Search results

This exploratory study aims to examine how wine stakeholders' are adopting innovative advancements in smart industry 4.0 application technology (SI4.0AT) coupled with electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) techniques to increase winery visitation and wine sales, prior to and during a global pandemic in the Yarra Valley in Victoria, Australia.

A qualitative interpretivist geographical bounded case study approach was used to collect data from fifteen Victorian wine stakeholder's prior to and during the global pandemic COVID-19. A thematic analysis was applied to interpret participant responses and how they viewed, reacted to and harnessed S14.0AT and e-WOM to continue and increase wine sales.

The findings suggest few wine stakeholders' were actively implementing SI4.0AT prior to the global pandemic, COVID -19. With the forced closure of wineries to visitors across Australia, most small to medium-sized wineries immediately changed their business models to concentrate on domestic e-commerce wine sales and home delivery. To support these new business models, e-WOM techniques were quickly adopted or increased whereas other S14.0AT technologies were not, due to financial restraints.

The number of participants used in this study is a limitation, however, this can be overcome by replicating this study in other wine regions. This research focused on the wine stakeholders' viewpoint only and may not be easily generalised. Future studies may examine the “what” aspect of SI4.0AT is being used and e-WOM content such as investigating what consumers are saying about these wineries, the method of communication and the motivations for consumers to engage with a winery.

The implications for the wine industry and overall results offer insight into the wine stakeholders' perceptions of SI4.0AT and e-WOM and consequent marketing strategy of wineries in the Yarra Valley, Victoria, both pre- and during forced face-to-face winery closures due to a global pandemic. Wineries need to continue to harness and leverage the benefits of e-WOM wine marketing in their marketing strategies and continue to explore the affordability of 4.0 app technology and Tourism 4.0 options.

This study is the first attempt at investigating how wine stakeholders' view; react to and harness SI4.0AT and e-WOM through formalised online marketing strategies which should continue to be investigated in the future.

Fueled by the soaring popularity of the digital medium, consumers are increasingly relying on dynamic images to inform their decisions. However, little is known about how changes in the presentation of movement impacts these decisions. The purpose of this paper is to document whether and how movement speed–a fundamental characteristic of dynamic images in the digital medium–influences consumers' risk judgments and subsequent decisions.

Three experimental studies investigate the impact of movement speed displayed in the digital medium, focusing on different risk-laden domains including health (pilot study), gambling (Study 1) and stock market decisions (Study 2).

The authors find that faster movement speed displayed in the digital medium elevates consumers’ feelings of risk and elicits cautionary actions in response. The authors reveal a mechanism for this effect, showing that faster movement reduces feelings of control over outcomes, which predicts greater feelings of risk.

Future work could expand upon these findings by systematically examining whether certain individuals are more susceptible to movement speed effects in the digital medium. Research could also investigate whether different ways of experiencing movement speed (e.g. physical movement) similarly influence risk judgments and whether movement speed can have positive connotations outside of risky domains.

The authors offer important insights to marketing practitioners and public policymakers seeking to guide consumers’ judgments and decisions in risk-laden contexts through the digital medium.

By showing how movement speed alters judgments in risk-laden contexts, the authors contribute to literature on risk perception and the growing body of literature examining how moving images shape consumers’ behaviors.

The different dimensions and contexts within which value is co-created has generated varied views of how value is understood or formed. This study aims to examine employee-guest perceived value as important factors for the successful implementation of value co-creation (VCC).

The study employs an interpretive paradigm, using in-depth interviews, focus group discussions and participant observation in a qualitative design to increase understanding of employee-guest perceived value to aid the implementation of VCC at the dyadic level.

Findings highlight eight value perceptions including value for money, hotel location, physical evidence, mutual respect, appreciation, safety & security, quality & varieties of food and technological characteristics of service as important factors for the successful implementation of VCC at the dyadic level.

Generalisability of the findings is a limitation not only due to the smaller sample size but also due to industry-specific context. The study follows rigorous procedures to minimise biases, yet research limitation is acknowledged from the researcher’s participation in the research process.

The notion that actor’s assess value differently from the same service suggests that diverse service elements might be experienced differently. This study provides insights for hotel managers to recognise not only individuals’ value preferences but also service types that reflect employee-guest collective service preferences for sustainability.

