Search results

Framed by nostalgia marketing, this research draws upon lessons from ParticipACTION, a Canadian non-profit health promotion organization, to examine one of their most well-known campaigns, Body Break with ParticipACTION, in order to assess the potential role for nostalgia-based marketing campaigns in sport participation across generational cohorts.

Exploratory sequential mixed methods involving two studies were completed on behalf of ParticipACTION, with the authors developing the research instruments and the collection of the data undertaken by research agencies. Study 1 was the secondary analysis of qualitative data from five focus groups with different demographic compositions that followed a common question guide. Study 2 was a secondary data analysis of a pan-Canadian online survey with a sample (n = 1,475) representative of the overall adult population that assessed awareness of, and attitudes toward, ParticipACTION, Body Break, physical activity and sport participation. Path analysis tested a proposed model that was based on previous research on attitudes, brand and loyalty. Further, multi-group path analyses were conducted to compare younger generations with older ones.

The results provide direction and understanding of the importance of nostalgia in marketing sport participation programs across generational cohorts. For instance, in the four parent-adult focus groups, unaided references as well as frequent and detailed comments regarding Body Break were observed. Similarly, Millennials reported that Body Break was memorable, Canadian and nostalgic, with a mix of positive and negative comments. The importance of nostalgia was supported sequentially via results from the national survey. For example, while 54.1% of the 40–54 age-group associated ParticipACTION positively with Body Break, so did 49.8% of the 25–39-year age group, most of whom were not born when the promotion ran. Further, brand resonance was found to explain 4% more variance in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA), the proxy for sport participation, for younger people compared to older people.

Results provide direction to brands, properties and agencies around the use of nostalgia in sport marketing campaigns and sponsorship efforts. For brands seeking to sponsor sport properties to alter their image with potential consumers in a new market, associating with a sport property that many view as nostalgic could improve the impact of the campaign. On the sport property side, event managers and marketers should both identify existing assets that members or fans are nostalgic about, as well as consider building nostalgia into current and new properties they develop.

This research is valuable to the sport marketing and sponsorship literature through several contributions. First, the use of nostalgia marketing, and nostalgia in general, is novel in the sport marketing and sponsorship literature, with future research in nostalgia and sponsorship recommended. Second, the potential to adopt or adapt Body Break to other sport participation and physical activity properties is empirically supported. Finally, the finding that very effective promotions can have a long-lasting effect, both on those who experienced the campaigns as well as younger populations who only heard about it, is notable.

This study aims to examine the multidimensional nature of institutional distance as a driver of acquisition decisions in emerging markets. Then, this study aims to offer a nuanced perspective on the role of its various formal and informal dimensions by taking into account the potential contingency role played by a firm’s context experience.

Building on institutional economics and organizational institutionalism, this study explores the heterogeneity of institutional distance and its effects on the decision to enter emerging versus advanced markets through cross-border acquisitions. Thus, institutional distance is disentangled into its formal and informal dimensions, the former being captured by regulatory efficiency, country governance and financial development. Furthermore, our framework examines the moderating effect of an acquiring firm’s experience in institutionally similar environments, defined as context experience. The hypotheses are analyzed on a sample of 496 cross-border acquisitions by Italian companies in 41 countries from 2008 to 2018.

Findings indicate that at an increasing distance in terms of regulatory efficiency and financial development, acquiring firms are less likely to enter emerging markets, while informal institutional distance is positively associated with such acquisitions. Context experience mitigates the negative effect of formal distance and enhances the positive effect of informal distance.

This study contributes to institutional distance literature in multiple ways. First, by bridging institutional economics and organizational institutionalism and second, by examining the heterogeneity of formal and informal dimensions of distance, this study offers a finer-grained perspective on how institutional distance affects acquisition decisions. Finally, it offers a contingency perspective on the role of context experience.

The notion of deeper experiences of Hindu devotees inspired by divine images and sacred places has roots in the historical past, going back to the Vedic period (ca. 2500 BCE), where we find rich literature on performances, rituals and merits of pilgrimages. Considered the bridge between human beings and divinities, the experiences received are the resultant ‘blissful fruit’ (phala) that helps the spiritual healing of pilgrims through awakening conscience and understanding the manifested meanings, symbolism, purposes and gains. This system can be viewed concerning the ‘texts’ (the mythology, ancient text and related narratives) and the ‘context’ (contemporality and living tradition). These rules and performances have regional perspectives of distinctions, but they also carry the sense of universality, i.e. locality (sthānic) and universality (sarvavyāpika) interfaces. The devout Hindus reflect their experiences in conception, perception, reception and co-sharedness – altogether making the wholistic network of belief systems, i.e. the religious wholes in Hindu society. This chapter deals with four aspects: the historical and cultural contexts, the meanings and merits received, the motives and the journey and interfacing experiences. The study is based on the experiential and questionnaire-based exposition and interviews of pilgrims at nine holy places during 2015–2019 on various festive occasions and is illustrated with ancient texts and treatises. The sacred cities included are Prayagraj, Varanasi, Gaya, Ayodhya, Vindhyachal, Ganga Sagar, Chitrakut, Mathura Vrindavana and Bodh Gaya.

