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This paper sheds light on the factors facilitating the digital transformation (DT) of companies, examining the empirical evidence according to a new and original dual lens: the internal and external marketing management perspective.

Through an explorative research design based on semi-structured interviews, we investigate the perceptions of some managers involved in managing the DT of their own companies.

The findings, organized from an internal and external marketing perspective, show how DT requires efforts in nurturing: (1) its organizational and cultural nature; (2) new managerial skills and e-leadership. These factors activate DT as an accelerator of (3) production processes and service provision and (4) competitive strategies.

Our findings underscore critical practical implications for organizations embarking on a DT journey. Firstly, managers should prioritize creating a culture that encourages employees to embrace change and technology. Secondly, recognizing the importance of new managerial skills and e-leadership, managers need to invest in developing the expertise to effectively lead DT efforts. The related skills encompass digital literacy, change management and the ability to inspire and guide teams through the complexities of a DT.

This paper suggests that organizations should holistically approach DT, focusing on culture, leadership and strategic deployment of digital tools. The proposed dual lens offers a valuable and simple answer for academics and practitioners to effectively frame the internal dynamics and external factors shaping DT.

This study synthesises the self-determination theory (SDT), expectation-confirmation model (ECM), and protection motivation theory (PMT) to formulate an integrated theoretical framework that elucidates the process of shaping the intention to continue using facial recognition payment (FRP) under the conditional impact of perceived technology security.

Data from 667 Beijing Winter Olympics visitors with FRP experience were collected through an online survey and analysed using variance based-structural equation modelling (VB-SEM).

This study reveals that the intention to continue using FRP evolves through three key stages. Initially, in the expectation stage, the multidimensional concept of artificial autonomy (sensing, thought, and action), which is underpinned by self-determination, is pivotal, strongly influencing perceptions of service enhancement and fostering trust in FRP. Subsequently, the confirmation stage underscores the importance of perceived service enhancement and trust as vital drivers in maintaining FRP usage, while also contributing to subjective well-being. Crucially, perceived technology security emerges as a key moderating factor, enhancing positive perceptions and intentions towards FRP, thus influencing its sustained adoption.

This study stands out by revealing the nuanced interplay between artificial autonomy and user perceptions, particularly concerning service enhancement, technology security, and trust, as they influence well-being and the continued adoption of FRP. Robustly grounded in the integrated theoretical framework of SDT, ECM, and PMT, the study’s findings are critical for comprehending the core elements and specific drivers that promote sustained FRP use, especially as we consider its potential widespread implementation. Therefore, this study not only advances theoretical understanding but also offers practical guidance for optimising FRP deployment strategies in a rapidly evolving technological landscape.

This study investigates how insurance intermediaries in Portugal and Ireland evaluate supply chain management (SCM) practices within the insurance industry, specifically focusing on potential regional variations in their assessments.

A comparative research design was employed, collecting data through surveys administered to insurance brokers in Portugal and Ireland. These countries were chosen due to their well-developed intermediary-based insurance markets.

The results show that some dimensions of supply chain management are significantly different between Portugal and Ireland. Nevertheless, the insurance brokers from the two countries also share similar views on key aspects of supply chain management.

This study offers valuable insights for insurance industry management, particularly regarding the dynamics of the insurer-intermediary relationship and the importance of catering to intermediary needs. The findings also highlight potential areas for European Union policy consideration, such as addressing potential asymmetries within the insurance sector across member states.

Improved relationships and collaboration within the insurance supply chain can lead to enhanced access to insurance products and more tailored services for consumers.

This research addresses two key gaps in the literature. Firstly, it examines the insurer-intermediary relationship from the intermediary perspective, a viewpoint often neglected in prior research. Secondly, the study investigates and confirms the existence of regional variations in insurance SCM practices across two European countries.

本研究擬探究在葡萄牙和愛爾蘭兩地的保險中介人於保險行業內,如何評價供應鏈管理方面的慣常做法,研究會特別專注探討這些評價所顯示的潛在地域差異。

研究人員以比較研究設計進行其探究;他們透過向葡萄牙和愛爾蘭兩國的保險經紀發出調查,繼而收集數據。這兩個國家被選中的原因是:它們擁有健全的、以中介為基礎的保險市場。

研究結果顯示,葡萄牙和愛爾蘭兩國的供應鏈管理在有些層面上存在著顯著的差異;但兩地的保險經紀在供應鏈管理的關鍵環節上則有頗類似的見解和看法。

本研究在保險業管理方面提供了寶貴的啟示,特別是它使我們更了解承保人與中介人之間的關係的變革動力,以及滿足中介人需要的重要性。研究結果亦強調了歐洲聯盟在制訂政策時必須考慮的潛在領域,如處理各成員國之間於保險業內的潛在不對稱。

若保險供應鏈內各方的關係和合作得到改善,則消費者會更容易取得各種保險產品;同時,他們亦可獲得更合適的訂製服務。

本研究嘗試處理相關文獻內兩個主要的研究缺口。首先,研究人員以中介人的觀點,去探討承保人與中介人之間的關係,而過去的研究,通常忽視了這個觀點;其次,本研究探究並確認有關的兩個歐洲國家,在其保險供應鏈管理方面的慣常做法上,確實存在著地域差異。

Live streaming has become an extremely popular form of online service and allows live audiences to give virtual gifts or money to their favorite streamers. This study aims to investigate the impact of the audience's multidimensional social presence on their attitudes toward live streamers and intentions to give money or gifts to streamers, based on the interactive marketing perspective. This study considers live audiences' gift-giving intentions by integrating the theory of multidimensional social presence, which includes awareness, cognitive social presence and affective social interaction, and the theory of reasoned action (TRA).

