Public transportation companies often classify customers into only two classes, i.e. first and second class. This segmentation largely ignores travelers’ needs and may leave heterogeneity within classes. Using a discrete choice experiment, this work investigates if the introduction of dedicated sections based on travelers’ characteristics can provide them additional value.

Export diversification – the extent to which the firm seizes export sales opportunities across different nations and/or geographic regions – is a critical element of export marketing strategy. Yet, knowledge of the export performance consequences of export diversification is lacking. Underpinned by contingency and resource dependence theories, we examine the export diversification-export performance relationship as well as critical contingencies of this link. Based on a sample of UK exporters we find that firms gain the highest export performance benefits when they simultaneously increase national and regional export diversification. Our results also show that the export diversification-export performance link is weaker when firms operate in markets that are very in dynamism. Additionally, the relationship between export diversification and performance is stronger when both resource sharing and interfunctional coordination are high. Such contextual factors provide a better understanding of the diversification-performance relationship.

Researchers have yet to investigate whether it is beneficial for exporters to engage in greater levels of product adaptation in their export operations, or whether there is some limit to the amount of adaptation exporters should engage in. We posit that customer value creation, a central marketing concept and a mechanism to achieving market and financial goals in business to business markets, is a core outcome of export product adaptation activities. In order to explore the routes by which adaptation may shape export customer value creation, we adopt a multi-faceted conceptualization of firm-level product adaptation, comprising export product adaptation (i) quantity, (ii) intensity and (iii) novelty. Drawing on survey data from 249 Finnish exporters involved in business-to-business activities, we find evidence to support the claim that the impact of export product adaptation on export customer value creation is contingent on various factors, and we identify instances where greater adaptation is beneficial for export customer value creation, and instances where greater export product adaptation is potentially harmful for export customer value creation.

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.

Attitudes toward advertising as an institution remain an important research topic in developing countries. Even in the West, the issue is currently being revisited to update for various online media contexts. This paper examines attitudes toward advertising among college students in Egypt. There was little difference in attitudes depending on whether they were thinking of traditional TV advertising or advertising on social media, although they use SM much more frequently. Generally the respondents agreed with a range of issues related to the beneficial aspects of advertising, and only slightly agreed or were roughly neutral on most issues related to detrimental effects. There is strong support for laws about ‘truth-in-advertising’ and legal responsibility for claims, but only weak support for direct government control of advertising.

Introduction Recent years have witnessed a rapid growth in sharing service businesses. In B2C sharing-service businesses such as Zipcar, customers share goods and services provided by a service firm with other customers and perform the roles played by service employees in traditional service businesses. Consequently, how well one customer carries out expected tasks influences the quality of service provided to other customers. Extant studies have emphasized the importance of a governance system to prevent such a social dilemma as the personal interest of an individual being pursued at the sacrifice of the interest of the community. However, few studies have empirically examined the effect of different design of a governance system. To fill this gap in the research, this study examines the framing effect of customer messages on customer intention to cooperate by complying with the request by the firm. Theoretical development For customers to be willing to cooperate with a firm, they have to be first motivated to do so. The framing effect of on customer motivation has been well demonstrated (Ganzach & Karsahi, 1995) in diverse service contexts such as healthcare (Christensen, Heckerling, Mackesy, Bernstein, & Elstein, 1991), education (Fryer Jr, Levitt, List, & Sadoff, 2012), and consumer behaviors (Ganzach & Karsahi, 1995; White, MacDonnell, & Dahl, 2011) In the context of service consumption, motivation is defined as the inner driver that triggers an individual to cooperate with the service providers (Tsai, Wu, & Huang, 2017). Whether messages were framed as a gain versus a loss exerted a significant impact on consumer motivation. In the consumer behavior contexts, consumer reactions to frames were mixed (Ganzach & Karsahi, 1995). In this study, we will examine the framing effect in the context of sharing service consumption. H1: In the B2C sharing service context, the framing of customer message (gain vs. loss) will affect customer motivation to comply with the request of the service firm. Customers tend to behave different depending on the value they pursue through consumption (Hwang & Griffiths, 2017). Even in the same consumption context, values of customer pursuit can vary widely. Hence, we intend to examine the moderating effect of customer value perception of sharing service on the effect of message framing on motivation. Studies showed that customers pursuing utilitarian values consider monetary savings and convenience as important, while customers pursuing symbolic value consider status and self-esteem as important and those pursing hedonic values consider entertainment and exploration as important (Rintamäki, Kanto, Kuusela, & Spence, 2006). The framing effect was shown to differ by the emphasized value of the product in the context of advertisement. A gain frame was more effective than a loss frame when the ad highlighting the hedonic attributes of a product while a loss frame was more effective when the ad stressing the utilitarian attributes of the product (Lin, 2007). Taken together, we conjecture that customers pursing different values will react differently to the same frame of messages and the level of motivation triggered by the same message frame will also differ. H2: Customer value perception of sharing service will moderate the framing effect of customer messages (gain vs. loss) on motivation. Specifically, customers pursuing utilitarian values will react more strongly to the messages framed as a loss (H2a), while customers pursuing hedonic or symbolic values will react more strongly to messages framed as a gain (H2b). The effect of motivation on customer behaviors and behavioral intentions have been well demonstrated (Ganzach & Karsahi, 1995). In the service context, customer cooperation behaviors induced by motivation significantly influence the efficiency of service operations (Mills & Morris, 1986). We propose that the motivation enhanced by customer messaged influence customer willingness to cooperate. H3: In the B2C sharing service context, motivation affects customer willingness to cooperate. Methodology Data will be collected from American consumers who have used a car sharing service at least once in the past one year through an online scenario-based survey using a 2 (message frames: gain vs. loss) x 3 (values of sharing service: utilitarian vs. hedonic vs. symbolic) between-subject experimental design. Hypotheses will be tested by an analysis of variance and a regression analysis. Implication The findings of this study will help P2P service firms better design customer messages in inducing customer cooperation and how to customize the design by customers’ value perceptions of sharing service.

