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 the booming popularity of social media such as facebook and Wechat, more and more people and firms commence to utilize it to promote products and services. The convenience of sharing personal experience online, however, also leads to increasing number of consumer to complain through online reiews. For example, negative online review has increased 800% over the years between 2014 and 2015 (Causon 2015) and has negative impact on many viewers’ buying decisions (Chevalier, & Mayzlin, 2006). Therefore, it is important to investigate what factors would reduce the negative impact of other customers’ online complaints on consumer purchase intention. Developing friendships with customers through social media is a common strategy for service provider to retain customers. Prior literature suggests that consumers in general are more tolerant of a service failure when the service provider is having a friendship with the customer than when the provider is having a business relationship (Wan, Hui, and Wyer 2011). Therefore, we suggest that friendship could also attenuate the negative impact of an online complaint from other customer on consumer purchase intention. Furthermore, we predict that this could happen only in the self-consumption situation. In the consumption situation of buying gifts for others, friendship would no longer attenuate the impact of a negative online review on consumer purchase intention. It is because gift giving involves sybolic value of face enhancement in developing social relationships with the gift giving target. Consumers would be less likely to take risks of buying substandard products as gifts. Implications and future research directions will be discussed.

In the last few years, the attention on false and misleading communications regarding company’s commitment towards the environment – a practice known as greenwashing – has drastically increased. Greenwashing has several consequences for companies: it deteriorates brand reputation and trust (Duan and Jie, 2013), increases consumer skepticism (Delmas and Burbano, 2011), reduces purchase intentions (Murray and Vogel 1997; Swaen and Vanhamme 2004, 2005), and erodes investor’s confidence in environmentally friendly firms (Delmas and Burbano, 2011). Indeed, private investors are interested in CSR and look for information about it (Cellier et al., 2016; Nath, et al., 2013) but little is known about the consequences of greenwashing on private investments. Moreover, greenwashing often happens because of the bad management of the supply chain and various company’s faults are related to the difficulty to manage it (Crane et al., 2014). The aim of this research is to investigate how greenwashing affects intention to invest depending on the involvement of the supply chain. In two experiments we compared three types of greenwashing, which vary according to the supply chain role in the misconduct and the declared CSR commitment of the company. We call indirect greenwashing when a company that declares to be CSR committed is accused of greenwashing because it purchases raw materials or services from a supplier that does not meet sustainability standards (e.g. child labor, environmental damages). Conversely, a company that does not follow its CSR talk because of its own production procedures is an example of direct greenwashing. We also propose a third category of greenwashing, which we called vicarious greenwashing: when the misconduct and the relative accusation regard a company’s supplier, but the company does not claim to be sustainable (so it’s vicariously affected). A scenario-based experimental design (n =107) asked participants to indicate the intention to invest on a company accused of direct greenwashing (vs. indirect vs. vicarious). Results showed that direct greenwashing is particularly detrimental on investment intentions, especially compared to vicarious greenwashing, but not compared to indirect greenwashing (even if the means were lower). This result suggests that greenwashing is detrimental for investments even when the company does not perform the misconduct. A second experiment (n = 202) investigated whether the declared control on the supply chain affects intention to invest when the company is involved in greenwashing. Direct greenwashing was the more detrimental for investments, but, when companies declared high control on the supply chain, greenwashing significantly decreased intention to invest, so that in high control condition direct greenwashing did not differ from vicarious and indirect greenwashing. These results show how the involvement in greenwashing affects investment intentions of private investors and expand our knowledge on the consequences of greenwashing, so far mostly investigated from the consumer side. We show that greenwashing has potential disruptive consequences from a broader perspective, because it reduces stakeholders’ willingness to invest, even when the misconduct is attributable to a supplier.

Cause-related marketing is a pervasive, global marketing tactic, and the practice grew by 18.5 percent between 2011 to 2016 (IEG 2017). While considerable academic research has been directed to understanding this practice and its impact on consumers, one aspect has received little attention. Almost nothing is known about the impact on consumer perceptions when a firm withdraws from a partnership. Firms withdraw their support of a charity for many reasons (i.e., the charity no longer resonates with major stakeholders, the sponsorship fails to produce the projected results for the charity or the firm, or the firm faces financial constraints). We conducted three on-line experiments with samples of North American adult consumers to address this knowledge gap. We examined the impact of three types of withdrawal on consumer perceptions: withdrawal from a partnership, replacement of one non-profit partner with another partner, withdrawal from a partnership and a price decrease offered based on the savings resulting from terminating the sponsorship. Given that the extant research established that the alignment of the cause with the core business of the firm is an important factor in the success of CRM strategies, we manipulated this variable along with the various withdrawal scenarios. Our findings reveal that consumers view a divorce negatively despite actions taken by firms to offset consumers’ negative views.

