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New approaches in loyalty programs try to activate membership by rewarding not just financial transactions but also customer engagement. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effect of rewarded customer engagement on loyalty intentions and behavior by applying a social media context.

A field study in the mobility service industry (focus groups (n=18) and questionnaire (n=1,246)) and a laboratory experiment (n=141, 2 (rewarded engagement and transaction/rewarded transaction)×2 (low/high reward) between subjects design) were conducted to determine the effect of rewarded engagement on loyalty.

In the field study, the participants could gather loyalty points through their social media engagement. Their attitudinal loyalty to the loyalty program and the company was significantly higher than that of the loyalty members who collected points solely through transactions. This effect is especially prevalent with respect to engagements rewarded with monetary incentives and is underlined by behavioral data. The results of the laboratory experiment show that rewarded engagement positively moderates the impact of intrinsic motivation on loyalty intentions. Offering rewarded engagement in loyalty programs offsets the undermining effect of rewards.

Rewarding customers for social media engagement can be a beneficial way of boosting active participation in loyalty programs, but this experience should be enjoyable and self-determined.

The study is the first to show the impact of rewarded customer engagement on the attitudinal and behavioral loyalty of members of a loyalty program.

Social media encourage interactions between customers and brands. Concerning the cues utilized during social media interactions, verbal cues (i.e. the language used) gain importance, since non-verbal and paraverbal cues are hard to convey via social media. Looking at interpersonal interactions, interlocutors adopt each other’s language styles or maintain their own language style during interactions to build trust. Transferring these insights to social media, the purpose of this paper is to test the effects of a brand’s language style accommodation in brand-customer interactions on brand trust and on its antecedents.

Two quantitative pre-studies (n₁ (questionnaire)=32, n₂ (laboratory experiment)=199), and one quantitative main study (n₃ (laboratory experiment)=427) were conducted to determine the effects of a brand’s language style accommodation on brand trust.

In line with communication accommodation theory, this paper reveals that the impact of a brand’s accommodation strategy on brand trust is mediated by perceived relationship investments, such as perceived interaction effort, benevolence, and quality of interaction. This paper also underscores language style’s roles and its fit, and sheds light on situational factors such as purchase decision involvement and the valence of the content.

This paper is the first to transfer cross-disciplinary theories on interpersonal interactions to brand-customer interactions in social media. Thus, the authors derive the effects of language style accommodation on brand trust as well as further mediating effects.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to marketing communications literature by exploring consumer responses to covert advertising (CA) in a social media context.

The persuasion knowledge model was used to explore the impact of CA on brand evaluations. A factorial design experiment was conducted in a social media context (YouTube).

The results of the study show that triggering knowledge about CA changes the way consumers respond to unfamiliar brands that use such tactics. This implies that for unfamiliar brands, with future development of persuasion knowledge, CA in social media will not only be ineffective but also detrimental with damaging effects on the brand.

An important contribution of this study lies in the application of the persuasion knowledge model to social media context.

The results indicate that firms should desist from covert product and brand communications in social media contexts, and instead employ disclosed brand communications.

Given that the effects of CA have not been investigated in an online context, this study makes a unique contribution to brand communications research by providing valuable insights and better understanding of the effects of CA in social media, specifically YouTube.

In this paper, after an elucidation of several central concepts of the topic, the author focuses on the sales channels in tourism and clarifies the role retailers play in the market. He shows that the existence of institutional travel retailers is generally based on transaction costs, and that thanks to the automation the level of dependence on transaction costs can be reduced. This thesis induces the question to what extent the retailers' performances can be automated. In answer to this question the author creates a list of criteria including the following aspects; the general and occasional suitability of retail products (e g tickets, travel packages), the availability of technical equipment and information necessary for the automation at the points of sale and in the households (buyers), the level of complexity and acceptance regarding the handling of automated travel services. The paper comes to the conclusion that the automation of travel services will probably be used mainly by business travelers, whereas private customers will more likely keep their affinity for conventional retailers.

This paper provides a cross‐country examination of service management practice and performance of service organizations in the UK, USA and Germany. The findings reported are based on a sample of firms from the international service study (ISS) from four service sectors: financial services, professional services, hotels, and utilities. The paper argues that generally there are differences in services management practices and performance and, more specifically, that service quality performance may be explained by the nature and market dynamics of the service sector within the individual countries.

Do customers recognize the effort and abilities of employees in service encounters? If so, to what extent do their perceptions influence customer satisfaction? The paper seeks to answer these questions.