The rise of the sharing economy is transforming the tourism and hospitality industry (So, Oh, and Min, 2018; Zhu, So, and Hudson, 2017). The growing popularity of Airbnb has led a number of recent studies to investigate consumer value derived from such innovative consumption model. In the context of Airbnb, research shows that perceived value motivated travelers to choose Airbnb (Mao & Lyu, 2017). However, the theoretical construct of consumer value includes multiple dimensions, such as emotional value, social value, price value, and quality value, and how each dimension contributes to consumer attitudes and behavioral intentions toward Airbnb is unexplored. Therefore, this study sets forth a national field investigation to provide a holistic understanding of consumer evaluation of various value dimensions with respect to Airbnb experiences. To empirically test the proposed model, a quantitative, national online survey was conducted using Qualtrics Online Sample. After checking the performance of the measurement model, we evaluated the results of the structural model. The results show that emotional value and quality value significantly explain overall attitude toward Airbnb, whereas, price value and social value were not significant in predicting attitude. However, price value and social value, together with overall attitude, significantly explain consumer’s purchase intention. The results show that the t values from bootstrapping were greater than 1.96, and the R2 values for endogenous variables well exceeded .26. All exogenous constructs producing effect sizes ranging from small to large. In addition, the Q2 for the endogenous latent constructs were well above the threshold, with .421 for overall attitude and .472 for behavioral intentions, thereby substantiating the structural soundness of the proposed model.

The purpose of the current study was to deduct the factors for e-sports and to develop measurement scale of each images of those factors so as to establish the concept of esports. In order to achieve the aforementioned purpose, the study was conducted through three steps: (1) deduction of the elementary/principal factors which were based on the literature investigation and in-depth interview of experts and general public, (2) conducting first survey and exploratory factor analysis, and (3) conducting secondary survey followed by confirmatory factor analysis. In the first step, in order to develop and identify measurement scales, images concerning e-sports, game and sports perceived by consumers and related items used in the extant literature were investigated. Additionally, in order to verify the face and content validity of deducted items, in-depth interview of experts, professional gamers, professors of Sports Science, doctoral students, people in charge, general public and etc was conducted. And in the second step, the survey with those confirmed items scales were conducted and with the results derived from the survey, the exploratory factor analysis for measuring images consisting e-sports were also conducted. Finally, in the third step, secondary survey based on the results derived from the exploratory factor analysis were conducted and in order to test uni-dimensionality of the measurement tool with the results emanated from the secondary survey, confirmatory factor analysis were conducted. Through aforementioned three steps, the current study confirmed the image factors consisting e-sports which are comprised of six positive factors (i.e., sociality, entertainingness, aestheticness, leisureness, education, and stress relief) and five negative factors (i.e., addictiveness, violence, commercial viability/marketability, and closedness).

