The study aims to analyze and compare how fashion brands of different categorization communicate in Instagram. Six global brands (Zara, H&M, Prada, Gucci, Nike, and Adidas) are chosen to be analyzed due to their different type/category of brands and their worldwide recognition. Netnography concept and method is used to conduct the data collection and data analyze during a period of time of six mouth. The results show that overall fast fashion brands (Zara and H&M) emerge to be more effective than other fashion categories in online communication. The Haute-de-couture brands (Prada and Gucci) reveal to be very similar in the way they communicate, demonstrating a good level of interactivity with consumers. The Sports brand (Nike and Adidas) have a low level of communication with the consumers and low number of photos and videos uploaded, which results in an average online communication of the brands in Instagram. This research highlights that to be successful in the online communication, fashion brands must be always updating photos and videos, they need to interact with consumers and make them feel a part of the brand, use celebrities to give more notoriety to the brand and be always present in the latest trends.

Introduction This study intends to analyse the impact of the engagement and employee experience towards the employee and employer success. The results demonstrate that organisations are conscious of the importance of retain and create happiness at work and are starting to create an internal experience for their workforce. They want to have employees engaged and retain talent. When employees are more committed to be happier at work they tend to take part of the ownership of their organisations. Employers and employees are more focused on people and the value that they can add to every single product and/or service they design, create and deliver. All this investment on internal world is feeding a better consumer experience as the quality standards are getting higher. Theoretical development The main goal is to evidence how the engagement is attaining more importance on both sides: employee and employer. In the past years, a growing number of studies and are giving more importance to the human side on organisations (e.g., Sinek, 2009; Nayar, 2010; Medeiros 2017). From the transactional economy, organizations are walking to an emotional, experience economy. In the customer-centric dynamics, organisations are taken employees first because these, once deep involved with the mission and goals of the organization, will be more devoted to customers. People “who love going to work are more productive and more creative. They go home happier and have happier families. They treat their colleagues and customers better. Inspired employees make stronger economies.” (Sinek, 2009, p.14) Without happy and empowered employees, the service will never achieve the best and higher levels to then be delivered to the customers. Company “can (should) focus on its value creators – the frontline employees. (…) in his or her knowledge, creativity commitment to tasks, and capacity to collaborate. In fact, (…) “the true value is created in the interface between the customer and the employee. (…) When a company puts its employees first, the customer actually does ultimately come first and gains the greatest benefit.” (Nayar, 2010, p.7). Internal engagement is crucial to companies’ reputation, to brand/service perception and ultimately for the business survival and successful future: “Employees who are dispositionally self-efficacious and proactive are likely to use their initiative, engage in proactive service performance, take charge to bring about change, proactively solve problems and implement ideas.” (Patterson et al., 2009). Research design According to the authors of the model applied, “we define engagement as the attitude, behaviour, the level of connectedness among customers, between customers and employees and of customers and employees with the firm.” (Kumar and Pansari, 2016, p. 498). This was the starting point for our interviews and our study. To complete this exploratory study, we’ve decided to follow a qualitative research by creating a script and interviewed 4 people in 10 organisations based in Lisbon. “Qualitative research starts from and returns to words, talk, and texts as meaningful representations of concepts.” (Pratt, 2009, p.856). The original script was written in English, then translated to Portuguese to be applied on the organisations. Each interview was fully transcript in Portuguese and the main findings and relevant content were enlightened in English to produce this paper. On each organisation, four employees were chosen: two women and two men from different departments and positions - board management, executive leadership, line managers and individual contributors. All interviewed people have Portuguese nationality and have a labour contract with their employer organisation. None outsourced employees have been selected to this study. All employees have between 25 and 50 years old. Interviews were done individually on the headquarters of each organisation. Interviews took between 45 and 60 minutes each. All conversations have been recorded with the individual’s authorisation. The note of confidentiality was explained and applied to all of them. The interviews followed the same script: three main blocks on a semi-structure script. Participants were asked to think about engagement and experience and share their thoughts and examples. Different organisations were chosen: multinational companies, agencies, national companies, private funds. The diversity of the organisations was accepted and taken as an added value to our work. To convert all audio into text, we’ve applied the google audio tool and a Huawei phone app that can transform audio into text. A final check was done in order to verify all sentences and avoid mishaps. After all transcription, a content analysis has been done and the most relevant facts, insights and details have been listed. The content analysis was done using the MAXQDA software. Results and conclusions The main goal of this exploratory study was to determine how engagement and experience are taking such an important role on employees and employers success. In order to be happier at work, employees are more committed and accountable. In the same equation, and to retain more talent, organisations are more focused on employees and how to design and delivery to them a better internal experience. The main finding confirm that happier and recognised employees work better, work more and have the ownership of the organisations they work for. Once people are happy and have good work conditions – financial, physic and technological – they will go further and beyond to deliver their tasks and when needed they will internally cooperate with their teammates or with other departments. To promote this good environment and to keep workforce with them, employers are changing the future of work, nevertheless a few organisations are not applying this or taking these questions as a priority. According to the content analysis of all interviews below a few findings that we would like to highlight: 1) Most of the interviewees say they like their jobs and they are happy at work. They feel that they are part of something: family, team, organisation, culture. 2) The feeling of belonging was mentioned multiple times – the emotional link and the human aspect of being accepted and valuable inside the organisation. 3) All interviewed people, despite the job and the position they have, spoke about the power of recognition and the importance of this aspect to retain talent. 4) All interviewed people raised the importance of happiness at work, the wellbeing variable and the crucial aspect of work/life balance. 5) All interviewed employees agreed that their organisations value more the individual, their soft skills, than the job position and the tasks that there are committed and designated to do. 6) From the point of view of organisations, as leaders and builders of a strategy, we could note that only a few are planning and designing a structured employee experience. Nevertheless, all companies have a list of benefits and create events to get together their employees and promote a better life for them. Following a more structured or more informal way, all interviewed organisations implement a list of actions to create a good work environment: flexibility on the work hours, the possibility to work from home, the team/company dinners and parties; the physical structure with infrastructures to have lunch or to have a break; the empowerment of the employees by asking them to be part of the decisions. 7) Only a few of the interviewed claim that their organisations are promoting situations of work mobility and career progression. Most of the people explained that is difficult to grow or to move from departments. 8) Both, organisations and employees, understand that the salary is not an imperative condition to work or to retain people. Employees value more other work conditions and benefits. The fact is that different and heterogeneous organisations understand and reveal concern in taking care of their people and on the importance of retain their employees. Strategies, or more simple activities, are taking place. All of 40 employees, aside their gender, ages, under all circumstances and positions, want the same: recognition, to be happy and to balance, the best way possible, their work and their life. People want to be treated as people, as an exclusive human being as each of one of human beings are: a unique person and to be recognise whenever they do an extra effort. And this is the part of the key for the success of employers and employees (see figure 1).

