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This research investigates the effects of consumers' online information searching on their dining satisfaction in upscale restaurants during the pandemic. Customers frequently rely on online sources to gather information about upscale restaurants prior to their visits.

Data from 307 diners across the top ten popular upscale restaurants in Hong Kong were analysed by using SEM to explore the links between customers' needs, information search, restaurant attributes and customer satisfaction.

This study uncovers customers' online search behaviours and identifies restaurant attributes that are associated with customer satisfaction, which were not typically emphasised before the COVID-19 pandemic. Driven by their social and psychological needs, customers devoted more time to reading written comments by other consumers compared to visual images or self-descriptions from restaurants. Only service attribute significantly influenced customer satisfaction, while food and price attributes were not significant.

The findings of this study provide valuable insights for researchers and practitioners, shedding light on the altered needs and preferences of consumers following the unprecedented health crisis.

This study contributes to the development of expectancy disconfirmation theory and needs theory through the investigation of consumers' online information searching behaviours and dining satisfaction in upscale restaurants during the pandemic. By identifying the most important attributes influencing customer satisfaction, this research can aid upscale restaurants in developing effective marketing strategies and enhancing customer experiences.

This study aims to understand a customer-purchase mechanism in the artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot context based on the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) and technology acceptance model (TAM). The first objective is to examine how to boost chatbot adoption. The second objective is to investigate the role of information characteristics, technology-related characteristics and attitude toward AI in purchase intention.

Data was collected from a sample of 492 users in Vietnam, who are potential customers of chatbots for purchase. Structural equation modeling was applied for data analysis.

Results illustrate that chatbot adoption is significantly influenced by information credibility, technology-related factors (i.e. interactivity, relative advantage and perceived intelligence), attitude toward AI and perceived usefulness. Moreover, information quality and persuasiveness motivate information credibility. Information credibility and attitude toward AI are the essential motivations for perceived usefulness. Finally, chatbot adoption and information credibility determine purchase intention.

The results are insightful for practitioners to envisage the importance of chatbot use for customer purchase in the AI scenario. Additionally, this research offers a framework to practitioners for shaping customer engagement in chatbots.

The value of this work lies in the incorporation of technology-related characteristics into the two well-established theories, the ELM and TAM, to identify the importance of AI and its applications (i.e. chatbots) for purchase and to understand the formation of perceived usefulness and chatbot use through information credibility and attitude toward AI.

This study aims to examine how customers’ perceptions of the quality and credibility of restaurants’ food safety information influence customers’ information adoption and, consequently, their trust in the restaurant and purchase intention. It also explores the moderating effects of customers’ food safety knowledge and health consciousness.

Participants were asked to read a food safety message from a chain restaurant’s website before taking a self-administered online survey. Using a cross-sectional design, a total of 526 valid responses were collected in the USA through Amazon Mechanical Turk. A two-step approach consisting of a measurement model and a structural equation model was applied to test the direct and indirect effects. Additionally, hierarchical regression models were developed to test the moderating effects.

Results show that perceived information quality significantly affects perceived information credibility and has a significant direct and indirect influence on information adoption. Furthermore, information adoption has a direct positive influence on customers’ trust in the restaurant and an indirect effect on purchase intention (full mediation effect of trust). Finally, the moderation effects of health consciousness and food safety knowledge were supported.

Restaurateurs can apply research findings to increase the likelihood that customers adopt their food safety information and to enhance customers’ trust and, consequently, purchase intention in restaurants.

Reflecting on framing theory and information processing theory, this study examines the ways that customers process restaurants’ food safety information by developing an original conceptual framework with strong empirical data support.

Customers' co-design behavior is an important source of knowledge for product innovation. Firms can regulate the focus of information interaction with customers to set goals and motivate their co-design behavior. Drawing on regulatory fit theory and construal level theory, the authors build a research model to study whether the fit between the regulatory focus of firms' task invitations (promotion focus vs prevention focus) and their feedback focus (self-focused vs other-focused) can enhance co-design behavior by improving customers' experiences (perceived meaning, active discovery and perceived empowerment).

The authors conducted two online between-subjects experiments to validate the proposed research model.

The two online experiments reveal that customers' experiences are enhanced when the feedback focus is congruent with the regulatory focus of the firm's task invitations. Specifically, self-focused feedback has a stronger positive effect on customers' experiences in the prevention focus context. Other-focused feedback has a stronger positive effect on customers' experiences in the promotion focus context. Moreover, customers' experience significantly and positively affects co-design behavior (i.e. co-design effort and knowledge contribution).

This work provides theoretical and practical implications for firms to improve the effectiveness of information interaction with their customers and eventually ensure the sustainability of co-design.

Data-driven marketing is replacing conventional marketing strategies. The modern marketing strategy is based on insights derived from customer behavior information gathered from their facial expressions and neuro-signals. This study explores the potential for face recognition and neuro-marketing in modern-day marketing.

The study conducts an in-depth examination of the extant literature on neuro-marketing and facial recognition marketing. The articles for review are downloaded from the Scopus database, and PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) is then used to screen and choose the relevant papers. The systematic literature review method is applied to conduct the study.

An extensive review of the literature reveals that the domains of neuro-marketing and face recognition marketing remain understudied. The authors’ review of selected papers delivers five neuro-marketing and facial recognition marketing themes that are essential to modern marketing concepts.

Neuro-marketing and facial recognition marketing are artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled marketing techniques that assist in gaining cognitive insights into human behavior. The findings would be of use to managers in designing marketing strategies to enhance their marketing approach and boost conversion rates.

The uniqueness of this study lies in that it provides an updated review on neuro-marketing and face recognition marketing.