Marketers increasingly develop strategies to benefit from the potentials of the mobile internet and related technologies. Digitally enhanced product packaging is one prominent example for this evolution and QR (quick response) codes currently give this trend an appearance. QR codes enable manufacturers to provide consumers - despite the limited space on the product package - with comprehensive product information. And consumers increasingly request additional product information, for instance, to monitor environmental factors before purchasing products. Hence, while marketers nowadays regularly use QR codes on product packages to provide consumers with additional product information, they complain about the low usage rates and finally about the effectiveness of QR codes. Extant literature provides little guidance on consumer responses towards these marketing stimuli and, in particular, on how the mere presence of QR codes on product packages affects consumer behavioral and behavior-related responses. Existing research unexceptionally explores how marketers can motivate consumers to scan QR codes (Okazaki et al., 2012; Okazaki et al., 2017) and thus draws a one-sided picture of how marketers can benefit from QR codes. To enrich extant knowledge, this research uses information processing and environmental theory to offer insights into whether and how QR codes on product packages affect consumer product purchasing. The findings of an experimental study illustrate that QR codes affect consumer product purchases by inducing product- and vendor-related cognitive beliefs. In particular, the presence of QR codes on product packaging strengthens consumers’ perceptions about product quality and vendor innovativeness which then positively translate into purchase intentions. Hence, QR codes displayed on product packaging indirectly shape product purchasing. In sum, this research broadens the previous focus on usage-related outcomes by considering how and why QR codes affect consumer purchasing.

As visual marketing gains a more critical role in marketing communications, consumer eye-tracking data has been utilized to assess the effectiveness of those marketing efforts (Croll, 2016; Glazer, 2012). With eye-tracking data, researchers can capture consumers’ visual attention effectively and may predict their behavior better than with traditional memory measures (Wedel & Pieters, 2008). However, due to the complexity of data: its volume, velocity and variety, known as 3Vs of Big Data, marketing scholars have been slow in fully utilizing eye-tracking data. These data properties may pose a challenge for researchers to analyze eye-tracking data, especially gaze sequence data, with traditional statistical approaches. Commonly, researchers may analyze gaze sequences by computing average probabilities of gaze transitions from a particular area of interest to another area of interest. When the variance of gaze sequence data in the sample is small, this method would uncover a meaningful “global” trend, a trend consistent across all the individuals. However, when the variance is large, this method may not enable researchers to understand the nature of the variance, or the “messiness” of data. In this paper, first, to overcome this challenge, we propose an innovative method of analyzing gaze sequence data. Utilizing the singular value decomposition, our proposed method enables researchers to reveal a “local” trend, a trend shared by only some individuals in the sample. Second, we illustrate the benefits of our method through analyzing gaze sequence data collected in an advertising study. Finally, we discuss the implications of our proposed method, including its capability of uncovering a hidden “local” trend in “messy” gaze sequence data.

This research investigated how neuromarketing can improve and determine the effectiveness of action-based public health and social cause marketing communications with social amplification platforms. Action-based advertisements (Ferrier, Ward, & Palermo, 2012) aim to encourage consumers to ‘act’, ‘share’, make a ‘pledge’ or complete a ‘challenge’ for a public health or social cause. Public health messages as non-commercial advertisements attempt to change public behaviour (Vecchiato, Cherubino, Trettel, & Babiloni, 2013). Research was conducted using a 64 channel EEG wet cap with electrodes placed according to the international 10/20 system (Gountas et al., 2014; Treleaven-Hassard et al., 2010). The study applied an exploratory design which involved 4 tasks where participants viewed 7 advertisements (6 action-based, 1 control) and their logos while EEG was recorded. Preliminary LORETA results from the first five seconds of the most effective advertisement indicated approach responses due to left prefrontal and right parietal cortex activation (Davidson & Irwin, 1999; Vecchiato et al., 2013). Results suggest that consumer’s decision making about an advertisement occurs within the first five seconds of viewing an advertisement.

Food trucks are not a new idea but the significant growth in the variety of foods served and the number of trucks operating means this retail option is becoming more important. The growth of this segment can be explained by McNair’s (1958) wheel of retailing theory which indicates that growth in retailing happens when new types of retailers with low startup costs, low capital and low prices enter the market – exactly what is occurring with food trucks entering the mature food retailing market. There has been limited academic research regarding the food truck industry. To better understand this retail segment and the factors influencing it, we conducted in-depth discussions with nine food truck owner/operators in the Midwest and Gulf Coast regions of the United States. The discussions with the food truck owner/operators indicated three critical areas: marketing, growth strategy, and legal issues. Technology was found to be vital to this retail segment with social media being used to promote the business and many vendors mentioned that apps like Square (which enables credit card payments) help them get additional sales when customers lack cash. These apps also helped the owner/operators manage some of the legal/regulatory issues associated with operating within different municipalities. Our in-depth discussions with the nine food truck vendors provided insight into the food truck business and helped refine our understanding of critical concerns of this growing industry.

