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This study employs a multi-method approach to investigate how perceived relationship marketing investment affects perceived relationship value and consumer gratitude, influencing consumer involvement, word-of-mouth intentions, and long-term relationships across three retail consumer types.

The study analyses a model involving 542 consumers, employing structural equation modeling and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to identify distinctive factor configurations across public, semi-public, and private retail organizations.

A retailer’s investment in relationship marketing significantly enhances relationship value and consumer gratitude, leading to increased engagement and word-of-mouth intentions. Perceived benevolence moderates the effect of relationship marketing on gratitude. However, gratitude alone does not ensure long-term relationships. Using fsQCA, we identify four distinct consumer configurations, providing nuanced insights.

Retail organizations broaden relationship marketing strategies to boost perceived value and elicit consumer gratitude, influencing consumer performance outcomes.

Retail organizations should broaden relationship marketing strategies to boost perceived value and elicit consumer gratitude, influencing consumer performance outcomes.

Managers should develop strategies that lead to consumer gratitude toward the firm, such as journey mapping can help visualize retail delivery. Grateful consumers may contribute to firms’ profitability by influencing current and potential consumers in their social networks and communicating their expertise through review/feedback for improvement. Therefore, various strategies are needed to stimulate positive comments from grateful consumers about the firm’s excellent performance.

This study builds on Lawler’s affect theory, highlighting how relationship value and consumer gratitude profoundly influence exchange process outcomes. It introduces new psychological mechanisms to explain the impact of perceived relationship marketing investment on performance outcomes. Integrating these elements provides a comprehensive understanding of retailer–consumer dynamics, revealing how emotional and psychological factors shape marketing strategies and business performance. This contribution enriches theoretical frameworks and offers practical insights for enhancing relationship marketing practices.

Engaging in webcare, i.e. responding to online reviews, can positively affect consumer attitudes, intentions and behavior. Research is often scarce or inconsistent regarding the effects of specific webcare strategies on business performance. Therefore, this study tests whether and how several webcare strategies affect hotel bookings.

We apply machine learning classifiers to secondary data (webcare messages) to classify webcare variables to be included in a regression analysis looking at the effect of these strategies on hotel bookings while controlling for possible confounds such as seasonality and hotel-specific effects.

The strategies that have a positive effect on bookings are directing reviewers to a private channel, being defensive, offering compensation and having managers sign the response. Webcare strategies to be avoided are apologies, merely asking for more information, inviting customers for another visit and adding informal non-verbal cues. Strategies that do not appear to affect future bookings are expressing gratitude, personalizing and having staff members (rather than managers) sign webcare.

These findings help managers optimize their webcare strategy for better business results and develop automated webcare.

We look into several commonly used and studied webcare strategies that affect actual business outcomes, being that most previous research studies are experimental or look into a very limited set of strategies.

This paper aims to assess retail shopping avenues for young consumers based on the type of guidance and assistance they pursue (social media vs professional service provider) in purchasing situations judged to be important. Young consumers consider themselves pet parents and pets represent an extension of self. Thus, pet-related products, by their importance, represent an excellent area of analysis for this inquiry.

Data collection was completed in a way that is contextually relevant and gives the results ecological validity with the assistance of a major supplier of pet food. A total of 470 Gen Z owners of small companion animals were obtained. The partial least squares structural equation modeling testing method is considered appropriate for the model analysis due to the structure and homogeneity of the sample and due to the precision of the method.

Results indicate that, in accordance with social media engagement (SME) theory, high SME elevated social commerce purchase intentions while professional advice seekers reported increased brick-and-mortar shopping. Thus, context-dependent, young consumers may purchase from brick-and-mortar sites.

This paper draws on SME and Advice Response Theory and proposes an original model explaining channel selection preferences for young consumers based on the type of advice sought for important purchasing decisions. The model represents a steppingstone to investigate the mechanism that translates information search sources into buying through different channels.