Self-efficacy in building self-identity amongst the differently abled employees of a fine dining restaurant in Mumbai has been used as the precursor to building up of a sustainable business model to create social capital. The outcome of this successful profitable business model has been able to demonstrate that such hearing and speech impaired individuals could be turned from being ‘social liabilities’ to ‘social positive assets’. The ‘social liability’ denotes to Mirchi & Mime employees being hearing and speech impaired who suffer from social, economic, financial and familial exclusion. The focal point of this study is to understand the transformation of such entities termed as ‘social liability’ to ‘social capital’ which has been possible within the span of three years. The study uses mixed method research to elicit, quantify and substantiate the building of social capital through the positive psychological, social and economic changes brought about in people who belong to the bottom of the pyramid (BoP). The study uses four different approaches to assess and validate the conceptual model and research objective. One, using survey instrument for guests (consumers) which included 32 items in total and 27 items were measured using likert type scale (5= strongly agree & 1- strongly disagree). Two, employee interview questionnaire was open ended. The questions intend to address the aspects such as regular vs special schooling, challenges experienced in daily routine, employee’s aspiration, pre-employment- economic, social and psychological condition and their post-employment changes, including their perception about the society. Three, the in-depth video-based interview with employee’s family- the questions revolved around their economic, social and psychological transformation pre and post-employment. Fourth, is personality assessment of selected few employees to understand implicit perception about ‘self’ and ‘world’. The quantitative outcome is obtained through descriptive and inferential analysis. The study empirically captures the social capital development with an extensive research from individual psycho-sociological perspective to familial- societal perspective. The study encapsulates an inward to outward outlook of hearing and speech impaired employees and how Mirchi & Mime a fine-dine restaurant (a profit making firm) has successfully converted a social liability into a social capital. Mirchi & Mime consistently maintained its top ranking on Indian restaurant search and discovery service (Zomato). Hence, the study contributes in justifying the viewpoint that social liability is a myth in fact if, employed strategically this would lead to economic and social inclusiveness and business sustainability.

Recently, the studios in Hollywood introduces mobile games based on the storyline of movies for promotional purpose. With wide exposure of such games, managers could expect raised market awareness and purchase intention toward movies set to be released. Among the movie-themed mobile games, at the same time, not a few games have made financial success as the box office scores of the original movie increases. Thus, managers should deal with the promotional mobile app and the target product simultaneously on the belief of reciprocal relationship between them. If the dynamic relation is true then, finding deterministic factors of mobile game performance has practical significance to make positive consequences for both products. Branded entertainment is defined as “the integration of advertising into entertainment content, whereby brands are embedded into storylines of a film, television program, or other entertainment medium” (Hudson and Hudson 2006). Wise et. al. (2008) states that the advergame, a videogame designed around a brand, is one form of branded entertainment. Additionally, Sood and Drèze (2006) examined film sequels as brand extension of experiential goods based on the reality that Hollywood brands movies. In this vein, movie-themed mobile games can be contemplated as a new practice of branded entertainment. To test the research hypotheses, we collected 43 pairs of a movie and a movie-themed mobile game. Among 300 movies in the annual top 100 U.S. domestic box office chart from 2012 to the end of October 2014, films having more than one promotional mobile game were selected. The data on mobile game were limited to the Apple’s App Store for consistency. For data collection, we utilized multiple archival sources such as boxofficemojo.com, metacritic.com, imdb.com, and appannie.com. The objective of this research is to investigate the impact of movie-themed mobile games on the performance of original movies and the characteristics leading mobile game success. We developed a simultaneous equation system to discover the interdependent relationship between mobile game ranking and movie sales. This study is one of the first empirical investigation demonstrating reciprocal relationship between promotional game app and its target product. The results show that mobile games perform profit generating function as well as promotional function, thus suggesting managers to deal with mobile game more strategic way.