Introduction Although hotel employees are trained to deliver the best service, service failures may happen at any time because service is delivered by people to people (Susskind, 2002). Moreover, customers are more impressed by failed services than good services (Titz, 2001). According to the recovery paradox, customers have higher satisfaction level after experiencing a service failure if they receive satisfactory service recovery or compensation (McCollough & Bharadwaj, 1992). With the development of information communication technology and mobile device, customers can receive personalized services in recent days (Migacz, Zou, & Petrick, 2018). They also can easily share their experience on the online review platforms such as TripAdvisor, as well as select hotels based on shared online reviews (Liu & Park, 2015; Nieto-Garaía, Muñoz-Gallego, & González-Benito, 2017). Therefore, it is important for hotel managers to understand the mechanisms for service failure and recovery strategy. Thus, this study aims to examine the relationship between different emotion, customer engagement and brand loyalty under the context from the luxury hotels in China that different service failure compensation strategies are adopted. Particularly, the following two research questions are aimed to be addressed: First, do emotions (anger, regret and helplessness) significantly affect hotel brand loyalty through customer engagement? Second, does compensation type (immediate vs. delayed) significantly affect customer engagement and hotel brand loyalty based on customers’ emotions? The results of this study will benefit industry practitioners for formulating effective service failure recovery strategies. Theoretical frameworks and hypotheses development Stimulus-Organism-Response framework Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) framework is a commonly used form of behavioral research in which events or occurrences are said to be the result of certain stimulus leading to a certain response, following a set of organism processes (Kim & Lennon, 2013; Mehrabian & Russell, 1974). In behavioral research, the S-O-R theory explains “how” something happens and a variance theory describes “why” (Chiles, 2003). We adopted the S-O-R framework in an attempt to explain the effect of the compensation types (immediate vs. delayed) on hotel brand loyalty. In our research model, customer engagement is used an intervening construct on the causal relationship between emotions of customer (anger and regret as a retrospective emotions, helplessness as a prospective emotion) (Gelbrich, 2010) and hotel brand loyalty. Customer engagement is composed of multidimensional concepts of identification, enthusiasm, attention, absorption, and interaction (So, King, & Spark, 2014). Our model thus explains four basic processes of relationship impact on service failure as “stimulus”, emotions and customer engagement as “organism”, and hotel brand loyalty as “response”. This study also emphasizes compensation type as “moderator”. The model shows how to enhance the understanding of emotions that affect hotel brand loyalty through customer engagement based on the moderating effect of compensations type. Customer engagement It is important for a firm to manage customers to improve a firm’s performance. Customer management has transformed from customer transactions, to relationship marketing, and then engaging customers (Pansari and Kumar 2017). There are different definition about customer engagement and most of them define customer engagement as the activity of the customer toward the firm. For example, Pansari and Kumar (2017) define customer engagement as how customer contributes to the firm by “the mechanics of a customer’s value addition to the firm, either through direct or/and indirect contribution.” Vivek et al. (2012) define customer engagement as “the intensity of an individual’s offerings or organizational activities, which either the customer or the organization initiates” (p.127). It has been discussed that customer engagement has been affected by customer emotion and also has significant impact on behaviour intention and brand loyalty. However it has not been discussed under service failure context and when different types of compensation strategies are employed. This study therefore aims to explore this mechanics. Under hospitality context, So, King and Sparks (2014) develop five factors to measure customer engagement: identification, enthusiasm, attention, absorption, and interaction. Since this study also examine hotel guest customers, we adopt the scale of So et al. (2014) due to its comprehensiveness and consistent context. Service failure and emotion Customer emotion is an important antecedent of customer engagement. Currently firms have been shifted their focus from selling products to emotional connection with their customers (Pansari and Kumar 2017). Positive emotion may enhance customer engagement and thereby improve customer loyalty. But when service failure occurs, customers have different negative emotions including anger, frustration, helplessness, regret amongst others. These negative emotions of customers disappoint customers themselves and reduce customer loyalty. Different emotions may have different impact on customer engagement. Anger often refers to the attributes of others such as the service providers (Weiner, 1985) whereas regret often refers to the service failure locus of customer himself/herself such as the customer is regret to choose this service provider (Roseman, 1991). Both anger and regret refer to retrospective emotions and when customer would like to solve questions they may also negative emotion of helplessness which is called prospective emotions (Davidow, 2003; Gelbrich, 2010). This study aims to examine and differentiate the impact of two retrospective emotions of anger and regret and one prospective emotions of helplessness. The first hypothesis is therefore proposed: H1: Anger has negative impact on customer engagement. H2: Regret has negative impact on customer engagement. H3: Helplessness has negative impact on customer engagement. Service failure compensation Though service providers aim to deliver zero fault service, it is inevitable service failure may occur that may bring customers anger and dissatisfaction and damage the customer loyalty thereby. It is found that compensation is an effective way to comfort and delight the dissatisfied customers. Therefore, it is important to formulate effective compensation strategy when service failure occurs. Different compensation strategies such as monetary or nonmonetary (Fu et al. 2015), immediate or delayed compensation (Boshoff, 1997; Davidow, 2003), may be suitable to different contexts/situations. According to prospect theory, a customer is risk-reverse in case of gains. A customer may value products available now more than products obtained in the future due to the higher certainty of the former. Similarly, immediate compensation has less uncertainty than delayed compensation, and therefore is supposed to have higher value. Therefore customers with anger are assumed to have higher customer engagement when immediately compensated. On the other hand, regret customers attribute failure to himself/herself and therefore less expect compensation. The immediate compensation may lead to unfair and thereby less effect than delayed compensation. Therefore immediate compensation may not always be superior over the delayed one under different contexts. We therefore propose the second hypothesis: H1a: Compensation type (immediate vs. delayed) moderates the relationship between anger and customer engagement. H2a: Compensation type (immediate vs. delayed) moderates the relationship between regret and customer engagement. H3a: Compensation type (immediate vs. delayed) moderates the relationship between helplessness and customer engagement. Brand loyalty Brand loyalty refers to the loyalty of a customer toward the brand both behaviourally and attitudinally (Dick and Basu 1994; Li and Petrick 2008; So, King, Sparks, and Wang 2013). It is a key goal of marketing activities, and its antecedents have been extensively examined such as satisfaction, perceived quality, received value, and brand trust, amongst others. Customer engagement, as the activity of a customer toward to a firm, is naturally viewed to