This study invited audiences who had watched live streaming from several popular live-streaming platforms to respond to a web questionnaire. The unit of analysis was at the individual level. This study applied the purposive sampling technique for data collection. A sample of 258 eligible responses to the online survey was analyzed using SPSS software and the causal relationships between the measurement variables of this research model were verified through structural equation modeling.

The results indicate that the audiences' awareness of participating in live streaming enhanced their cognitive and affective social presence, which positively affected their attitudes toward live streamers. These attitudes had a further significant effect on their gift-giving intentions. Cognitive social presence and affective social presence were found to play significant mediating roles in the relationship between awareness and attitudes toward live streamers.

This study examines audiences' intention to give gifts to their favorite live streamers, based on the interactive marketing perspective. The interactive relationship between live streamers and online audiences is developed by audience members through the process of inner psychological transformation, which is measured through the multidimensional construct of social presence. This occurs through a mutual influence relationship in which awareness simultaneously influences cognitive social presence and affective social presence, and cognitive social presence impacts affective social presence.

The study contributes three noteworthy findings to the theory development through the integrated perspective of the TRA and the theory of social presence. (1) Exploring the influence of belief factors on internal psychological responses and intention in live streaming to expand an innovative application of the TRA. (2) Adopting the multidimensional social presence can help researchers more clearly describe various live-streaming situations and extend the research scope of the social presence theory to live-streaming interactive marketing strategies. (3) From the perspective of live-streamer marketing, this study broadens the research fields of electronic commerce and interactive marketing.

This study provides four practical implications for platform managers and live streamers. (1) To induce favorable attitudes toward live streamers, live streamers initiate various interactive activities sequentially to establish a social presence with the audience. (2) Live streamers should devote themselves to forming a joyful atmosphere for their followers, as this will trigger audiences' affective social presence to generate positive attitudes and increase followers' intentions. (3) To attract and retain young followers, live streamers must devise interesting content and provide fresh services. (4) Platform managers must create useful widgets to assist live streamers in managing their channels and followers.

Building friendly real-time interaction between the live streamer and the audience is an important task in live streaming and further influences the income of the live streamer and the platform. The study provides an effective approach to building friendly real-time interaction for the live streamer and manager of live-streaming electronic commerce through the interactive marketing perspective. The approach can help the live streamer manage nice communication with their audience and obtain virtual money and gift-giving from the audience.

This paper aims to examine a new approach to understanding the interrelationships between destination brand gender, stereotypes, destination brand identification and brand advocacy, as well as the mediating role of destination warmth (vs. competence) in the connections between destination brand femininity (vs. masculinity) and destination brand identification.

A qualitative study and literature review were conducted to revisit and refine the items on the scale. Preliminary item reduction was qualitatively grounded in focus groups, a panel of experts, and a pilot study. A follow-up quantitative evaluation of two studies (N1 = 705 and N2 = 472) was conducted to test seven hypotheses using exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis with structural equation modeling.

The findings provide robust evidence for the interrelationships among destination brand gender, stereotypes, destination identification and destination advocacy. The outcomes also reveal that warmth is more important than competence for destination identification. Finally, the results indicated that only destination warmth serves as a partial mediator in the association between destination brand masculinity and femininity, on the one hand, and destination identification, on the other hand.

This article adds to the destination branding literature by using social role theory and the stereotype content model to explore novel connections among destination brand gender, stereotypes, destination brand identification and brand advocacy.

This study aims to examine the underlying mechanisms through which entrepreneurial marketing (EM) promotes the development of a favorable brand image and enhances sales growth and market share in new ventures (NVs).

The authors tested the theoretical model using a multi-informant design in which survey data were collected from NV entrepreneurs and marketing managers. Hypotheses were tested using linear regression and PROCESS analysis.

The authors demonstrate the significance of EM as comprising two NV capabilities – first, the level of complementarity between entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and market orientation (MO) as a dynamic capability, and second, brand management capabilities (BMCs) as an operational capability – in shaping a favorable NV brand image and promoting market performance.

The authors offer a novel perspective by demonstrating that EO and MO yield complementarities in driving NVs’ BMCs, which, in turn, drive brand image development and market performance for NVs. In doing so, the authors demonstrate novel theoretical implications for the relevance of EM to NV branding, which, to date, has received scant attention in the literature.