The purpose of this study is to examine how a “paring” of a sponsoring brand with wellmatched products in a branded content (e.g., branded entertainment content and/or commercial) possibly leverages consumers’ attitude toward the sponsoring brand. For instance, to maximize the perceived benefit and desirability of their product, Guinness previously portrayed their product along with foods, such as oysters, steaks, and cheese, that would all be much better if consumers enjoyed it with a bottle of Guinness. We refer this type of practice as a “paring strategy,” another form of Leveraged Marketing Communications (LMC), and aim to explore how such paring practice successfully benefits the brand through association. In this context, this study shows a) a proportion of a sponsoring brand and a paring product portrayed in a content (e.g., 20/80 vs. 80/20), b), the attribute of the branded content (desirability vs. feasibility orientation), c) the demonstration natures of the paring strategy (integrated vs. sequential) creates association between a sponsoring brand and matching products, and amplify the perceived benefits of the sponsoring product. Finally, this study aims to explore the moderating role of consumer’s general tendency of processing style (holistic vs. analytic) in the effect of paring strategy.

This study investigates how different types of corporate crises and issue congruence interplay in determining the effects of a previous corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiative on the company faced with a crisis. The findings suggest that a prior CSR initiative can more effectively protect a company’s reputation when the company has a competence-related crisis than a morality-related crisis. In addition, when the social cause of the CSR initiative is congruent with the issue of the negative event, consumers will respond more negatively than when there is no issue congruence between CSR and the negative event. Moreover, there is an interaction effect between issue congruence and the type of crises. That is, when a firm has a moral crisis that is associated with the social cause supported in a previous CSR initiative, consumers perceive the firm’s CSR initiative to have been more insincere and selfish than if the firm were facing a competence-related crisis.

Introduction Service quality is becoming an important business factor even in the business-to-business markets. Actually, the various service factors such as technical level, lead time and after-sales service play the role as the important factors regarding decision making on purchasing other than price in the trade of B2B market. Most researches that measure the service quality in service field have focused on B2C consumer goods and the limited number of researches are only being carried out regarding the service quality in B2B area. Initial studies in B2B borrowed the service quality scale that was made mainly based on consumer goods (Gounaris 2005) by partially using the measure of SERVQUAL that was developed and collected by Parasuraman et al. (1988). In this study, we tried to investigate two main objectives: (1) develop the measurement scale to facilitate assessments of B-to-B service quality and (2) investigate the structural model which deals with the relation between the service quality and B2B relationship performance. Considering that most previous researches about service quality were conducted in the business-to-consumer area, this study conceptualizes the various quality aspects of service that are considered in B2B market and proposes our research model which is the detailed quality measurement scale of B2B service. We developed a measurement scale called B-SERVQUAL for B2B service quality and tested research hypotheses and structural model. Conceptual background This study carried out the comparative analysis against the measured items of previous researches and the contents acquired from the qualitative research. Various different measuring items and aspects related with service quality evaluation can be drawn out through the in-depth interview with companies’ purchasing staffs. To develop items for B2B service quality scale, we followed the procedure proposed by Churchill(1979), and Gerbing and Anderson(1988). First, in-depth interview with purchasing staffs was performed regarding transaction experience with B2B service providers. As proposed by Homburg and Garbe(1999), B2B service was classified into professional service that is provided by service expert company and industrial service that is provided by manufacturer of machine equipment. The responders were instructed to answer some important factors required to evaluate service providing company and items for current service provider to improve. After performing the pre-test with the filtered measuring items, the scale of service quality specialized for B2B service was developed after checking reliability and validity of measurement items. Based on such results of pre-test, we finally carried out the survey of respondents of B2B companies. Our final scales to measure the service quality were composed of 5 factors with 19 items such as economic quality, technical quality, process quality, empathy quality and convenience quality. We determined to call this scale ‘B-SERVQUAL’. Research design We developed research hypotheses and proposed our research model to analyze the effects of service quality on relationship performance in B-to-B market. To verify the sets of hypotheses and study model, we conducted questionnaire survey, targeting the personnel in purchase departments of public corporation and in the field of distribution/logistics, financial services, construction, manufacturing (electricity / machine, textile leather, food). A total of 250 questionnaires were distributed directly or through mail and 230 responses were used for the final analysis. Result and conclusion 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. We found that service quality has a positive effect on relationship bonding, indicating that the superior service quality of service providers leads relationship bonding with buyers. Five dimensions considered in this study bring not only structural bond but also the social bond that refers to the emotional bonding. Relationship bonding has a positive effect on commitment. Relationship commitment appeared to be an important factor that has a positive effect on relationship performance, which demonstrates the reduction of management cost through commitment. This study reflected the economic and convenience aspects of services that haven’t been highlighted in the previous studies in the business marketing area. This study has academic implications in that it reflected the economic aspects of services, which have been dealt with conceptually by some scholars such as profitability, productivity, and cost. From the viewpoint of B2B service providers, the B-SERVQUAL proposed in this study will be helpful guide for B2B marketers to specifically identify the customers’ needs and manage their service quality in the business market.