The aims of this study are to understand the influence of celebrity endorsement on consumers’ word-of-mouth and decision behavior, that is: (i) understand the influence of the number of followers of the celebrity and the positive/negative valence of the messages conveyed by them in the intention to buy and their intention to generate eWoM; (ii) analyzing how the behavior of a celebrity (antisocial vs. pro-social) may affect the perception of its credibility, the intention of the consumers to relate to the celebrity in the social networks and the social identification with it; (iii) understand the impact of celebrity messages on brands and products present in social networks. To achieve this goal a quantitative methodology for the development of research was adopted, selecting the application of a survey as the information collection instrument. The sample is selected by convenience sampling method, collecting 241 responses, 122 females and 119 males. Findings show: (i) concerning the intention to purchase, female seem to be more influenced by the opinions and recommendations of celebrities, while male tend to be more likely to generate e-word-of-mouth into their contact network through social media. (ii) Regarding to antisocial versus prosocial type of celebrity, celebrities with a prosocial behavior seems to have a greater influence for both genders in the way they identify with celebrity and their willingness to relate to them. (iii) Female tends to feel higher purchase intention when exposed to an endorsement, where celebrity promotes a brand or product through its Instagram account.

Introduction The traditional approaches on corporate social responsibility communication are revealing to be unable of raising awareness and increasing stakeholders’ empowerment, often failing to improve positive relationships with consumers. In this study, the digitally co-created CSR activities will be explored using a more general approach, which will also take into consideration these philanthropic activities, i.e. the activities where companies invite stakeholders to participate in the resolution of a social issue but without asking them to buy the brand’s products. Moreover, in the present study, interactivity and freedom of cause' choices are both believed to be two mechanisms that play a key role in generating more empowered stakeholders, with increased propensity for participating in co-created CSR initiatives. Therefore, it is important to analyse digitally co-created CSR activities since it may represent a major opportunity for organizations to add value and meaning to stakeholders (and even for society at large), where the two parties work together to solve a social issue. Theoretical development The World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD, 1999) defined Corporate Social Responsibility as the “continuing commitment by business to behave ethically and contribute to economic development while improving the quality of life of the workforce and their families as well as of the local community and society at large.” Although previous findings regarding the financial implications of CSR might have been ambiguous, there is an increasingly acceptance about the positive outcomes these activities have in building brand equity, brand image (Esmaeilpour & Barjoei, 2016), in improving reputation, trust and loyalty among consumers (Stanaland et al., 2011) and in the willingness consumers have to purchase and possibly even paying higher prices for products of firms with more CSR engagement (Servaes & Tamayo, 2013). Additionally, with consumers’ and other stakeholders’ (e.g., employees, channel partners, regulators) increasing expectations that organizations should behave in socially responsible ways (Mishra & Modi, 2016), CSR has become an integral part of business practice over the last years, with many firms dedicating a section of their annual reports and corporate websites to CSR activities (Servaes & Tamayo, 2013). Arrillaga-Andreessen (2016) notes that the new generations seem to have social consciousness embedded in their DNA. They are united in wanting to do more than acquire material riches and measure success by their ability to transform the lives of others. Their question is not “What do I want to be when I grow up?” but “How will the world be different because I lived in it?”. In Euromonitor’s Top 10 Global Consumer Trends for 2015, Consumer Trends Consultant Daphne Kasriel-Alexander states that consumption is increasingly being driven by the heart: consumers are making choices defined by their positive impact on the world and community. Despite the strong interest in CSR activities, particularly in its outcomes, in firms’ value and branding, there is yet little research and empirical studies regarding the effects of these activities in a social media context. This exploratory research aims to fill this gap, by focusing on the branding outcomes a CSR activity can generate while communicated in Social Networking Sites (SNS) and using participatory approaches. Some researchers already found it questionable how stakeholder dialogue and engagement through corporate websites and CSR reports are accomplished and if they necessarily lead to greater stakeholder participation (Chaudhri, 2016). Thus, one of the research objectives is to examine if using a participatory CSR activity in social media rather than (or, at least, combined with) the traditional approach of communicating CSR performance on firms´ annual reports can generate greater outcomes for brands, especially by testing if these activities can raise awareness, increase participation and empowerment levels. Some authors (Du et al., 2010) found two key challenges regarding CSR communication: the first one is the need for higher levels of awareness, as several researchers already found that a company can only benefit, enhance critical branding outcomes and even increase firm value through CSR activities if it has a high advertising intensity. These activities have low or negative impact on firm value for firms with low advertising intensity, sometimes with costs outweighing the benefits, as the lack of customer awareness about CSR activities represents a major limiting factor for their ability to respond to such activities (Servaes & Tamayo, 2013). Thus, Sen et al. (2006) argue that to reap the positive benefits of CSR, companies need to work harder at raising awareness levels. Although not every firm might experience high levels of awareness (since not