Even though Mod is a cutting-edge business model that benefits a variety of multi-sided market participants, empirical research on Mod, the value co-creation activity of game users and game developers, is hard to come by. This study intends to look into how the combination of the Mod and the IP from the prior game affects user engagement. An experiment was carried out with Korean university students to examine the hypotheses. User engagement was found to increase with the use of the Mod and the IP from the previous games. On the other side, it was discovered that the impact of mod games on user engagement did not differ significantly from non-mod games when the previous game's IP was absent. The study's findings help establish the framework for afterwards empirical research by showing the effect of mod on user engagement.

Social media have emerged as one of the most important tools for firms to engage customers (e.g., Chandrasekaran et al., 2022; Cheng & Edwards, 2015; Lee et al., 2018; Wedel & Kannan, 2016). Within the tourism industry, scholars have investigated the role of social media communication in various contexts, such as online travel information search (Xiang & Gretzel, 2010), sharing travel experiences (So et al., 2018; Wang et al., 2022) and establishing positive customer relationships (Jamshidi et al., 2021). Insights into which social media content makes for generating positive engagement are, however, still largely based on marketers’ intuitions or focusing on message factors of social media posts such as message appeals (e.g., Wang & Lehto, 2020). It also often neglects the importance of the visual component of social media posts, and only a few research have investigated the effects of the image in social media on the travel industry (e.g., Fusté-Forné, 2022). The objective of this research is, therefore, to understand how textual features and image features generate user engagement in social media utilizing cutting-edge transfer learning techniques and to propose how these features should be customized to maximize user engagement for online travel shopping companies. We collect and analyze more than 10,000 Instagram posts from three online travel shopping companies, including Expedia, Priceline, and Kayak. The results from transfer learning algorithms utilizing 24 features, such as the number of people in the image, emotions expressed in the people in the image, hue, and RGB value, successfully predict the level of engagement measured by the number of likes and comments.

Voice assistance (VA) has been widely adopted in the tourism and hospitality industry to interact and communicate with tourists and provide useful travel recommendations. Although more companies in tourism have adopted environmental sustainability practices and tourists have increased their sustainability awareness, lack of research has been conducted to investigate the effectiveness of VA in promoting sustainable consumption of tourism products or services. This study proposes that customising environmental sustainability messages for tourists with different cultural orientations and VA use purposes can enhance their engagement with the VA, which can affect their consumption decision. The results from a scenario-based experiment demonstrate that tourists with interdependent/independent cultural orientation have higher engagement with the environmental sustainability messages communicated by the VA when they are with a non-transactional/transactional purpose. Implications for tourism marketing strategies are discussed.

AR (Augmented Reality; 증강현실)은 가상의 이미지를 현실 세계에 덧붙이는 기술이다. 본 연구는 온라인으로 활발히 소비되는 품목인 음식을 AR로 제시했을 때의 효과를 살펴보고자 한다. 본 연구에서는 AR 음식 이미지가 구매 의사와 사용자 참여에 미치는 영향을 정적인 음식 이미지와 비교하여 알아보았고, 이미지 제시 방식과 구매 의사와의 관계를 사용자 참여가 매개하는지도 살펴보았다. 참가자는 두 조건 중 하나로 무선할당되어 AR 조건은 AR로 음식 이미지를 보고 정적 조건은 정적인 음식 이미지를 보았다. 그 후 참가자들은 사용자 참여와 구매 의사를 묻는 설문에 응답했다. 실험 결과, AR로 음식을 본 조건이 정적인 이미지를 본 조건보다 사용자 참여가 더 높았고, 구매 의사 또한 더 높은 것으로 나타났다. 매개 분석 결과, 사용자 참여의 간접효과는 통계적으로 유의했으며, 사용자 참여는 이미지 제시 방법과 구매 의사 간의 관계를 완전매개하는 것으로 나타났다. 하위요인별로 매개 분석을 진행한 결과, 사용자 참여의 하위 척도 중에서도 심미성의 완전매개 효과가 나타났다. 연구 결과를 정리하면, AR로 음식 이미지를 보게 되면 심미성이 높아지며, 높은 심미성은 음식에 대한 높은 구매 의사로 이어진다. 따라서 본 연구는 음식 이미지를 제시하는 방법으로 AR 기술이 효과적으로 사용될 수 있음을 밝히고 있다.

An increasing number of Internet users use hotel booking websites and online travel agencies to arrange trips and search for information related to their travels. This study investigates the impact of customer engagement on user perceptions of the quality and value of an online hotel-booking website, as well as whether such perceptions further influence user trust in online websites (eTrust) and result in behavioral intention of eLoyalty. The empirical results of structural equation modeling analysis of 400 questionnaire results collected in Taiwan reveal that customer engagement has a positive impact on perceived website quality (i.e., usability, ease of use, entertainment, and complementarity), which in turn influences perceived value. The results do not show a direct impact from customer engagement on perceived value. Finally, the results verify that eTrust mediates the relationship between consumers’ perceived website quality and behavioral intention of eLoyalty toward an online hotel-booking website; eTrust also mediates the relationship between consumers’ perceived value and behavioral intention of eLoyalty toward an online hotel-booking website. The findings provide both academic researchers and practitioners with a better understanding of customer engagement and facilitate development of more effective customer engagement strategies for online booking platforms.

For better understanding user behavior, especially exploring what factors would motivate user engagement in sharing economy and whether there are some differences between people behaviors in sharing economy and conventional economy, this research developed a conceptual framework of user engagement (UE) in sharing economy on the basis of customer engagement and related literature and tested it through empirical analysis.

Festival branding is undergoing a revolution based on the consolidation of new communicative behaviours in virtual brand communities (VBC), above all channelled through social media platforms (Hudson & Hudson, 2013; MacKay, Barbe, Van Winkle, & Halpenny, 2017). Although generic literature (Dessart, Veloutsou, & Morgan-Thomas, 2015) has highlighted the role of user engagement in VBC, there are no in-depth analyses of how users modulate engagement attributes and behaviours and how they are related to festival branding, as well as other possible and sometimes interrelated drivers (social capital creation, place making). Thus, this paper aims to characterise these elements in festivals’ VBC to cover these shortcomings. This proposal performs a multi-platform, multi-period, multi-user and mixed-method analysis of nearly 2,150 references in the Twitter and Facebook VBC of one of the most prominent music festivals in Europe, Sónar (Barcelona). Results show the benefits for organisers (and other relevant users) of jointly understanding these elements (and their mutual relationships) with the aim of retaining various positive economic and social impacts.

In order to identify effective approaches for creating more viral Facebook posts, this research conducted an empirical content analysis of leading Korean brands' Facebook fan-pages (Samsung Mobile, SK Telecom, Kia Motors, and POSCO). Their distinctive visual storytelling and communication patterns were investigated as effective user engagement triggers. Through analysis of the research results, it was statistically proved that the different industrial attributes of the four brands, which are primarily characterized by their product (or service) types, affect their Facebook posting patterns by showing different engaging rates (measured by like, comment, and share metrics). In addition, the user engagement rates of the posts were influenced by their visual storytelling factors (i.e. ad objective, value scale, and visual media types). In line with these statistical findings, the distinctive visual storytelling strategies of the four brands were identified. Moreover, competitive and uncompetitive visual storytelling tactics were suggested according to the ad objectives and visual media types on Facebook.