The concept of performance-based contracting (PBC) has received an increasing attention in both academic research and business practice over the last decade. Typically, in a PBC an industrial supplier is paid based on the outcome created with an investment good. This payment covers the actual usage as well as all related maintenance and repair efforts for the resource (Böhm, Backhaus, Eggert, & Cummins, 2016). Although the concept of PBC is not new, research on this topic is still on a preliminary level (Essig, Glas, Selviaridis & Roehrich 2016). As the customer orientation in service-oriented sales processes is crucial (Haas, Snehota, & Corsaro 2012; Terho, Haas, Eggert, & Ulaga 2012), our study explores customers’ requirements and motivational patterns within a PBC sales process. We report on data obtained in laddering interviews with 31 PBC-experienced customers in Europe from three industries (industrial air supply industry, gas supply industry, filling and packaging industry). Results from a means-end-chain analysis indicate that PBC customers have a higher sense of duty (e.g., by analyzing suppliers’ competence for operating a PBC), a distinct need for security (e.g., by requiring positive emotions for purchase decision), a comprehensive sense of responsibility (e.g., in terms of the long-term contractual obligation) and perfectionist values for purchase decisions (e.g., by striving for an optimal technical and contractual PBC design). Since these aspects address the PBC sales process, our study contributes by generating empirical evidences for value-based selling techniques and by generating management implications for a customer-oriented selling of PBC.

This study investigates an under-developed research area, sports partnership management, to deepen the understanding of the strategic implications derived from a sports club’s partnerships. A relationship perspective to the portfolio framework is employed by considering the complexity of a partnership as the managerial input variable, and the value impact of the partnership as the output variable. It adopts a longitudinal single case study design, allowing aspects of both exploration and explanation through evidence from multiple sources within the organization. The data collection entails a three-phase empirical research process, collecting data from different sources within a professional sports club. Based on a dataset containing two waves of contract data collected in Phase 2 coupled with interviews in Phase 1 and discussions in Phase 3, this research provides three meaningful applications of a partnership portfolio framework. Theoretically, this research provides insights into enhancing the rigor of the operationalization of a portfolio analysis by paying particular attention to the validity of the portfolio framework and its measurement issues. Practically, the study offers a framework for analyzing its partnership portfolio that provides insights into the current status of the portfolio and ways to build, sustain and/or improve the management of their partnerships.

Introduction and Rationale Research interest in the global and strategic marketing field has been stimulated significantly over the past two decades by the increasing globalization of economic systems and accelerating pace of competition worldwide. The establishment and development of global business operations involves international marketing strategy decisions that can bring substantial economic benefits for both national economies and individual companies. A large number of conceptual propositions and empirical works have examined how firms can derive sustainable competitive advantage from their global and strategic marketing activities and cross-border collaborations. The Special Session aims to uncover and debate on some important empirical, methodological, and theoretical research challenges within the broad domain of global marketing and strategy. Further, it sets to highlight emerging trends and concepts in the field to critically evaluate their potential impact on existing theory development and management practice. Emphasis will be placed on comparing contributions from leading international scholars to stimulate research synergy and collaboration. Specifically, the Special Session will provide a strong base for establishing, maintaining, and developing a dialogue among marketing academics who have interests in the global marketing and strategy phenomena. All panel members specialize in the topic and have published extensively in well-recognized academic journals. All contributors hold a highly international profile and are affiliated to different research institutions. The proposed topic cover important and timely issues in global and strategic marketing which are outlined below.

This study focuses on the value of social platform and investigates the relationships between knowledge sharing and customer value. The study examines the effects of social network attributes on knowledge sharing in social platforms, and the effects of knowledge sharing on customer value in social platforms. In the context of social platform, this study clarifies the concept of customer value, the role of knowledge sharing, and the relationships between knowledge sharing and customer value. The study builds a theoretical model regarding social platforms and customer value that offers implications for advertising & PR practitioners.

