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.

Carbohydrate derivatives of cyanidin, a class of anthocyanin pigments, are major component of red cabbage, which is responsible for the characteristic reddish color. The color of cyanidin derivatives is quite stable against heat, and here we aimed to identify the chemical component of glucoside-derivatives of cyanidin which is responsible for the thermal stability. By comparing the thermal stability of color from unmodified cyanidin and cyanidin-3,5-diglucoside with the color of cyanidin derivatives from red cabbage, we found that the glucoside modification confers the thermal stability. We believe that our finding will contribute to the preparation of heat-resistant anthocyanin pigments for food coloring and other applications.