The authors identify a potential avenue for entrepreneurs and NV managers to mitigate the potential failure rates by simultaneously pursuing a higher level of EO and MO and investing in brand-building activities. Such efforts can help enhance brand image, drive sales growth and foster long-term success.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to include brand capabilities as an element of EM, examine EM in NV brand image development and identify the role of EM capabilities relevant to NV brand building and market performance simultaneously.

Conceptual and empirical research over the past 20 years has moved the social media (SM) literature beyond the embryotic stage to a well-developed academic discipline. As the lead article in the special issue in the Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing on Cutting-Edge Research in Social Media and Interactive Marketing, this review and agenda article has two key goals: (1) to review key SM and interactive marketing research over the past three years and (2) to identify the next wave of high priority challenges and research opportunities.

Given the “cutting-edge” research focus of the special issue, this review and research agenda paper focused on articles published in 25 key marketing journals between January 2021 and March 2024. Initially, the search request was for articles with “social media, social selling, social commerce” located in the article title, author-selected key words and journal-selected keywords. Later, we conducted searches based on terminology from articles presented in the final review. In total, over 1,000 articles were reviewed across the 25 journals, plus additional ones that were cited in those journals that were not on the initial list.

Our review uncovered eight key content areas: (1) data sources, methodology and scale development; (2) emergent SM technologies; (3) artificial intelligence; (4) virtual reality; (5) sales and sales management; (6) consumer welfare; (7) influencer marketing; and (8) social commerce. Table I provides a summer of key articles and research findings for each of the content areas.

As a literature review and research agenda article, this paper is one of the most extensive to date on SM marketing, and particularly with regard to emergent research over the past three years. Recommendations for future research are integrated through the paper and summarized in Figure 2.

Consumer welfare is one of the eight emergent content areas uncovered in the literature review. Specific focus is on SM privacy, misinformation, mental health and misbehavior.

Configuring strategies to ensure a health service provider’s resilience when extreme disruptions occur is not simple. Optimal configuration in such circumstances is rare. Therefore, this research has relied on the dynamic capability view (DCV) to develop a decision-support framework for configuring resilience strategies that will mitigate the worst challenges and improve the performance of health service providers during “extreme” disruptive events.

The research adopted a multi-study, multi-method approach comprising interviews, quality function deployment (QFD), and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA).

The findings reveal that, during a crisis, standalone resilience strategies are not enough. To guarantee performance, healthcare services require a combination of resilience strategies and a negation of challenges.

This research extends our current knowledge of healthcare operational management by offering optimal configurations of resilience strategies to manage performance during extreme disruptions. Thus, it offers strategic insights into how health-service managers can be more resilient during a crisis.

Consumers increasingly expect brands to have a social purpose. Yet, guidelines on how to effectively engage in conscientious purpose-driven branding are lacking. This study aims to better understand what the key drivers of a successful conscientious purpose-driven branding strategy are and what is its impact on key brand outcomes.

Data was gathered using a self-administered survey, answered by 670 young adults belonging to generations Y and Z. The study integrates in a single moderated-mediation model, tested using partial least squares structural equation modelling, the joint effects of cause–brand–consumer congruences, cause-brand authenticity and brand image, on consumers’ intention to purchase and recommend the brand.

Consumer-brand congruence mediates the path from cause-brand congruence and authenticity to brand image, which in turn impacts purchase and recommendation intentions, with authenticity playing a dominant role. Moreover, for consumers highly congruent with the cause/purpose, the direct effect of cause-brand congruence on brand image becomes non-significant and only works through consumer-brand congruence.

Theoretically, this study contributes to a better understanding of how and when conscientious purpose-driven branding can be effective. Its findings further advance prior research, by providing an alternative path anchored on cause-brand authenticity to explain positive effects of conscientious purpose-driven marketing on brand outcomes. Moreover, it challenges prior assumptions regarding the impact of consumer-cause congruence on the effectiveness of these strategies. Finally, it highlights that cause-consumer and brand-consumer congruencies also play a role, offering an integrated, triadic view of conscientious purpose-driven branding strategies. Managerially, it provides insights to brand managers wishing to successfully implement these strategies and better understand the role of brands as “purpose-driven entities”.

This study aims to examine the relevance of strategic marketing planning in this agile era and its effect on firms’ international performance and explores conditions under which the influence of planning changes.

Based on contingency theory, a conceptual model is tested based on survey data from internationalizing firms. Data were analyzed using partial least squares -structural equation modeling.

Marketing strategy planning is (still) associated with enhanced performance, and depends on external and internal contingencies. While the planning−performance relationship is amplified by market sensing (external contingency), surprisingly, it is decreased in presence of high tolerance for failure (internal contingency).

Findings seek to transform marketing planning in international business practice by requiring that its implementation receives the attention of senior management.

Marketing strategy planning should not be deemphasized. While planning appears to be undergoing an identity crisis, practitioners’ attention to marketing planning is warranted.