Introduction This study examines acceptance effect of successful advertising public-relations campaign strategy in 4th industry innovation on students in dept. of advertising public relations. And this paper tries to analyze how university students feel and perceive acceptance effect of concept of successful advertising public-relations campaign strategy in 4th industry innovation and how the types are classified. Examining opinions of concept of successful advertising public-relations campaign strategy in 4th industry innovation on university students is an important direction for research at the level of multiple discussion in which we can look at it from the center of social and cultural issues, and meaningful for the development of the related researches in the future. This paper purposes to examine the characteristics and the subsequent implication of acceptance type of acceptance effect about concept of successful advertising public-relations campaign strategy in 4th industry innovation on university students' self-consciousness and to suggest subsequent use value. Theoretical Development This study is to examine the types of university students who perceive acceptance effect of successful advertising public-relations campaign strategy in 4th industry innovation. In addition, until now, the interests and researches of the related societies are most actively in progress however there is hardly analysis on the acceptance types of acceptance effect of successful advertising public-relations campaign strategy in 4th industry innovation on university students' self-consciousness found. So this study tries to discover a type of acceptance in which university students themselves define and structuralize acceptance effect of successful advertising public-relations campaign strategy in 4th industry innovation through Q-methodology approach. Research Design In this study, Q-methodology will be applied to the sorting of statement cards to determine students’ reception type derived from the effect of a behaviors. As a source for statement cards, a Q-concourse was developed based on newspaper articles, specifically Korean articles on acceptance effect of successful advertising public-relations campaign strategy in 4th industry innovation related political items, advertisements, and interviews; from this data a Q-statement was written and a P-sample selected. Following this, sorting was done to determine the Q-sort, which was then analyzed using a PC QUANL program(for Dos). The Q-sample for this research is composed from the statements of acceptance effect of successful advertising public-relations campaign strategy in 4th industry innovation, in order to document their subjective opinions and values. At first, 34 Q-population (concourse) was selected based on the media related literature review described above, and interviews targeting the general public. As the next step representative statements were chosen randomly and reduced in number to a final 16 statement samples for the purposes of this study. These statements include all opinion values and were written to have positive, neutral, and negative balance. Since Q-methodology deals with intraindividual differences rather than inter-individual differences, it is not influenced by the number of the P-sample. In addition, since the methodology of a Q-study does not infer the characteristics of the population sample from the sample, selecting of the P-sample is likewise not governed probabilistic sampling methods. Finally, in this research, 34 people were selected as the P-sample. Result and Conclusion In order to see the subjectivity types of the university students' participation in acceptance effect of successful advertising public-relations campaign strategy in 4th industry innovation, Q-factor analysis was conducted and three factors were found. As the result of the using QUANL program, 12 students were in type 1, 12 students were in type 2, and 10 students were in type 3. Here, the number of students are meaningless and these three types explains about 40(0.4011)% of total variance. Since the people whose factor weight is higher than 1.0 is 6, 4, and 2 for each group, we can say that type 1 is the biggest factor. In addition, the representative Eigen values are 5.4079, 4.6256, 3.6039 each. The study used Q methodologies in order to observe the subjective propensity of the university students about successful advertising public-relations campaign strategy in 4th industry innovation. At 3 types of analyzed results, it’s not unfamiliar concepts compared to the past, the most of respondents shown the various opinions as a matter of the expanding and understanding successful advertising public-relations campaign strategy in 4th industry innovation of university students.

In many mature markets competition keeps growing. As a result, products are increasingly becoming similar, which often prompts price reductions and other promotional tools to ensure profit margins and the long-term marketing viability. Another solution frequently employed to win the competition is the use of emotional advertising (Rossiter & Percy, 1997). This is because products sharing the same or similar attributes can generate different emotion, therefore, be perceived different. However, the frequent use of emotional advertising has led to the situation that not only products but also their ads become similar primarily because consumers buying products of the same category tend to prefer similar effects. Such similarity of the ads is likely to create confusion among the ads so that consumers may not identify the brands of the ads correctly. Impacts of the confusion, however, may differ due to a number of variables. Of the variables, a few critical variables are examined in this study, and several propositions are suggested for the future study.

With the arrival of multimedia environment due to the development of digital technology, advertisement surrogacy type and structure are diversified. This advertising agency is a situation that requires a commission system idea suitable for changing environments. Especially in Korea, there is no legal standard of advertising agent fee. Principles such as the fee rate and the burden body of the fee that depended on this custom are also considered part. In particular, government advertisements, where advertising costs are in short supply compared to private companies, need to establish a more efficient system of subsidies. Currently, the compensation system for advertising agencies in Korea is based on commission However, there are many opinions that it is necessary to have a gross fee system that is necessary for acting as an advertising agency, and there is a strong tendency for actual global advertising companies to pursue the agency fee system. We propose the feasibility of the fee system by analyzing the commission system suitable for the multi-media environment, focusing on the commission, the fee system, etc. The results of the study show that the fee system of the domestic advertising market It can become a method that can complement the market, and it is also a direction for domestic advertising companies to seek in a market where global competition is intense. The research methodology is based on the analysis of the advertising agency fee system of Korea and the comparison of the fee system of the global advertising agency with the analysis of the structure of the advertising market in major overseas countries, , Where basic information such as surveys of prisoners are used together. This result will serve as a guide for efficient advertising by means of marketing communication using media.

