Brand resonance plays a crucial role in customer relationship management and the development of brand equity between customers and the brand. Therefore, effective methods for promoting customers’ brand resonance are critical in the hospitality industry for gaining competitive advantages and establishing sustainable management strategies. The purpose of this research was to investigate the relationships among brand coolness, customer inspiration, and brand resonance in the hospitality industry, as well as the mediating influence of customer inspiration. A total of 451 customers from 25 well-known brand restaurants in Taiwan returned questionnaires. These restaurants are recommended by TripAdvisor and had elements of coolness indicated in the customer reviews. Among the 451 participants, 260 (57.6%) were female and 191 (42.4%) were male; 344 (76.3%) were unmarried; 279 (61.9%) had received a college-degree certificate or above; and most were 21 to 30 years old (36.6%). The results revealed that brand coolness positively affected customer inspiration and brand resonance and that customer inspiration positively affected brand resonance. Furthermore, customer inspiration mediated the relationship between brand coolness and brand resonance. The study contributes to the hospitality literature of brand resonance. These findings can apply for the practice of brand management and customer relationship management in the hospitality industry.
The outbreak of COVID-19 has brought significant changes to today’s life. Human contact is regarded as a source of risk. Thus, the low-contact services provided by service robots have gained more attention in the hospitality industry. However, a relatively smaller proportion of empirical research exists about service robots on the consumer side. Moreover, technology acceptance theories were mostly used in the adoption of new technology products, but the psychological aspects of consumers were rarely explored. Therefore, the stimulus- organism-response model (SOR model) was applied to explore consumers’ acceptance of adopting service robots and to understand what factors will successfully stimulate consumers’ subsequent value and behavioral responses. Furthermore, we investigated the relationship among stimulus (coolness and affinity), organism (utilitarian value and hedonic value) and response (intention to use and word-of-mouth recommendation). This study used convenience sampling and tested the hypotheses with SPSS and Smart PLS.