influence brand loyalty. This study therefore adopts brand loyalty as the consequence of customer engagement. Furthermore, we would like to examine if compensation types have moderating effect between customer engagement and brand loyalty. We therefore propose below two hypotheses: H4: customer engagement has positive impact on brand loyalty. H4a: Compensation type (immediate vs. delayed) moderates the relationship between customer engagement and brand loyalty. The research model is shown in Figure 1 where all hypotheses are demonstrated. Our research model is developed based on the S-O-R framework in which emotions are antecedent of customer engagement, and customer engagement impacts hotel brand loyalty. This research model also shows the moderating effects of compensation types has on causal relationships between the aforementioned constructs. Methodology Scenario design Scenario based questionnaire is designed to obtain quantitative data for analysis. Based on the interview with hotel managers/operators, one service failure scenario and two compensation scenarios (immediate and delayed) are designed. In-depth interviews with a couple of hotel managers and guests were conducted to verify the realisation of the scenarios formulated. The questionnaire begins with a screening question: in the previous 12 months have you ever had experience staying in a four- or five-star hotel? The survey would only continue if the answer is “yes”. Then the participant is asked to write down the name of this hotel and read the below service failure scenario thereby. Service failure scenario: Imagine you have checked into this hotel again. During your stay in hotel, you send your coat for laundry. It is a nice coat and you bought it a year ago with the price of 1000RMB. However when you collect the cleaned coat, you notice that there is a damage on your coat which makes you cannot dress this coat anymore. You therefore call the service counter for complain. Immediate and delayed compensation scenarios were designed as follows: Immediate compensation scenario: after 15 minutes, the duty manager of the hotel went to our hotel and expressed his sincere apology. You showed him about the damage and informed him the original price of your coat. The manager offered you the cash compensation with the original price of your coat and you agree with this. After half an hour you received 1000RMB cash as the compensation. Delayed compensation scenario: after 15 minutes, the duty manager of the hotel went to your room and expressed his sincere apology. You showed him about the damage and informed him the original price of your coat. The manager said according to the hotel policy, they need to check how this happened and confirm the price of your coat first before making the compensation for you. After two weeks you left the hotel, you received 1000RMB compensation which is transferred into your bank account directly. Participant emotion is measured after the participants read the service failure scenario and before they read the compensation scenario. Each participant is randomly assigned to be involved in one compensation scenario only. Customer engagement and hotel brand loyalty are measured after the compensation happened. Variable measurement Customer engagement is measured using 25-item scale developed by So et al. (2014) in which five factors are involved: identification, enthusiasm, attention, absorption, and interaction. Particularly, identification is measured by four attributes: “When someone criticizes this brand, it feels like a personal insult”, “When I talk about this brand, I usually say we rather than they”. “This brand’s successes are my successes”. “When someone praises this brand, it feels like a personal compliment”. Enthusiasm is measured by five attributes: “I am heavily into this brand”. “I am passionate about this brand” “I am enthusiastic about this brand” “I feel excited about this brand” “I love this brand”. Attention is measured by five attributes: “I like to learn more about this brand” “I pay a lot of attention to anything about this brand” “Anything related to this brand grabs my attention” “I concentrate a lot on this brand” “I like learning more about this brand” . Absorption is measured by five attributes: “When I am interacting with the brand, I forget everything else around me” “Time flies when I am interacting with the brand” “When I am interacting with brand, I get carried away” “When interacting with the brand, it is difficult to detach myself” “In my interaction with the brand, I am immersed” “When interacting with the brand intensely, I feel happy”. Interaction is measure by five attributes: “In general, I like to get involved in brand community discussions” “I am someone who enjoys interacting with likeminded others in the brand community” “I am someone who likes actively participating in brand community discussions” “In general, I thoroughly enjoy exchanging ideas with other people in the brand community” “I often participate in activities of the brand community”. Three emotion of anger, regret and helplessness are included as the measurement of emotion. Particularly, according to Gelbrich (2010), three attributes are adopted to measure anger “I would feel angry with the hotel/hotel employees”, “I would feel mad with the hotel/hotel employees”, and “I would feel furious about the hotel/hotel employees”. Three statements are employed to measure regret (Tsiros & Mittal 2000): “I would feel sorry for choosing this hotel”, “I regretted choosing this hotel”, and “I should have chosen another hotel”. Four statements are used to measure helplessness (Gelbrich 2010): “I would feel helpless”, “I would feel lost”, “I would feel defenceless”, and “I would feel stranded.” Five statements are used to measure brand loyalty (So, King, Sparks, & Wang 2013): “I would say positive things about this brand to other people.” “I would recommend this brand to someone who seeks my advice.” “I would encourage friends and relatives to do business with this brand.” “I would consider this brand my first choice to buy services.” “I would do more business with this brand in the next few years.” A seven-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (=disagree strongly) to 7 (=agree strongly) is adopted for all measurement. Data collection and analysis method In-depth interview with managers from upscale hotels and customers will be used to finalize scenarios. Opinions of academic experts will be used to revise variable measurements and questionnaires. Convenience sampling method will be adopted to obtain about 400 respondents who has experience of staying at four- or five-stars hotels in China in the previous year. Regarding with data analysis, Partial least square structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) is used to test the hypotheses proposed. Expected results The manipulation check has been conducted to verify the scenarios designed. The negative relationship between emotions and customer engagement are expected and compensation timing (delayed or immediate) may moderate this relationship. Most importantly, it is expected that this moderating effect varies when different emotions and customer engagement are examined. Contributions The theoretical contributions have three folders. Firstly, this study first considers compensation timing into the examination of relationship between different negative emotions and customer engagement, after service failure occurs. Secondly, this study adopts stimulus-organism-response theory to explore the mechanism how service failure could be well recovered by relationships of different negative emotions, effective compensation type, customer engagement, and brand loyalty. Thirdly, this study applies second order factor for the measurement of customer engagement and also divides negative emotions into retrospective and prospective ones to shed light on customer engagement in the context of service failure and compensation. The practical implication of this study will benefit industry practitioners for their formulation of compensation strategies. Especially as the development of big data, hotel industry is able to adopt different strategies for individuals to maximize customer experience. The findings of this study could propose different strategies for different situations/individuals thereby.