Augmented reality (AR) generates a enhanced and augmented reality by coupling virtual and real worlds. AR facilitates primary features: a permutation of real and virtual worlds, real-time interaction and an exact 3D process of virtual and real objects. AR offers a new level of interaction between their products and consumers by engaging them in a totally new environment. This study identifies the current state of AR marketing and future research directions. Concentrated on the marketing value of AR, the study enlightens the concept of AR marketing value, the role of value sharing, and opportunities and challenges creating customer value in the AR platforms.

The evolution of the internet led to a shift in the business operations environment, giving rise to a plethora of challenges and opportunities for companies. Social networks have become attractive to companies due to their interactive nature, not only facilitating conversations with consumers, but also increasing the possibility of enhancing the online consumer brand engagement. Additionally, social networks and online brand communities increased consumers’ possibility of developing an active role in companies’ decision-making process, through the creation of user generated content, together with the opinion sharing and directly information exchange with brands and other internet users. The main objective of this research is to ascertain whether the active listening practice can contribute, in some way, to the improvement of the relationship maintained between consumers and brands. The current study suggests the adaptation of the active listening practice on the online field, as an attempt to enhance the communication strategies held by brands. Hence, this research seeks to demonstrate that this practice can improve the consumer-brand relationship through the development of two qualitative studies, as main approach, where the findings extracted in the first study will be used as inputs to the second one.

Digital advertising is one of the most crucial medium of communication and marketing (Berner and Kiley, 2005). Digital advertising brings with itself several benefits such as increase in reach, low advertising cost, and high degree of customer engagement. However, along with benefits it also brings several challenges for the marketers such as comprehending consumer attitude, consumption and behaviour towards digital advertisements. According to prior literature attitude towards internet consists of factors such as information, entertainment, irritation, and trustworthiness (Aaker & Bruzzone, 1985). Ad blocking has become one of the most important concerns for advertising industry globally. This paper has attempted to understand the series of actions that leads to ad blocking. This series consists of consumer response and consumer attitude towards digital advertising where the constant ad delivery creates ad intrusiveness which leads to ad irritation which in turn leads to ad avoidance and ultimately results in ad blocking. Ad blocking further has serious consequences in brand image and brand valuation, because as more number of users opt to download and use ad blockers, advertisement instead of increasing brand valuation results in brand devaluation, not to mention wastage of ad spend. Through literature review it was found that reports discuss ad blockers and its operations but there is little understanding on the process that leads a consumer to install ad blocking software on his digital device. The research objective of the study is therefore, to understand cognitive process of consumers that leads them to take a decision of installing an ad blocking software on their digital device. The study therefore proposes four research questions, 1. What aspects of online advertising irritate users? 2. How do consumers avoid advertisements? 3. What causes a consumer to use ad blocker? 4. What cognitive process lead a consumer to install ad blocking software? A mixed method research is adopted for the purpose of this paper. In the first stage a qualitative research was conducted through semi-structured interviews in order to understand consumer opinion on what leads them to install an ad blocking (Jagani and Panda 2016). Thematic analysis of transcripts was conducted from which 81 items on ad irritation, ad avoidance and ad blocking were identified for second stage of the study which consists of online survey using quantitative research methods. The items for the quantitative survey are \categorised in three main categories viz. Irritation, Avoidance and Action. The sample consists of 18 to 35 year olds who are active users of internet and have been exposed to digital advertisement, spends more than two hours per day on internet through various digital device and are aware of ad blockers or have used them in the past. Non-probabilistic sampling method was selected for the study and quota sampling was implemented. The study aims to comprehend the process that leads a consumer to install an ad blocking software on his or her digital device.

