Since consumers have expanded their interest in global countries with the ease of access to global content through online platforms such as YouTube, marketing practitioners endeavor to uncover an underlying mechanism on how consumers’ interest in global countries would prompt their digital shopping behavior. However, prior literature has not concentrated on the influence of watching videos about global countries on consumers’ digital shopping intentions. By scrutinizing a proprietary dataset regarding consumers’ YouTube watching history and shopping website/app usage behavior, we find that watching global content could increase consumers’ digital shopping duration. In addition, we also find that consumers watching more global content have variety-seeking tendencies when they use shopping websites and apps. Furthermore, we investigate the moderating factors such as social media search and consumers’ sentiment toward different countries on digital shopping. Our findings contribute to the international marketing literature and provide managerial implications to digital media platforms and global companies that utilize target recommendations strategy for marketing communication.

This study addresses the influence that the use of social media for posting travel-related content has on holiday destination choice. The study builds upon the Theory of Conspicuous Behavior and the Theory of Planned Behaviour and aims at understanding whether expected Social Return, referring to the amount of positive feedback that travel posts have on social media, is a determining factor of destination decisions. A model entailing E-Word of Mouth, Social Return, Attitudes, Subjective Norm, Perceived Control and Intention to Visit is proposed and tested with a survey of 177 respondents who had an Instagram account. Data was analyzed using Structured Equation Modelling. The results highlight that Instagram promotes social recognition attributed to e-tourists that share a travel experience considered charming and trendy. Such social recognition is tangibilized by the constructs of e-WOM and social return. The study finds that the intention to visit is impacted by e-WOM, Social Return and Subjective Norm. However, the impact of Attitudes and Perceived Behavioral Control on the Intention to Visit was not supported.

The outbreak of COVID-19 has brought significant changes to today’s life. Human contact is regarded as a source of risk. Thus, the low-contact services provided by service robots have gained more attention in the hospitality industry. However, a relatively smaller proportion of empirical research exists about service robots on the consumer side. Moreover, technology acceptance theories were mostly used in the adoption of new technology products, but the psychological aspects of consumers were rarely explored. Therefore, the stimulus- organism-response model (SOR model) was applied to explore consumers’ acceptance of adopting service robots and to understand what factors will successfully stimulate consumers’ subsequent value and behavioral responses. Furthermore, we investigated the relationship among stimulus (coolness and affinity), organism (utilitarian value and hedonic value) and response (intention to use and word-of-mouth recommendation). This study used convenience sampling and tested the hypotheses with SPSS and Smart PLS.

Destination branding has become an important trend in modern tourism. The development of destination brands has become a strategic tool worldwide because of the growing competition between destinations. In recent years, many tourist destinations have combined unique, creative, and attractive elements to transform themselves into “cool” tourist destinations. Destination brand coolness refers to tourists’ subjective and positive perception of tourist destinations and their beliefs that the destination brand offer distinctive, novel characteristics and attributes that the visitors are attracted to. Creating destination brand coolness can help tourist destinations differentiate themselves from their competitive counterparts, thereby attracting tourists. However, no study has conceptualized the construct of destination brand coolness, let alone developing scales that measure destination brand coolness.

This study explores the role of the digital communication in determining customers’ e-service agent use behavior and examines whether perceived communicator authority interacts with communication style toward strengthening or weakening future e-service agent use intention. The results of this study provide pioneering evidence on the effects of digital service communication strategies. This study contributes to digital service research by exploring the communication strategies of e-service agents. Results also provide implications for practitioners on how to achieve most out of deploying digital communications in the digital customer service platform.

Customer value co-creation behavior (CVCB) has been regarded as a strong predictor of firm performance in many industries for decades. CVCB—the customer’s direct and indirect contribution of resources to enhance the offering of the focal agent/object—is ubiquitous in service industries. Recently, customer engagement has been identified as a determinant of the value realized by customers and businesses. Customer psychological engagement (CPEngagement) is a multidimensional customer-firm relationship marked by customer satisfaction and emotional connectedness to the firm. Although there is concurrence that customer engagement and CVCB are linked, scholars diverge as to the precise nature of the relationship. Marketing and hospitality literature have not yet developed an integrated model of customer engagement with the digital and physical components of hospitality services. Given the increasing managerial interest in digital customer engagement and value co-creation behaviors, it is essential to enhance our understanding of the interplay between these concepts and their implications for both consumers and businesses. This research investigates the relationship between CPEngagement and value co-creation in the digital and physical aspects of hospitality services.