Consumers tend to anthropomorphize brands and treat products under the anthropomorphized brands as if they were human beings. Previous research has pointed out that there could be two kinds of anthropomorphized brands, i.e., servant and partner brands and claimed that typical consumers (non-materialists) prefer brands-as-partner, whereas materialists prefer brands-as-servant. However, there is room for improvement: (1) Previous studies have examined only brands-as-servant and brands-as-partner and brands-as-master have been ignored; and (2) they have regarded materialists as a unidimensional construct, though it can be divided into instrumental and terminal materialists. Thus, we conducted multiple comparison tests among the three kinds of anthropomorphized brands with a dataset of three kinds of consumers. The results showed that non-materialists, instrumental materialists, and terminal materialists prefer, brands-as-partner, brands-as-servant, and brands-as-master, respectively.

A company’s collaborative competence to seamlessly engage with its customers within the service industry becomes one of the primary sources of competitive advantage. Increasingly more customers expect more personalized and contextualized services to maximize the value they can obtain from each transaction, and companies are actively seeking opportunities to listen and learn from customers to enhance their value proposition. Scholars in the service marketing literature suggest that service recovery encounter represent one of the situations where a company can effectively leverage its collaborative competence to restore the company-customer relationship damaged due to an initial service failure. One of the important benefits customers can obtain from actively engaging in recovery is enhanced control. However, they are required to put additional personal resources which count as an increased cost for customers. Also, depending on the nature of a collaborative outcome (positive vs. negative), customers tend to ascribe responsibility differently (more credit to oneself for a positive result and less blame for an adverse result). This study attempts to 1) investigate the role of enhanced control and increased self-effort in customers’ equity perception toward a service recovery encounter and 2) examine how attributional bias intervene in the process. A 2 x 2 web-based experiment with a service recovery scenario was designed and administered to collect the data. The results indicate that when the resulting outcome is not desirable, the increased self-effort from customers counteracts the positive effect of enhanced control. When the recovery outcome is positive, on the other hand, customers with a low level of involvement in recovery process tend to overestimate their self-effort. However, such effect does not exist for customers with a high level of engagement. This study contributes to the extant literature by contemplating adverse impacts of effort and positive impacts of empowering customers with more control. It also provides valuable insight into the usefulness of customer engagement as a pre-emptive recovery strategy.