Enterprises' multichannel operations provide various avenues for customer interaction; however, existing literature investigating customer-to-customer interaction (CCI) mainly focuses on a single channel. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the spillover effect of CCI and potential underlying mediating mechanisms in different information channels.

Three between-subjects experiments with 946 participants were employed to empirically validate the proposed hypotheses in the context of an experiential product and a material product.

Results suggest the clear spillover effect of CCI, indicating that positive CCI improves focal customers' satisfaction and purchase intention, whereas negative CCI reduces focal customers' satisfaction and purchase intention. Moreover, CCI's spillover effect varies based on the CCI channel. Offline CCI has a stronger positive spillover effect than online CCI. Contrarily, online CCI has a stronger negative spillover effect than offline CCI. Customer experience and trust are demonstrated to have mediating roles in this process.

This study is the first to comprehensively understand and compare the CCI spillover effect of the two information channels. The findings add to the existing knowledge of information processing in the psychological mechanisms influencing the belief in addition to providing insights for companies engaged in multichannel operations management across different channels.

This paper aims to develop a conceptual framework for further understanding the risks embedded in co-creation services in high-contact service transactions. It delineates behavioral and economic perspectives focusing on agency costs, risk behavior, compensation structure and provides a context in which information is processed.

Following an extensive review of the literature, propositions are advanced that relate an agent’s risk behavior to information processing, compensation and the propensity to engage in co-creation. These propositions provide a complementary context for understanding risks in the co-creation process.

The propositions detail how a service agent’s information processing can be enhanced if the customer’s expected utility from transactions is maximized by managing the agent’s risk behavior and earnings potential. A compensation structure that balances fixed base and variable pay can motivate risk-taking and the agent’s propensity to engage in co-creation.

This paper extends the understanding of agency risks in the co-creation of hospitality services that integrates economic and behavioral perspectives with information processing. Theoretical implications include a broader context of the risks underlying co-creation. Practical implications relate to how earnings potential could be maximized by considering the agent’s risk behavior and the expected utility arising from such transactions.

The authors investigate how logistics digitalization affects two types of third-party logistics (3PL) performance: financial performance and service performance. In particular, the authors explore the mediating role of customer collaboration between logistics digitalization and firm performance based on organizational information processing theory and examine the moderating role of government support.

The authors use an SPSS macro program (PROCESS regression analysis) to analyze survey data from 235 3PL firms in China. The mediation model, moderation model and moderated mediation model are tested.

The empirical results show that in the new age of digitalization transformation, logistics digitalization positively affects 3PL's financial performance and service performance by strengthening customer collaboration. Additionally, government support amplifies the positive effect of customer collaboration on service performance but not financial performance. The moderated mediation test further indicates that government support strengthens the positive indirect effect of digitalization on service performance through customer collaboration.

This study offers empirical insights into the growing body of 3PL literature, and the findings contribute to the theoretical and practical understanding of the emerging research topic of digital transformation (DT) and sustainability issues in 3PL firms.

This paper aims to explore the conditions in a business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C) context characterized by new technologies. Innovations enhance disintermediation and pursue sustainability goals that drive customers’ willingness to use eco-friendly delivery options, namely, parcel lockers – in e-commerce and their impacts in terms of communication and transparency along the supply network.

The study conducted an extensive survey in Italy and Germany, collecting 1,010 usable responses. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data with the aim of identifying the factors that drive customers’ willingness to use parcel lockers and the effect on customers’ behaviour as determined by the disclosure of information about the environmental performance of different delivery options.

The results highlight several factors affecting the willingness to use parcel lockers, namely, performance and effort expectancy, social influence, technology anxiety, hedonistic motivation and environmental knowledge. The results also demonstrate that the disclosure of information about the environmental performance of different delivery options influences customers’ behaviour.

This paper faces several limitations, mostly related to the focus on just two countries, the use of cross-sectional data and the survey’s explicit reference to just one type of product. Nevertheless, the findings contribute to the discussion on the relevance of information sharing along the supply chain, providing favourable evidence in this regard. It also improves the stream of research concerning technology adoption in the context of e-commerce, highlighting factors that can lead consumers to use eco-friendly self-service technologies.

The results can support companies in understanding how they can design and manage the last mile of delivery to jointly achieve customer satisfaction, process efficiency and superior environmental performance.

This pioneering contribution studies the adoption of delivery solutions for e-commerce and its implications for the supply network.

This research aims to examine the factors that influence customers' product return intentions and proposes that YouTube product reviews can mitigate customers' desire to return a product.

The proposed theoretical research model and hypothesized relationship were investigated using a quantitative process. This study used 302 data from Indonesian young adult respondents to examine the structural model, which was analyzed using the SmartPLS 3.2 software package.

The results show that YouTube product reviews, product fit uncertainty and customer satisfaction are the key determinants of customers' product return intention. Furthermore, the results show that the credibility of YouTube product reviews has a major impact on customers' familiarity with a product, satisfaction and the likelihood of returning goods to sellers.

In the e-commerce industry, increasing the use of YouTube product reviews will help businesses eliminate unnecessary product returns. Sellers are also encouraged to collaborate with YouTube producers to review specific products, which can benefit companies by raising brand awareness and gaining customer feedback. Furthermore, YouTube online product reviews can help consumers avoid having an unpleasant shopping experience that causes emotional reactions and lowers satisfaction.

Most research has not considered antecedents in observing the product return phenomenon; this study observes a prerequisite of consumer product returns (i.e. information asymmetry and product familiarity) and investigates the relationships between YouTube product reviews, customer satisfaction and product return intention.