This research focuses on analyzing the impact of a recommendation system on customer behavior in the e-commerce industry. The study examines the use of big data-driven product recommendations and tailored promotions to enhance customer engagement, conversion rates, and revenue generation. The importance of prioritizing customer engagement in the early stages of the purchasing process is emphasized, and key statistics related to customer behavior in e-commerce are presented. The objective of this research is to investigate the effectiveness of a recommendation system in influencing customer behavior and driving conversions in the e-commerce industry. The research design incorporates a case study analysis of a prominent marketplace in Indonesia. Data was collected from three automation trigger campaigns: browsing abandonment, wishlist/cart abandonment, and purchase reminders. The findings of the research indicate that a recommendation system based on big data has a significant impact on costumer behavior in the e-commerce industry. The research highlights the importance of prioritizing customer engagement and implementing effective recommendation systems to drive conversion rates and revenue in the e-commerce industry.

Virtual reality (VR) has been set with an expectation of becoming the technology to enable new electronic businesses on metaverse platforms. VR is an application of three-dimensional computer graphics to create a convincing virtual environment where users can interact (Cowan & Ketron, 2019). The most used immersive VR devices are head-mounted displays. Importantly, in addition to visual sense, auditory, haptic, and olfactory senses stimulating devices are used in conjunction with head-mounted displays to reach a multi-sensory VR experience (Xi & Hamari, 2021). VR has been part of the brand strategy for various marketing endeavours (Cowan & Ketron, 2019) such as viewing furniture or kitchen setups by IKEA or creating virtual customer experiences in the real estate sector. However, VR’s impact on the consumer thought model has not been thoroughly examined. This extended abstract contributes to this shortcoming.

B2B marketers increasingly encounter a pressure to be digitally present in digital channels and to generate content that is tempting in driving potential customers to interact with the company online (Wiersema, 2013; Andersson & Wikström 2017). This is what B2B lead nurturing is about as the objective of lead nurturing is to provide the audience with relevant and valuable content which leads to an increased brand interest and awareness, with the goal of bringing in new customers (Marketo, 2023). To better understand how prospects and leads react to digital content, companies can build lead scoring into a strategic tool for the salespeople to qualify the prospective customers down to a list of leads, meaning prospects who are considered the most likely to convert to a positive business outcome and to be contacted in person by the salespeople (Järvinen & Taiminen 2016; Paschen et al. 2020).

By using signaling theory, we shed light on how international entrepreneurial ventures co-brand with international players by leveraging multichannel approaches involving social media platforms. The contribution to signaling theory within international marketing literature is multi-fold.

Customers’ service experience is related to the perceived state in the process of interacting with the target at various channel touchpoints (Kaushal & Yadav, 2023). Furthermore, positive customers’ service experiences can increase the repurchase intention of buyers by strengthening the interconnection and cooperation between buyers and suppliers in business-to-business (B2B) firms and reinforcing corporate competitive positioning.

Agility involves dynamic capabilities that can adapt to change, reduce complexity, and reconfigure resources. Research on B2B firms' agility in complex international ecosystems is limited. This study explores the essential dynamic capabilities necessary for B2B marketing to enhance organizational agility. Qualitative methods are applied, including focus groups and interviews with managers and officials in various industries. The aim is to contribute to the discussion on B2B firms' capabilities, strategies, and patterns to gain agility in internationalization efforts.

To successfully expand their business activities in overseas markets, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) must first acquire a thorough knowledge and understanding of prevailing environmental and market conditions. This study examines the crucial role that a learning orientation can play in the generation of relevant foreign market knowledge. It also investigates the impact of foreign market knowledge on strengthening internationalizing SMEs’ operational adjustment agility and market capitalizing agility, which in turn enhance firms’ international venture performance. Our empirical effort is based on data collected from 209 Nigerian industrial SMEs which internationalize their efforts. To test our research model and hypotheses we collected data by means of a survey conducted among Nigerian small- and medium-sized firms (i.e., employing 250 or less people) which internationalize their efforts and launch their products in B2B markets. The positive role of learning orientation, foreign market knowledge and organizational agility is confirmed by our results on driving international venture performance.

From the past to the present, we are living in an age of social comparison. Above all, upward social comparison to those who are superior in terms of their social and economic status makes individuals feel psychologically deficient and threatened. As a result, individuals oftentimes exhibit compensatory consumption to relieve their unfulfilled desires such as stress, disappointment, and self-esteem deficiency by purchasing high-end products or brands (Mandel, Petrova, & Cialdini, 2006; Pettit & Sivanathan, 2011).

