. A new topic, customer engagement, has emerged along with the fast advancement of social media. Customer engagement refers to a type of customer behavior that is beyond purchase such as spreading word-of-mouth, providing recommendations to family and friends, interacting with fellow customers, and writing online reviews (Bijmolt et al., 2010; Verhoef, Reinartz, & Krafft, 2010). This study introduces the Flow theory, which is especially important to understand consumers’ online experiences, with the intention to shed light on how to better engage consumers in the hospitality industry (Bilgihan, Okumus, Nusair, & Bujisic, 2014; Hoffman & Novak, 2009). The purpose of this study is to examine the antecedents of flow and further investigate its influence on positive attitude and continuance intention among restaurant social media users. This study specifically examines restaurant customers who use social media through their smart phones in searching information and sharing experiences with others. A self-administered questionnaire was developed and a Structure equational modeling (SEM) was employed to test the proposed hypotheses. Study results support the hypotheses, indicating the importance of creating flow to increase customer engagement. Academically, this study contributes to the limited body of literature on flow experience and customer engagement in the hospitality context. Additionally, it provides practical insights for hospitality marketers on how to gain competitive advantages by strategically managing customer engagement on social media marketing through flow.

We evaluate the loyalty of a tourist destination considering tangible and intangible factors using the city of Porto as a case study. We observed that the main dimensions that the tourists associate with the visit and consequently with the city, in order of importance, were: i) engagement with the city of Porto, ii) identification with city of Porto, iii) Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) of the city of Porto, iv) experiences in the city of Porto, and v) having visited visiting the city of Porto. Direct interviews were administered in the main tourist’s points in the city during the month of October 2017. The survey was only applied to the respondents who pursued tourism in the city of Porto, with 958 valid questionnaires. The questionnaire included the sociodemographic characteristics of the respondents, the evaluation of level of importance of the eleven factors related to the trip, the level of agreement with the eight statements on the engagement with Porto developed by Sprott et al. (2009) – applied for the first time to a destination - and, in the final part, the evaluation of the intention to return to city of Porto. The eleven statements related to the importance of various factors associated to the trip and the eight statements that evaluate the engagement with the city were subjected to a principal components analysis with varimax rotation in order to identify the main dimensions. A logistic regression was used to explore the determinants of the likelihood to return to Porto considering the respondents’ sociodemographic variables and the main dimensions obtained in the factorial analysis (related to the important factors on the trip and the engagement with the city). Regarding the intention to return, which is the proxy of tourists’ loyalty to the destination, we observed that it is positively influenced by the engagement with the city, the tourist’s perception of CSR, the good experience in the city and having visited the city. These results connect the political, economic and marketing objectives in the tourism sector. The goals need to be aligned and the stakeholders(visitors, local residents and business, public bodies and government) must work together to maintain a solid and unified destination image. Considering that the city of Porto has been in the spotlight at an international level as one of the top cities’ destinations, this kind of information is fundamental for Porto to continue to be an attractive city tourism destination.