This study integrates and extends extant literature by examining employees’ and guests’ individual and collective views at distinct hotel contexts to gain useful insights into value and VCC. The study proposes a framework that hospitality firms can use to address service failure and competition-related issues.

Cost overrun is a significant issue in construction, an undesirable feature the industry has long been associated with. Poor procurement practices are often blamed for subsequent cost overruns in construction, especially with conventional procurement methods leading to outrageous cost overruns. The purpose of this study is to review the features of the new models of construction procurement (NMCP) and assess their potential to reduce cost overruns in construction projects.

A literature review was conducted to identify the issues of procurement leading to cost escalations. Primary data were obtained through exploratory, semi-structured interviews using a case study approach.

Clients’ lack of knowledge was highlighted as a key issue in procurement that interlinks with many factors causing cost escalation. The findings suggest that the features contained within the NMCP, such as early contractor involvement and collaboration throughout the project team, have the potential to make a positive contribution to addressing cost escalation in construction.

The primary research was undertaken as an exploratory study and presents the contractor's perspective. Further research is therefore suggested, with multiple organisations representing all key stakeholders in a construction project, including clients, consultants, sub-contractors and suppliers.

The study recommends awareness of the NMCP be raised throughout the industry, and simplified information must be made available to help widen uptake of these contemporary procurement methods.

Addressing the dearth of research concerning the use of NMCP within the industry, this study makes a niche contribution to the body of knowledge on construction cost management by illustrating the potential offered by these new procurement methods for addressing cost escalation. For an industry where collaboration is accepted with reservations, this case study demonstrates how novel collaborative strategies such as open book costing, project bank accounts and shared pain and gain mechanisms can be implemented as part of the procurement strategy and how such strategies can contribute towards minimising the cost escalation inherent in construction projects.

This study explores how police culture is experienced by women officers serving in positions where they are significantly underrepresented (i.e. leadership and elite specialty units) and the environmental factors that shape these experiences.

A qualitative analysis of transcripts from interviews with 71 women serving in male-dominated roles was conducted (N = 39 ranking women; N = 32 women on elite units).

Participants described five occupational, organizational and assignment-level factors that shaped their workplace experiences. While some contextual forces at play are similar for women working patrol (e.g. traditional police culture, the underrepresentation of women in law enforcement) unique position-level factors were also identified (e.g. the high-risk and consequential nature of the work).

While the cultural environment for women patrol officers has improved in the past few decades, the same cannot be said for women working in positions that are still dominated by men. More attention to this area of policing is needed to ensure gender diversity is achieved throughout organizations and not only in positions deemed suitable for women.

The study extends research on women in policing beyond the focus on patrol. Further, it explores the assignment- and rank-based perspectives of police culture, which are largely absent from the literature.

The main purpose of the study is to reveal the hotel managers' perspectives strategies, and predictions on smart technologies, and their expectations for current staff and potential staff to be employed in the future.

A qualitative research approach was used to reveal the internal perspectives of managers to determine their Smart Tourism (ST) perspectives. With the snowball sampling method, face-to-face interviews were conducted with 16 senior hotel managers working in a 5-star hotel in Antalya. The data obtained were carried out with inductive content analysis and descriptive analysis from qualitative research analysis methods.

In this study, hotel managers' broad perspectives on ST were discussed in depth and presented comprehensively. Managers' perceptions of smart technologies are classified in terms of aggregate dimensions and themes. Among the most important findings, rapidity/quickness, managing/holistic assessment, standardization, harmony/integration-coordination and experience-memory, defined as the crossroads of total dimensions or the heart of smart technologies, were identified as the most important themes. In addition, Stylos et al. (2021), another important finding is the classification of technologies used in top-quality hotels, based on the conceptual framework for smart technologies presented in the literature.

The effective and efficient use of technology, its internalization and openness to technology provides important advantages in hotels such as increasing revisits and satisfaction, providing loyalty and reducing costs. Thus, the perceptions, practices, strategies and prediction of senior managers working in high-level hotels about ST provide valuable data to other hotels that want to survive in the competition.

From a theoretical point of view, this study is valuable in that it deals with the ST perceptions of senior managers with an exploratory research approach. Managerially, the research findings offer valuable contribution about the attitudes, trends, forecasts and expectations of senior managers working in high-level hotels towards ST.