every organization can support high advertisement intensity or already have strong branding), this research responds to the call for further research by “exploring channels available for dissemination of CSR activities” (Servaes & Tamayo, 2013:1059), in particular, the social media channels, and by providing new research on “the extent to which these new social and communicative arrangements are being realized by organizations and stakeholders and the attendant implications for CSR communication”, as it currently represents an “evolving area of investigation” (Chaudri, 2016, p.422). Therefore, once it is recommended that companies work on increasing CSR awareness levels, social media sites, such as Facebook, can be powerful channels not only due to its popularity and vast audience reach at a much lower cost, but also due to the opportunities consumers’ word-of-mouth can create (Du, Bhattacharya, & Sen., 2010). The second challenge is concerned with minimizing stakeholder scepticism. Stakeholders quickly become suspicious of the CSR motives when companies aggressively promote their CSR efforts (Du, Bhattacharya, & Sen, 2010). Communicating CSR is a very delicate matter. It requires a certain sensitivity and balance, where organizations face the paradox of demonstrating social responsibility without communicating it blatantly, and being simultaneously credible, informative, and engaging (Chaudri, 2016). There’s also no room for inconsistencies, as CSR is all about being selfless and charitable, the need for transparency and honesty is a must, since on one hand, these activities can have a backlash effect if stakeholders become suspicious and perceive predominantly extrinsic motives in companies’ social initiatives (i.e. when the company is seen as attempting to increase its profits) and, on the other hand, stronger attributions to genuine concern are likely to be associated with more positive reactions towards the company, both internally and behaviourally (Sen et al., 2006). Kesavan et al. (2013) also found that social media is increasingly perceived by consumers as a more trustworthy source of CSR information than traditional media tools (e.g., TV and advertising). Based on above argumentation we formulate: H1: Online co-created CSR activities have greater potential for raising awareness than the traditional communication channels. H2: Online participatory CSR activities can increase consumers’ empowerment levels. Research design Globally, the questionnaire is composed of 28 questions, separated into three sections. The first section is composed by 14 questions that measured social networking usage, current CSR awareness levels, general use of the traditional CSR communication channels, current level of control felt by respondents towards CSR activities, the empowerment felt after companies adding cause choice freedom and respondents’ attitudes towards the effectiveness and outcomes of participatory CSR initiatives. The second section of the questionnaire consists in 10 questions regarding a real CSR initiative, implemented in March 2016, by one of the biggest Portuguese retailers - Continente. After a brief contextualization, the questions measured activity recall rate, participation rate, reasons to (or not to) participate, WoM dissemination rate (or propensity), perception of brand image after the initiative and attitudes towards online co-created CSR initiatives (acceptance levels). The third and last section contained 4 questions regarding socio-demographic measures, namely: nationality, age, gender and educational level. The launch of the questionnaire comprises two stages: for the first stage, it is prepared a pre-test of the questionnaire, which was the pillar for the second and main stage: the online questionnaire. Pre-testing is a method to evaluate in advance if a questionnaire causes misunderstandings, ambiguities, or other difficulties with instrument items to respondents, helping researchers minimizing future errors. During the pre-test stage, a total of 10 people is selected to be monitored while responding to the first draft of the questionnaire. This stage provided important insights about each one of the questions previously elaborated, allowing for reviewing and refining them, as well as adding more questions that revealed to be relevant for the study. As for the second stage, the online questionnaire was launched in social networks - Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn - and in an international forum - Reddit, from 18th of June of 2017 to 01th of August of 2017. Results and conclusions Findings from 322 valid responses provide clear evidence that co-creating socially responsible activities in social media can indeed increase not only the awareness for such actions, but also increase empowerment, participation levels, positive word-of-mouth dissemination, and reinforce consumer-brand ties in the process. Currently, individuals feel very low control regarding the process and the outcomes of CSR initiatives, and that by providing interactivity experiences and adding freedom of cause choice, organizations can increase stakeholders’ empowerment levels, consequently enhancing participation, one of the dimensions of consumer engagement. Online users are starting to connect with their preferred brands in social media and are demanding interactive experiences. Although SNS presents many opportunities for brands to guarantee that they remain relevant to its consumers and other stakeholders, the findings imply that social media remains unexplored as a CSR communication channel by organizations. Considering that the traditional communicating channels used to inform shareholders about these initiatives have a very low adherence by the general public and that they are failing to provide more awareness to CSR activities, brand managers need to devise different strategies for the optimal communication of these initiatives in new channels, which have higher potential to result not only in improved attitudes and brand image, but also in the increased intent of stakeholders to commit personal resources (e.g., money, time, etc.) to the benefit of the company, in a near future. Even for the users who do not follow brands in their SNS, for example, companies can still use SNS tools such as targeted posts (i.e. promoted posts that appear in target users’ feed), to ensure that their awareness and relevance levels remains significant, especially when companies are seeking for users with specific interests.