This paper uses the informational cascades perspectives to investigate how popularity of online service deals influences consumers’ reactions when (in)congruently presented with star rating evaluations. Previous research suggested that deal popularity and star rating are two common information cues representing past consumers’ online behavior that signal about online service quality potentially influencing prospective online consumers’ judgments and decision making (Flanagin et al. 2014; Kao et al. 2016). Hence this research aims to examine the conditions under which online deal popularity and star rating can effectively influence service quality evaluation and purchase intention. Using scenario-based experiments, we show how different combinations of information cues impact on the manner in which online deal popularity is used by consumers to shape service quality expectation and purchase intention. Findings indicate that congruency effect is highly influential when high deal popularity is paired with high star rating. Specifically, an informational cascade effect is activated by high deal popularity which overrides quality cue of low star rating. Accordingly, consumers’ service quality expectation and purchase intention are increased even when a low star rating is presented simultaneously with low star rating. Findings are useful to marketing strategists and e-retailers as they devise their online strategies, promotional campaigns and website design.

Even though luxury brands embraced social media (Godey et al., 2016; Kim & Ko, 2012), research on the use of social media for luxury brand marketing is limited. Given the increasing popularity of social media, it is imperative to examine social media-based communication strategies for luxury brands to achieve desirable consumer evaluations of brands and advertising. This research explored the role of brand anthropomorphism strategies in social media in enhancing consumers’ advertising and brand evaluations. Specifically, this research investigated (1) the effects of verbal-based brand anthropomorphism in the luxury goods brand context (Study 1), (2) the effects of verbalbased brand anthropomorphism in the luxury service brand context (Study 2), and (3) the effects of verbal-based brand anthropomorphism cues (Study 3) on consumers’ luxury brand and advertising evaluations. Studies 1 and 2 both collectively examined the role of self-focused anthropomorphized brand effects in two different contexts. Consumers easily connect themselves with an anthropomorphized advertising, compared to an objectified advertising for luxury brands. Study 3 identified the fit between luxury brand type and an anthropomorphized brand cue to explore the effectiveness of brand anthropomorphism. Depending on the type of luxury brands, consumers processed anthropomorphized brand cues differently. Consumers favorably perceived the fit between luxury good brands and partner cues; on the other hand, consumers favorably perceived the fit between luxury service brands and servant cues. Results of this research contribute to the social media advertising and luxury brand marketing literature by clarifying the role of brand anthropomorphism in consumer-brand relationships as well as in brand-advertising relationships. Results also provide industry suggestions for delivering personified brand messages to have desirable consumer brand and advertising evaluations.