Introduction In the context of online interactions, social media has becoming a crucial part of people‟s everyday lives, where they converge to exchange, debate, communicate and participate in any form of social interaction (Ryan & Jones, 2009). They post and share new content but also review and rate products/services and/or brands, share experiences and expertise and exchange opinions (Ryan & Jones, 2009). As a result, the growing popularity of social media, the competitors‟ presence on social networking sites and the cost reduction pressure derived from the financial crisis and consequent necessity to find cheaper solutions for brand promotion, motivated companies to use social media as part of their marketing and brand building activities (Tsimonis & Dimitriadis, 2014) and to create brand fan pages in different social networks such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube, among others. Due to this attractiveness, social media is becoming the media channel of choice across the world (Dong-Hun, 2010). However, traditional media still plays an important role for both consumers and marketers, being a central component of brands‟ communication strategies. Yet, several questions still remain unanswered regarding social media effectiveness and influence on consumer engagement. In the current study we intend that we intend to contribute to fulfil the second. Thus, the objective of the current study is to explore how brands create and maintain online relationships with consumers through their Websites, Facebook and Instagram brand pages . Theoretical development The concept of engagement was originally employed in different fields of study including psychology, sociology and organizational behaviour. Now is attracting marketers‟ attention especially in the field of relationship marketing (e.g., Brodie et al., 2011; Hollebeek, 2011). Accordingly, two central concepts consumer engagement and online brand engagement need to be defined. First, consumer engagement, refers to the intensity of a person‟s participation and connection with company‟s offerings and activities that can be initiated by the consumer or the organization (Vivek, Beatty, & Morgan, 2012). Online brand engagement, on the other hand, can be defined as a consumer‟s cognitive and affective commitment to partake in an active relationship with a brand on a website or other computer-mediated platform designed to communicate brand value (Mollen & Wilson, 2010). Online brand engagement measures how much and how frequently users interact with a firm‟s page and its social media content. When consumers make the effort to like, favourite or comment a brand‟s post, they are vigorously engaging with that content. Engagement metrics display audience action, an important feature for social media health and growth (Dunham, 2014). As social media provides numerous ways for users to get involved with organizations (Waters, Burnett, Lamm, & Lucas, 2009), marketers must find rightful strategies to nurture relationships with the public. Dialogue has been one of the topics under research by several scholars. Including this two-way form of communication is crucial to “understand how organizations can build relationships that serve both organizational and public interests” (Kent & Taylor, 2002: 21), thus several studies use dialogic communication to investigate the influence of online strategies for relationship building (Loureiro & Gomes, 2016). Three crucial strategies have been used in numerous studies (Waters et al., 2009; Loureiro & Gomes, 2016; Men & Tsai, 2012) to build and maintain relationships online: disclosure or openness, information dissemination, and interactivity and involvement. First, disclosure or openness refers to the companies‟ willingness to be transparent in their online communication activities. Waters et al. (2009) suggest that companies must provide information such as company‟s full description, its history and mission. Organizations should use hyperlinks connected to their websites and use logos and visual cues to enhance brand recognition. Information dissemination concerns posting photos and videos, announcements about products, as well as answering questions to address stakeholders‟ needs, concerns and interests (Men & Tsai, 2012; Loureiro & Gomes, 2016). Posting links to external news content related to the company and its business and including press releases and campaign summaries can maximize the impact of a company‟s online presence (Waters et al., 2009). Finally, interactivity and involvement can be seen as the most important strategy, out of the three, since it is essential to foster relationships with the public and represents one of the main advantages of using different social media platforms (Haigh, 2014). This strategy is often analysed as a whole, with no distinction between the two terms (Men & Tsai, 2012; Loureiro & Gomes, 2016) however, interactivity can be analysed separately from involvement according to research done by Haigh (2014). Involvement regards connecting with consumers. Providing information such as organizational contacts, giving users the ability to stay in touch with the company is one way to involve them. Interactivity, on the other hand, is often defined as “the extent to which users can participate in modifying the form and content of the mediated environment in real time.” (Steuer, 1992: 84). When considering computer-mediated environments, Liu (2003) also studied interactivity, developing a scale to measure interactivity on websites. According to the study, interactivity should be defined as "the degree to which two or more communication parties can act on each other, on the communication medium, and on the messages and the degree to which such influences are synchronized” (Liu & Shrum, 2002: 54) and three dimensions should be included when discussing this topic: active control, two-way communication and synchronicity. Active control regards users‟ capacity to voluntarily participate and usefully influence communications. Two-way communication concerns the bifacial flow of information. Synchronicity evaluates the speed of the interaction. This led to the definition of interactive communication: “communication that offers individuals active control and allows them to communicate both reciprocally and synchronously” (Liu, 2003: 208). Finally, human-to-content interactivity refers to the ability to contribute