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.

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.

Customers’ opinions on social network platforms are known to influence peer behaviour (Bai, 2011; Eirinaki, Pisal, & Singh, 2012). Customers are also known to be more engaged in sharing their experiences by writing online reviews and recommendations that may be useful to others (Cantallops & Salvi, 2014; Tang & Guo, 2015; Xu & Li, 2016). Actually, user-generated content (UGC) on social network platforms has emerged as an important source for understanding and managing consumers’ expectations, particularly using automated and semi-automated knowledge extraction techniques from text such as text mining and sentiment analysis (Zhang, Zeng, Li, Wang, & Zuo, 2009). This research analyses dimensions of online customer engagement and associated concepts in customers’ reviews through (i) a global sentiment analysis using positive, neutral and negative sentiments and (ii) a topic-sentiment analysis to capture latent topics in online reviews. Furthermore, it examines what influences customers to contribute their online reviews, beyond the features of each focal company or brand. The research methodology is based on a text mining approach, using the MeaningCloud tool. The study focuses on Yelp.com reviews and includes a random sample of 15,000 unique reviews of restaurants, hotels and nightlife entertainment in eleven cities in the USA. An innovative customer engagement dictionary is created, based on previously validated scales using known dimensions of engagement, experience, emotions and brand advocacy, and extended using WordNet 2.1 lexical database. The research findings reveal a high impact of the engagement cognitive processing dimension and hedonic experience on customers’ review endeavour. The study results further indicate that customers seem to be more engaged in positively advocating a company/brand than the contrary. The findings will help social network managers to reinforce their platforms.