Two empirical studies, including a critical incident study and a video‐based experiment. Theoretically, this paper builds on motivation theory, naïve psychology, and attribution theory.

Customers spontaneously and explicitly judge service encounters on the basis of service employees' effort and abilities, perceived through certain behavioral cues. The specific, direct impact of perceived effort and abilities on customer satisfaction varies for different service types.

Taking different dependent variables into account (e.g. customer emotions, customer loyalty and brand perceptions) might offer a valuable contribution to the fields of service or brand research.

Companies must examine customers' perceptions of their employees' encounter behavior in depth to evaluate and effectively and efficiently manage perceived effort and abilities as the main determinants of customer satisfaction. They should acknowledge behavioral training represents a significant satisfaction management approach.

The paper offers interdisciplinary theoretical foundation, brings in innovative research methods and combines content and methodology to a new scientific framework for the field of service research as well as practical application for companies.

European hotels, which tend to be individual businesses, have a hard time resisting the continued globalization pressure. In order to survive the fierce international competition, Europe's hotel business needs to offer their potential customers an added value that they do not receive from hotel chains. The author shows how European hotels can prevail by developing international service competencies.

The purpose of this paper is to analysis the relationship between business ethics and business activities in the dynamic world. Corporations are increasingly expected to play a stronger role as a collaborator with government and society in finding solutions to future challenges. Money no longer is the only or ultimate outcome of business. Business executives like to see themselves as self-sufficient, societally supportive and leading.

This paper is a case study.

Four new core areas need to be understood which are a field’s pillars for a shining business position: truthfulness, simplicity, expanded participation and personal responsibility. In addition, the introduction of guiding key tenets in the educational curriculum of business schools need to be considered.

This study focuses on business ethnics.

Previous research has argued that little is known about the dynamics of (de)coupling. This has led to a relatively static and potentially oversimplified view on how externally imposed accountability demands are incorporated into organizational routines. The purpose of this paper is to address these calls by exploring the dynamic processes of de- and re-coupling the two institutional rules of achieving a “balanced budget” and serving “the needs of individuals” in a Swedish school context.

A qualitative case study based on 28 observations and 32 interviews with principals, administrators and teachers within a large Swedish municipality has been used.

In contrast to earlier research, the paper shows that (de)coupling is more than just a static state; it is a result of dynamic challenges and boundary maintenance. It is a state where professional groups try to both decouple and couple accounting into routines to achieve greater autonomy and control, where incarnation of one myth leads to loosening another. It is embedded in an institutional environment’s powerful actors, and when incarnation takes place at different organizational levels, it leads to less conflict in another sphere. The dynamics of (de)coupling thereby unfolds how institutional rules play out in an organizational setting.

From a practical viewpoint, this paper has provided insights into how rules operate in an organizational setting. Given that regulative authorities tend to assume that rules should be tightly coupled to practice, this paper provides a critical examination of the assumption that coupled organizations are inherently “better” than non-coupled ones. To what extent does incarnation of rules reflect the societal ideas – and for whom? By unfolding the dynamics of (de)coupling, this paper illuminates some potential issues with increased tightness between rules and routines.

The paper illuminates the ways in which institutional rules takes place on the ground, and the associated roles for accounting in such process.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the nature of organizational commitment among employees of Palestinian arts-and-culture organizations and to examine the combined effect and role of organizational and job characteristics in shaping employees’ commitment.

An on-site employee survey was conducted in 20 distinct local not-for-profit arts-and-culture organizations, where the respondent sampling frame constituted of 190 individuals with a response rate of 48 per cent. Confirmatory factor analysis was used in this study to confirm the original scale structure for study constructs and evaluate their distinctiveness in the Palestinian context.

Results from structural equation modeling analysis revealed a reasonable rather than a good fit of the model to the data. The current study recognized organizational and job characteristics as critical determinants of employees’ commitment, particularly its affective component; which was also found to be the most accurate description of organizational commitment in arts-and-culture organizations.

Consistent with the social exchange theory, an emphasis should be placed on employees’ perception of organizational and job characteristics. This study advocates for combining organizational characteristics with job characteristics in light of their significant association with commitment in the context of motivational theories.

This study empirically demonstrates the positive effects of organizational and job characteristics on employees’ evaluation of their organization. Managers of arts-and-culture organizations should maintain a proper alignment of organizational values with those of the employees and create a working environment that meets employees’ psychological and career needs.

This study makes a valuable contribution to the existing body of research and adds to a very limited number of studies investigating organizational commitment in arts-and-culture organizations, validating the structure of commitment and its antecedents in a non-Western context and showing the multi-dimensionality of the concept.