to the organizational online content by commenting on organizational posts and to reply to other users‟ posts. (Loureiro & Gomes, 2016; Men & Tsai, 2012). Thus, considering the above-mentioned, the following research question is proposed: RQ1: What strategies are Portuguese companies incorporating to create and maintain relationships with publics on their Websites, Facebook and Instagram pages? Research design We conducted an exploratory content analysis to investigate online relationship cultivation strategies by Portuguese brands (RQ1). Following Loureiro and Gomes (2016), first we retrieve a list of the 50 most valuable Portuguese brands of 2016 provided by Brand Finance, “…the world’s leading independent branded business valuation…” (The Brand Finance Group, 2016). This list is made with regards to the brand value (USD $ millions) and the brand rating in the year under analysis, therefore raking the top 50 Portuguese brands. Afterwards, from this initial sample of 50 companies, brands are analysed in terms of their presence in social media by verifying if they have an official website and brand fan Pages on Facebook Instagram. After examining their social media presence, the sample included 47 companies with a website, 28 companies with a Facebook page and 19 with an Instagram account. Pages without information or not maintained by the organisation were not considered. Coding categories used in this analysis are adapted from previous research (Waters et al., 2009; Men & Tsai, 2012; Haigh, 2014; Loureiro & Gomes, 2016). The categories coded are the same for Website, Facebook and Instagram pages. Based on Waters et al.‟s (2009) method for coding online relationship cultivation strategies, the website and social media pages are examined to identify the presence of items representing organizations‟ strategies of disclosure, information dissemination and involvement. The units of analysis are the website corporate profile page on Facebook and Instagram page. We evaluate whether each strategy and item occurred, hence categories are coded with „yes‟ or „no‟ depending if the information was present (Haigh, 2014). On websites, the first step is to go to the homepage and see if the website provided a site map to easily find the items belonging to each strategy. When site maps are not available, each tab inside the website would be inspected to look for the information needed for each strategy. Since websites are more complex, with information spread across them instead of reunited in one single page as in Facebook and Instagram the following analyses were simpler. On Facebook the first page of each corporate profile is studied. This is the page that users see after signing in and where they have access to all the main elements, including the photo album and the message board. The details examined on each page are items that are readily observable (Men & Tsai, 2012). On Instagram, the analysis is similar to Facebook. Here, most of the page is visually-based (photos and videos) with the exception of to the brief description below the profile picture or logo (where usually companies also insert the URL to the Website). Thus, we look to photos‟ descriptions to get more insights about the content shared and the cultivation strategies implemented. Users‟ comments are also considered to evaluate, whether or not companies reply to them and initiate conversations with consumers. Intercoder reliability was tested using Perreault & Leigh‟s (1989) formula. Main results and conclusions Websites perform better in the first two strategies (disclosure and information dissemination) by frequently displaying a brief description about the business as well as brand history, logo and visual cues, news links and information about achievements and awards. However, in what concerns the last strategy, interactivity and involvement, websites lack interactive features that allow firms to engage with consumers such as commenting and sharing opportunity. Generally, actions to foment online participation are not implemented. This could be explained by the fact that Websites‟ main purpose is, according to Keller (2009), to express ambitions, history, products as well as the firms‟ vision therefore they act more as sources of information than as sources of interaction. However they still have to be attractive enough to encourage repeated visits (Keller, 2009). By contract, brand fan pages on Facebook and Instagram disclose and disseminate less information about firms and their activities (more evident on Instagram) and perform better in the interactivity and involvement strategy. In accordance with (Jahn & Kunz, 2012), brand fan pages main goal is to promote a communicative and interactive channel that creates a bond between the user and the brand, therefore it is expected that the main strategy used to nurture relationships on these social networks is the one that enables interaction and encourages involvement. Finally, comparing the three SNS‟s, Facebook seems to be the more consistent channel to combine and implement the three strategies altogether, since it displays a better overall performance. However, each social networking site has its own role, therefore companies should consider which network works best for each strategy and for each type of consumer and build an overall plan that maximizes the potential to connect with consumers, remembering that the image they build online should present an accurate representation of the brand and should align with other marketing efforts to present consistent messages to customers. Regarding consumer engagement, brands should focus on creating interesting and captivating content instead of posting too regularly just to have an active online presence. Posting more often does not necessarily lead to online brand engagement. Moreover, having more followers is not necessarily good on its own. Fans need to feel connected to the brand and its content and usually, smaller audiences are more engaged with brands. Therefore, brands should work on strategies that allow them to grow their audience while keeping the perks of interacting with smaller audiences. Also, audience growth rate is a helpful measure to evaluate performance on each network, identify which one is generating the highest rates and investigate how to gain more followers on all networks. Additionally, it may be useful in tracking specific campaigns‟ success.