This study aims to analyze the attitude of consumers toward the recycling process, especially toward the manner of its promotion through social media platforms.

Using social media analysis, the authors analyzed the posts on the RetuRO page on Facebook. The results showed us that the first posts started in January, the recycling program and the guarantee return systems implementation have been active in the stores since November 30. Thus, the posts from each month were analyzed, observing that at the beginning of the program, the posting frequency was higher (8–10 posts/month), whereas in 2024, the frequency registered a slight decrease.

This paper reflects two facets of consumer attitudes: if at the beginning of the recycling program, the feeling expressed was one of delight and satisfaction because customers had the opportunity to get rid of plastic or glass packaging, respectively aluminum cans, thus contributing to protecting the environment, with the development of the program, their opinions changed. The problems generated by the difficulty of recycling, and the technically deficient aspects of the devices led to a paradigm shift and the manifestation of a negative component of consumer attitudes.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first carried out in Romania that analyses the influence of the RetuRO platform in the recycling process carried out in our country using social media analysis.

Our study aims to understand what is known about happiness at work (HAW) in terms of publication, citations, dimensions and characteristics, as well as how knowledge about HAW is generated regarding theoretical frameworks, context and methods. Additionally, it explores future directions for HAW research.

This paper conducts a systematic literature review of 56 empirical articles published between 2000 and 2022 to comprehensively explore HAW. It examines publication trends, citation patterns, dimensions, characteristics, theoretical frameworks, contextual factors and research methodologies employed in HAW studies.

Our findings suggest that while HAW research has gained momentum, there is still a need for exploration, particularly in developing countries. Various theoretical frameworks such as the job demand-resources model, social exchange theory and broaden-and-build theory are identified, with suggestions for the adoption of less popular theories like the positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning and accomplishment (PERMA) model and flow theory for future investigations. The review contributes to workplace happiness literature by offering a comprehensive analysis spanning two decades and provides valuable insights for guiding future research toward exploring factors influencing employee well-being.

Our article offers a structured analysis of HAW literature, emphasizing the necessity for more extensive research, especially in developing nations. It provides valuable insights into the theories and dimensions associated with HAW, guiding future research and assisting organizations in formulating strategies to enhance employee happiness and overall well-being.

Social media has become an inescapable part of our lives. However, recent research suggests that excessive use of social media may lead to fatigue and users’ disengagement. This study aims to examine which brand-related factors contribute to social media fatigue (SMF) and its subsequent role on driving lurking behaviors, particularly among young consumers.

Based on survey data from 282 young users of social media, a holistic model of brand-related drivers and outcomes of SMF was tested, emphasizing the contribution of brands’ social media presence to users’ disengagement.

Research shows that branded content overload and irrelevance, as well as branded ads intrusiveness significantly impact SMF, which in turn plays a mediating role between brand-related drivers and lurking behaviors. The authors further conclude that the impact of SMF on lurking is stronger for users who follow a larger set of brands.

The study contributes to social media research by addressing its “dark side” and empirically validating the role of brands’ social media presence in developing young users’ fatigue and disengagement. The study further adds to the scant literature on SMF, which was mostly developed outside the branding field. Research also provides valuable insights to brands on how to improve their social media performance.

Proenvironmental hotels and hotels with green initiatives are emerging as a method to address environmental issues and respond to tourists’ environmental concerns. To better understand what can encourage reservations in proenvironmental hotels, this study aims to investigate the connection between the performing arts watching experience and the preference for such a hotel.

Five scenario-based experiments were conducted. A total of 1,024 participants for the five studies were recruited with the help of Credamo, a commonly used Chinese data collection platform.

The results indicated that viewing performing arts could increase tourists’ preferences for proenvironmental hotels. This phenomenon occurred due to the fact that performing arts watching experience can induce a psychological state of self-transcendence in individuals, which, in turn, can raise their levels of altruism, and ultimately lead to proenvironmental hotel choices. This effect will not occur, however, when people watch performing arts with either an extrinsic motivation or in an analytical state.