As brands’ use of social media to connect with customers becomes increasingly important, there is a need to continually monitor and examine activities in social networks. An important aspect of the social network communications is its unique ways of concentrating and dispersing information among participants (actors) – density and centrality of the network. By looking at both density and centrality, the relationships among actors and their ability to influence others are revealed, allowing deeper understanding into networked behaviors. In this manner, examining whole and ego network patterns, the unique roles of individual actors, can provide brands significant insight in understanding how influencers form and how users connect and spread information. Based on the social network analysis, which represents a combination of theory and analytical methods of networked relationships, this study analyzed Twitter networks of two multi-brand cosmetics and beauty retailers, Sephora (global brand) and Ulta Beauty (U.S. domestic brand). Using NodeXL, daily Twitter data for both brands were gathered to investigate network activities. By examining both ego-networks and the whole networks, the results showed that while ego-networks for brands were quite similar to one another, there was a big difference between the ego-networks and whole networks in regards to the number of actors, type of connectivity, as well as the prominence of brands. Sephora was often not an important part of its hashtag network, and thus was not able to maintain strong control over communications and messages in these networks whereas Ulta maintained its control over its networks. The findings from analyzing these network patterns, the unique roles of individual actors, and the brands within the networks provide significant insights in understanding how influencers form and develop the ability to connect and spread information.

With the increasing prevalence of smartphones, marketers have a keen interest in the mobile channel hoping to enhance the effectiveness of marketing activities and improve sales performance. Prior research on mobile marketing examines for example, coupon redemption, time sensitivity, and message optimization, and find that marketing activities and the corresponding performance should be understood based on contexts in which such actions are employed. Following this stream of research, we focus on the context in which consumers interact with mobile phones, and evaluate the role of real-time mobile coupons in driving e-commerce interest. To this end, we collaborate with an online retailer selling beauty products as well as a credit card company distributing mobile coupons on behalf of the online retailer. Target customers are selected using prior usage of credit cards such as category preference and spending amount. When SMS texts are being sent to smartphones with transaction confirmation, mobile coupons are attached to such texts in order to induce target consumers to sign up for the online retailer. Thus our data comes from two sources. The credit card company provides transaction information along with demographics and the online retailer track consumers’ behavior in log and purchase data. Our empirical analyses suggest that real-time contexts matter in determining the effectiveness of mobile coupons. To be specific, consumers who have just spent a small amount of money show a greater propensity to redeem the coupons despite small rewards. Also, heavy users of e-commerce tend to be more responsive to the coupons promoting the online retailer whereas those with large spending on beauty products are less likely to sign up. We discuss theoretical contributions of these findings and offer practical insights.

This study aims to analyse the overall sentiments of online reviews on restaurants in Malaysia using predictive text analytics. As we know in opinion mining, sentiment analysis is a prominent technique in predictive text mining. It is a technique that categorises opinions in unstructured text format into binary classification (ie. good or bad). The authors attempt to go beyond the binary classification by viewing texts as empirical entities derived using the Term Frequency - Inverse Document Frequency (TF-IDF) weighting algorithm. These empirical entities, based on online reviews of restaurants in Malaysia, are then manifested into hypothetically defined constructs closely reflecting their thematic and semantic nature. The were 4914 customer reviews from restaurants across 20 towns and cities in Malaysia scraped off TripAdvisor.com using web crawler tools. Then a series of analytical tests were carried out. First the online reviews were parsed, filtered and clustered using SAS Text Miner. Then the online reviews underwent the TF-IDF process to identify significant terms and weightages were assigned according to their importance. The TF-IDF process resulted in a series of important nouns and adjectives from the text corpus. Using these weightages of nouns and adjectives, the authors went on to thematise these terms based on their semantic nature to manifest hypothetical constructs. These constructs were based on the Mehrabian–Russell Stimulus Response Model. Subsequently the authors tested the associations among the constructs using variance-based and covariance-based Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). The authors were encouraged by this exploratory methodological approach in formulating predictive text analytics using SEM. Results indicated that sentiments were generally positive towards restaurants and the important terms derived were price, hospitality, location, waiting time, availability of parking and size of food portion.