This study builds on prevalent approaches of extending the applications of importance performance analysis (IPA) tool. Thus, we analyse the influence of Performance expectancy on Customer Satisfaction. The instruments employed were adapted from previous studies and pilot tested with a group of master students to verify clarity of meaning and comprehension. Findings reveal the stronger influence of three factor that emerge from performance expectancy: Usability, Reliability, Information Quality.

This study was conducted in real art galleries in Lisbon to explore whether the experience lived at an art gallery with or without music background may positively influence behavioral intentions directly or through the positive emotions and the memory created. A total of two hundred and eighteen questionnaire were collected from the seven art gallery. Findings reveal that the intentions to recommend and encourage others to visit the art gallery is a function of pleasant arousal and memories. In this study we also show the influence of background music in helping encoding the information provided by stimuli, which induce visitors to incentive others to visit the art gallery.

Medical tourism has becoming a topic of increase interest for both researchers and practitioners all around the world. The current article intends to propose a conceptual framework that presents antecedents and outcomes of consumers (patients) desires to undergo medical tourism practices, as well as moderators that can strengthen or weaken the established relationships. In the future the model should be tested in cross cultural context and so contribute to give more insights for researchers and mangers of medical tourism.

This research was conducted in simulated art scenarios to explore the effects of three treatment variations of music on the visualization of art (not only its presence/absence was tested, but also its fast/slow perceived rhythm) and it employed a sample of 234 potential art consumers. Findings suggest that music is not able of enhancing the art experience. Actually, the study found empirical evidences of its negative influence on consumers’ emotional, cognitive and behavioral responses.

Create, develop, maintain and nurturing the passengers-airline relationships is crucial in a very competitive market in Europe. Relationship quality and behavioural intentions to fly again in the same airline carrier and recommend to others are core outcomes which may result from a favourable travel experience over time. However, the complexity and the multidimensional phenomenon lead us to develop a holistic framework, which posits that relationship quality and behavioural intentions do not depend on individual air-flight attributes and other individual demographicpsychological variables but on specific configurations of such attributes and variables. Thus, the framework of this study is investigated using qualitative comparative analysis and a sample of 304 passengers. Accordingly, the property space consists of all combinations of binary states, that is, presence or absence, of the 7 in-flight attributes (air quality, temperature, odour, noise, crew, layout and equipment/amenities), frequency of fly in an airline carrier, the type of airline carrier and demographic-psychological variables (age, gender, mindful) (that is, 212 combinations or configurations). Data from both Portuguese and non-Portuguese passengers, who have air travel experiences through Europe in both low cost carriers and legacy airlines (also called traditional or flag airlines) are used to test the hypotheses. The Lisbon airport agreed in helping to conduct the survey during October 2015. Research Question: Which configurations of in-flight attributes, demographicpsychological variables, frequency of fly in an airline carrier and type of airline carrier lead to relationship quality and behavioural intentions? The findings of the current study highlight the importance of coaligning the multiple attributes of air-flight attributes and other individual demographic-psychological variables, also including the frequency of fly in an airline carrier and type of airline carrier, for increasing relationship quality and behavioural intentions. Here the findings point out that complexity theory and QCA are useful tools for understand that simple antecedent conditions relate to an outcome condition of interest positively, negatively, and not at all, which of these three relationships occur depends on the observed complex antecedent conditions in which the simple antecedent conditions occur. Positive outcome (relationship quality or behavioural intention) is not the mirror opposite of negative outcome. By employing QCA, airline managers in Europe can identify whether and under what circumstances individual attributes and other variables will increase (or decrease) the relationship quality and behavioural intentions. QCA can also help managers uncover alternative ways for combining the attributes in order to induce behavioural intentions. Overall it is possible to see that crew and equipment & amenities, particularly for mindful passengers, emerge in several configurations as essential elements for the four outcomes: satisfaction, trust, affective commitment and behavioural intentions. For passengers not affectively committed to an airline, satisfaction plays an important role in their behavioural intention to fly again in the same airline carrier and recommend it to others. The combination of trust and affective commitment may also generate the intention to fly again in the same airline carrier and recommend it to others, particularly for mindful passengers. The findings contribute to managerial practices by providing new insights for improving the in-flight service provide and process. The findings also contribute to theoretical advancing of how passengers’ in-flight evaluations and their experience with an airline relate to their assessments of relationship quality and behavioural intentions.

This study aims to explore the effect of three factors of Servicescape on customers’ emotion, perceived quality and image. The proposed model was tested in medical tourism context in Portugal, using a sample of 332 fully completed questionnaires. Findings reveal that ambient and design are the most important factors in formation Servicescape itself. Servicescape is an effective antecedent of customer image, perceived quality and pleasure-feeling. Finally, the article also provides managerial implications and suggests avenues for further research.