Influencers have become a critical component of marketing strategy to increase awareness, encourage consideration, and drive purchases. A new type of influencer, computer-generated and artificial intelligence-powered avatars, has emerged amid this boom. Despite the mixed marketing results virtual influencers deliver, they are generally thought to create similar engagement as human influencers. Consumers appear capable of developing complex psychological processes when engaging with virtual influencers. Even though the positive impact of influencers is evident, there is a growing concern about how they can affect consumers' well-being. The feeling of envy is a significant well-being concern in the social media world. Assuming virtual influencers can deliver similar emotional effects as human influencers, can we feel envy towards virtual influencers?

We explore how young, educated consumers in a collectivist emerging market, utilize social media (SM) to increase self-esteem through interaction with retailers and achieve emotional well-being. Primary data were collected in Vietnam through a survey. 192 responses were analyzed using PLS-SEM. The findings show that SM provides an online space for value co-creation, where young consumers feel more closely connected with the service provider and express themselves to retailers. Close interaction via a retailer’s mediation “responsiveness” facilitates consumer learning and provides opportunities for consumers to convert initial knowledge to second stage knowledge through conversion. In the process of mediation and interaction, SM is used to facilitate the learning cycle. Also, retailers apply the value-in-use concept by adapting relevant information to better suit a particular individual’s needs. This imbues a sense of self confidence and results in consumers gaining self-esteem.

Today, the metaverse is everywhere; it has become a major buzzword. The term was first coined in an American writer’s 1992 science fiction novel, Snow Crash, as a portmanteau of meta (Greek prefix meaning beyond) and universe. Nearly three decades later today, it is no longer the setting of a science fiction epic. Rather, it is becoming as real as the physical world. In the current time, the metaverse is used as a concept to describe a seamless convergence of the physical and digital worlds, or a virtual community where people can work, play-to-earn, transact and socialize (J.P. Morgan, 2022).

How do people perceive new technology-embedded machines? Based on the previous literature on mind perception, this research proposes how people perceive the mind of machines including artificial intelligence (AI), robots, recommendation systems, chatbots, and self-service technologies (SSTs).

Since the impact of COVID-19, the tourism and hospitality (T&H) practitioners have become increasingly aware of the crucial role of technology. The metaverse, which combines multiple emerging technologies, has become a hot topic that can take customers' experience in T&H to the next level. Previous research has already indicated that industrial practitioners should begin to consider business transformation to face the era of the metaverse. The metaverse is a continuum from the digital worlds to the physical worlds, with the convergence of physical and virtual worlds in the middle. Digital worlds include mirror worlds that simulate and reflect the real world and the virtual native, an innovative digital world. The digital twin has been mentioned as being created for destinations, hotels, and resorts, relying on the internet of things (IoT) as a crucial component of metaverse technology. However, previous studies have rarely explored the role of the IoT in the metaverse, particularly for T&H customers' metaverse experience. Therefore, this study aims to explore the role of the IoT in customers' metaverse experience in T&H and provide a clear picture for industrial practitioners to take steps into the metaverse. Exploratory research was adopted, including document analysis, literature review, and in-depth interviews with twelve international metaverse-related company experts. Moreover, this research adopted the thematic analysis technique to analyze the data; the theoretical bases include the Task-Technology Fit (TTF) and the components of metaverse as the lens and framework to develop this research. The findings uncovered three scenes of T&H metaverse experiences, including mirror scenes (that reflect the physical and real world in the digital worlds), convergent scenes (that combine the digital and real worlds), and virtual native scenes (that mainly create a whole new virtual scene but still connect to the real world). All of these scenes require IoT to connect the physical world and digital at different levels. Such as, mirror scenes strongly need digital twin techniques through IoT to enhance the authenticity and synchronicity of digital hotels or attractions to immerse guests. Under a convergent scene, connecting via IoT devices to display visitors' paths in the attractions simultaneously or a message board with IoT functionality for users’ social interactions simultaneously. In a virtual native museum, even though users stay in a whole new virtual world, IoT techniques can transfer users from the real world to the virtual world and make them feel physically present. The results provide practical implementations to integrate the IoT into T&H, increasing customers' metaverse experience and enhancing the creative and innovative aspects of the T&H experience.

While there is an increasing number of studies highlighting the power of videos in influencing audience attitudes and behavior, academic research in tourism is largely behind due to the methodological challenges of analyzing unstructured video data. This study adopts an automatic video analytics approach to examine the relationship between content features of pro-environmental videos and audience engagement in tourism. Artificial intelligence was used to extract video content features by detecting scenes and shots as well as labels (e.g., trees). Our findings suggest that there exists an inverted U-shape relationship between video informativeness and audience engagement. This study makes significant theoretical and methodological contributions to extant tourism literature by theoretically explaining and empirically testing how video content features influence audience engagement in pro-environmental video communications in tourism.