Recent studies on construction supply chain management (CSCM) evaluated its vulnerability and challenging factors, but studies that have identified and examined the possible corrective measures of CSCM are rare. This study sets out to bridge this gap by identifying and evaluating the most effective CSCM corrective measures that will benefit the global construction industry.

A methodology was designed to obtain the corrective measures of CSCM. Data were collected from 68 experts who served as research participants in this study, through a questionnaire survey and were analyzed statistically using the severity index analysis, Mann–Whitney test and factor analysis which includes KMO and Barlett's test, commonalities, total variance pattern matrix.

The findings of the study revealed that free exchange of information between parties from both suppliers and site/firm is the best CSCM corrective measures, according to the research participant's opinion using the severity index analysis. Further analysis revealed seven underlying factors of CSCM corrective measures.

The findings of this study have identified the most critical solutions to the lapses of CSCM. These will serve as adequate corrective measures to the challenges of CSCM and benefit the global construction industry.

This study contributed seven underlying factors of CSCM corrective measures which can be adopted as adequate corrective measures to the lapses of CSCM. The study further contributed to CSCM research theory.

This study aims to investigate how image-presentation-order influences mental imagery (MI) processing and purchase intentions. This study also examines the moderating effect of a series of images on the relationship between image-presentation-order and MI processing.

This research conducted two studies using an experimental approach.

Two studies showed that MI processing was higher, when an apparel product image worn by a model with a background was shown after rather than before a simple product image (SPI), indicating the recency effect. In contrast, examining a series of images, consumers were more engaged in MI processing, when product image(s) worn by a model with a background were presented first, followed by the four SPIs, than the reversed order (primacy effect). The level of MI in two studies subsequently increased purchase intentions.

Results of this study have the potential to provide guidance to online retailers for how to best order their product images on a website to help consumers form elaborated MI about the product and thus increase purchasing intentions.

Although past research has examined presentation-order effect using textual information, very limited studies have explored presentation-order effect of pictorial information. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is in the forefront of investigations about the joint effect of image-presentation-order and the number of images on individuals’ perceptions.

The authors investigated the factors influencing consumer evaluations of advertisements for ethical luxury products that incorporate animal rights and protection concerns. The authors empirically examined how ethical messages influence advertisement persuasiveness through ethical consumer guilt and positively impact consumer evaluations of ethical luxury products. Furthermore, the authors explored the moderating role of consumers’ independent versus interdependent self-construals.

The authors conducted four experimental studies on the interplay among ethicality, luxury brand positioning and self-construal. Moderated mediation analyses revealed that moral emotions were responsible for the effect of ethical luxury advertisements that address animal welfare on brand attitude.

Advertisement messages signaling a luxury brand’s ethical efforts increase empathy through ethical consumer guilt, thereby generating favorable attitudes toward luxury products. However, this effect is limited to consumers with independent self-construal in South Korea and the United States of America.

The authors offer novel insights into the roles of ethical consumer guilt and empathy in the positive effects of ethical messages from luxury brands. Furthermore, the authors identified brand type and self-construal as boundary conditions for the effects observed across different consumer groups and markets.

This study aims to explore how source type can influence organizational assets proposed by source credibility theory (SCT) when paired with matched situational crisis communication theory (SCCT) strategies for accidental, preventable, and victim crises. Crisis communication delivered online provides an invaluable outlet for organizations to disperse information to stakeholders quickly. It has been shown that receivers of this information have motivational assumptions about sources having their own agenda for producing content. Thus, it is important to explore how sources tasked with delivering crisis responses can influence perceptions of the sincerity and credibility of the message.

The researchers conducted a 3 (crisis response: matched accidental, matched preventable, matched victim) × 3 (source type: organization, CEO, The New York Times) online between-subjects experimental design (N = 623).

By identifying how the source disseminating crisis responses influences message perceptions, findings from this study recognize how the crisis response is situated in a greater context. Since perceived sincerity and credibility were found to influence message acceptance and reputation, making intentional decisions that acknowledge both within a crisis communication strategy may benefit both future practice and research applications.

The current study advances understandings afforded by SCCT, along with SCT, by experimentally testing the influence of these variables within crisis responses on outcomes such as account acceptance and organizational reputation.