The findings of this study provide hotel managers with a novel approach to market the proenvironmental attributes of their hotels and to promote tourists’ proenvironmental behaviors.

This study proposes performing arts viewing experiences as a novel way to encourage proenvironmental hotel choice. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to explore the impact of the performing arts watching experience on tourist behavior.

This research explores how contextual elements and significant events influence the changing storylines within a company's directors' reports spanning a period of six decades. These elements and events encompass the internal dynamics of the family that owns the company, industry-specific advancements, political and socioeconomic climates, and explicit guidelines related to corporate reporting.

This research employs a case study methodology to analyse the directors' reports of Barilla, a prominent Italian food manufacturer, within the theoretical framework of historical institutionalism. A systematic content analysis is conducted on sixty directors' reports published between 1961 and 2021. The study also identifies and examines significant contextual events within this six-decade period, which are linked to four key institutional factors.

Based on the research findings, the directors' reports exhibited notable fluctuations throughout the studied timeframe in reaction to shifts in the institutional setting. Our investigation highlights that each institutional element experienced crucial pivotal moments, and given their interconnected nature, modifications in one factor impacted the others. It was noted that these pivotal moments resulted in alterations in the directors' reports' content across various thematic areas. Additionally, despite Barilla being a multinational company, it was found that national events within Italy had a more pronounced influence on the evolving narratives than global events.

Previous research on directors' reports or chairman's statements has primarily focused on the influence of macro-level institutional factors on the narratives. In contrast, our study considers both macro-level and micro-level institutions, specifically examining the internal events within a family business and how they shape the content of directors' reports. Our study is also distinctive in its analysis of specific critical junctures and their interactions with the investigated institutional factors. Additionally, to the best of our knowledge, few existing studies span a timeframe of sixty years, particularly concerning an Italian company.

The purpose of the paper is to analyze the supply and demand of marketing and communication consulting services and evaluate actual and perceived gaps.

The paper uses two different datasets to assess the gap. The supply database comes from desk research carried out in the province of Bergamo (n. 159 consulting agencies). The demand dates are the results of 100 structured interviews with local companies that requested marketing and communication consulting services both inside and outside the province.

Findings show that there is no significant shortage in local service supply. Nonetheless, a limited gap exists between the provision of specific services and their overall quality. Conversely, the perceived gap is wider, leading to an impression of scarce availability – a notion disproven by the analysis of the actual supply.

The study suggests that local agencies may overcome their “myopic” attitude and need to increase their visibility, competencies and expertise by investing in these areas and improving networking.

There are no previous studies that compare the supply and demand for marketing and communication consulting services. The paper also provides insights into actual and perceived gaps in a hypercompetitive environment.

Amid multiple crises and increasing volatility, sustainable development is a pressing concern. Higher Education for Sustainable Development, especially Responsible Management Education (RME), drives transformative change by fostering new perspectives on work, decision-making and leadership. Conferences serve as pivotal sustainability discussion platforms, yet many remain traditional and lack interactive student engagement. This hinders active involvement and collaborative problem-solving. The Global Goals Design Jam, a dynamic, nontraditional format explored in this study offers an alternative approach. By blending design thinking and playful learning and constructivist learning methods, the Global Goals Design Jam offers a space for collaborative and creative Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) solutions. At the ninth Responsible Management Education Research Conference (RMERC) in September 2022, students from various universities took part in a Global Goals Design Jam. The current prestudy postulates that participation in a Global Goals Design Jam is primarily associated with positive attributes related to emotions and a sense of coherence. The potential for empowering learners to navigate real-world complexities and contribute to sustainability is highlighted, establishing formats like the Global Goals Design Jam as a valuable addition to educational conferences with a sustainability focus. The results also highlight potentials and limitations of the format and provide insights into further research requirements.