This study aims to explain the effects of different types of innovations on organizational performance in terms of firms’ external effectiveness and internal efficiency. The study examines the interrelationship of technical and nontechnical innovations in complex services and the mediating effect of customer participation on the relationship between innovation type and organizational performance.

The study draws on a neo-Schumpeterian model for innovation to examine the complex service setting of healthcare provision. Data from Statistics Sweden, containing 38 hospitals and 242 primary care units in Sweden, provided the study's results.

The findings show the importance of combining different types of innovations in complex services, demonstrating a mediating effect of nontechnical innovation on both the relationship between technical innovations and external effectiveness and internal efficiency. Moreover, the results show that customer participation has a positive mediating effect for technical innovation and nontechnical innovation on external effectiveness. However, there is no such significant effect on internal efficiency.

The findings are based on self-assessment data, which has inherent limitations. The innovation data used were cross-sectional, which may lack reliability (although self-assessed data counter this risk to some extent).

Managers should pursue both technical and nontechnical innovations for gains in external effectiveness and internal efficiency. However, complex services call for technical innovations to be accompanied by nontechnical innovations to support positive effects. The results cause a dilemma for managing customer participation in complex services. As the results show customer participation resulting in external effectiveness, they also fail to establish an effect on internal efficiency.

The primary contribution is to add to the knowledge of different types of innovation in complex services by demonstrating their interdependent effects on both external effectiveness and internal efficiency. Furthermore, the study tests and advances the mediating effect of customer participation in complex services on organizational performance.

This study analyzed three years of data from the Collegiate Leadership Competition to investigate potential differences in longitudinal leader self-efficacy growth between students who identify as men and those who identify as women.

Survey design.

Results indicate that women participants enter their competition experience at higher levels of leader self-efficacy than men and that both groups were able to sustain moderate levels of growth measured several months after the end of the competition.

The gap between men and women in their leader self-efficacy did not change over the several months of measurement. Implications for leadership educators are discussed.

The paper aims to investigate the practices facilitating the transformation of healthcare services, understanding the resulting outcomes in terms of well-being and uplifting changes. a systematic literature review (SLR) focusing on analyzing the healthcare sector under the transformative service research (TSR) theoretical domain is conducted to achieve this goal.

Employing a structured SLR developed based on the PRISMA protocol (Pickering and Byrne, 2014; Pickering et al., 2015) and using Scopus and WoS databases, the study identifies and analyzes 49 papers published between 2021 and 2022. Content analysis is used to classify and analyze the papers.

The SLR reveals four transformative practices (how) within the healthcare sector under the TSR domain, each linked to specific well-being outcomes (what). The analysis shows that both practices and outcomes are mainly patient-related. An integrative framework for transformative healthcare service is presented and critically examined to identify research gaps and define the trajectory for the future development of TSR in healthcare. In addition, managerial implications are provided to guide practitioners.

This research is among the first to analyze TSR literature in the context of healthcare. The study critically examines the TSR’s impact on the sector’s transformation, providing insights for future research and offering a roadmap for healthcare practitioners to facilitate uplifting changes.

This article aims to explore the concept of chain value of the public port system in Ecuador from the perspective of importing/exporting companies, analyzing how perceived value in the use of port services affects customer satisfaction and the intermediate links of the influence of trust and commitment on customer loyalty.

Relying on a survey of 634 Ecuadorian companies with experience in international trade as port users and a theoretical framework well-established in the literature on consumer behavior, the empirical study found evidence of a positive and significant relationship with the knowledge of chain effects.

The findings confirm the chain effect and reveal ways to maintain an ongoing satisfactory, trust and committed relationship with users, thereby ultimately gaining and maintaining their loyalty. The conclusions suggest how this postulate can help to close the gap referred to the effective management of port services, and point out that port managers should be concerned with a continuous in-depth understanding of the perceived value and its chain effects.

The authors add evidence of the use of the postulate of the chain of effects on these dimensions, whose applicability is very well established, tested and consensual for the doctrine in industrial marketing. In contrast, it is scarcely present in the port relationship with its users.

The purpose of this research is to explore how an industry is represented in multimodal public media narratives and to explore how this representation subsequently affects the formation of public sense-giving space during a persisting crisis, such as a pandemic. The question asked is: how do the use of multimodality by public service media dynamically shape representations of industry identity during a persisting crisis?

This study made use of a multimodal approach. The verbal and visual media text on the restaurant industry during the COVID-19 pandemic that were published in Finland by the public service media distributor Yle were studied. Data published between March 2020 and March 2022 were analysed. The data consisted of 236 verbal texts, including 263 visuals.

Three narratives were identified– victim, servant and survivor – that construct power relations and depict the identity of the restaurant industry differently. It was argued that multimodal media narratives hold three meaning making functions: sentimentalizing, juxtaposing and nuancing industry characteristics. It was also argued that multimodal public service media narratives have wider implications in possibly shaping the future attractiveness of the industry and organizational members' understanding of their identity.

This research contributes to sensemaking literature in that it explores the role of power – explicitly or implicitly constructed through media narratives during crisis. Furthermore, this research contributes to sensemaking literature in that it shows how narratives take shape multimodally during a continuous crisis, and how this impacts the construction of industry identity.