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Ever since its emergence, the metaverse has presented opportunities and disruptions to every stakeholder, including individual users and organizations. This article aims to offer valuable perspectives on six identified critical areas that the metaverse could significantly impact: marketing ethics, marketing communication, relationship marketing, retail marketing, supply chain management and transportation management.

Through a multi-perspective approach, this paper gathers valuable perspectives from various invited contributors to each of the six identified key areas that the metaverse could significantly impact.

For each key area identified, the invited contributors first share their valuable perspectives by discussing the roles of the metaverse. Subsequently, the invited contributors discuss their views on vital opportunities, challenges and research agenda concerning the metaverse.

With the widespread metaverse, it is expected that each key area identified is likely to undergo significant levels of disruption. Against this backdrop, this paper contributes to the academic literature and industry by gathering different perspectives from invited contributors on the relevance of the metaverse in marketing and logistics domains.

Technological advancements have catalyzed disruption in the banking sector. The impact of the metaverse on the banking sector is no exception. In view of this, the current paper aims to provide valuable insights into four key areas (i.e. corporate banking, retail banking, banking employees and public policy) that the metaverse could significantly disrupt.

Insights into four key areas of the banking sector that the metaverse could significantly impact were gathered from various invited contributors.

The invited contributors first introduce the association between their respective key areas with the metaverse. Subsequently, the opportunities and challenges relevant to the key areas were identified. Finally, future research agendas were proposed for the attention of all relevant stakeholders.

The metaverse's impact on key areas of the banking sector is discussed in this paper. Following the metaverse's potentially wide application in the banking sector, insights from the invited contributions offer great value to the relevant stakeholders.

Photos are powerful tools to attract individuals’ attention and convey service experiences. Yet exactly how visual cues in a photo contribute to the perceptions of the staged servicescape, and how these perceptions inspire online booking/reservation behaviors, remains underexplored. Addressing the gap, this study aims to uncover (1) how perceptual information mediated by an online photo contributes to the formation of consumers' holistic perceptions of the service environment and (2) how such consumers' holistic perceptions further influence customers' online purchasing behaviors.

This research adopts an innovative crowdsourcing approach and refers to field data on consumers' online hotel booking behaviors to examine relationships among inferred servicescape dimensions, consumers' holistic perceptions of the mediated servicescape and their actual online booking/reservation behaviors (e.g. page-view and meta-click behaviors).

Confirmatory factor analysis and path analysis indicated that five mediated servicescape dimensions (i.e. color, lighting, furnishings, layout and style) contribute significantly to consumers' perceptions of the mediated servicescape (CPMS) and exert different impacts on CPMS. Connecting the crowdsourced rating and consumer behavioral data, CPMS is found to influence consumers' aggregated page-view and meta-click behavior, especially in the US market.

Building upon servicescape theory, the medium theory and the online booking literature, this research proposes a novel conceptual framework of CPMS to theorize the process by which visual cues in online photos contribute to CPMS and subsequent online purchase behaviors. Findings from this research extend Bitner's servicescape framework to mediated service contexts and provide practical implications for promoting service businesses.

Since the development of the COVID-19 vaccinations, questions surrounding race have been prominent in the literature on vaccine uptake. Early in the vaccine rollout, public health officials were concerned with the relatively lower rates of uptake among certain racial/ethnic minority groups. We suggest that this may also be patterned by racial/ethnic residential segregation, which previous work has demonstrated to be an important factor for both health and access to health care.

In this study, we examine county-level vaccination rates, racial/ethnic composition, and residential segregation across the U.S. We compile data from several sources, including the American Community Survey (ACS) and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) measured at the county level.

We find that just looking at the associations between racial/ethnic composition and vaccination rates, both percent Black and percent White are significant and negative, meaning that higher percentages of these groups in a county are associated with lower vaccination rates, whereas the opposite is the case for percent Latino. When we factor in segregation, as measured by the index of dissimilarity, the patterns change somewhat. Dissimilarity itself was not significant in the models across all groups, but when interacted with race/ethnic composition, it moderates the association. For both percent Black and percent White, the interaction with the Black-White dissimilarity index is significant and negative, meaning that it deepens the negative association between composition and the vaccination rate.

The analysis is only limited to county-level measures of racial/ethnic composition and vaccination rates, so we are unable to see at the individual-level who is getting vaccinated.

We find that segregation moderates the association between racial/ethnic composition and vaccination rates, suggesting that local race relations in a county helps contextualize the compositional effects of race/ethnicity.

Managers engage in marketing efforts to boost sales and in setting marketing budgets based on current or historical sales. Past studies have overlooked the reciprocal relationship between marketing spending and sales. This study aims to examine the nature of the relationship between sales and marketing expenses in the B2B market.

Five hypotheses on the relationship between sales and marketing expenditures were framed. A total of 30 of India’s dyeing firms provided data on revenues, sales (in units) and marketing expenditures over time. The structural vector auto-regressive model and the vector error correction model were fitted to the data.

The results show that marketing expenses and sales are related bidirectionally in a sequential way. Furthermore, sales drive the long-term equilibrium relationship to a greater extent than marketing expenditures.

The findings of this study should assist managers in predicting sales and marketing budgets simultaneously and devising precise marketing strategies and tactics.

Using econometric models in data-driven research is not a frequent practice in marketing. This study adds value to the body of marketing literature by advancing the theory of the relationship between sales and marketing spending using real-world data and econometric models in the B2B sector.

To determine the factors influencing the perception of undergraduate students toward research–teaching nexus and also to examine its impact on the attitude of the students.

The study used a quantitative design to examine the perceptions of students in higher education institutions in India. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to describe the data and test the hypothesis. The data was collected using a structured questionnaire for a sample of 188 students from higher education institutions (HEIs). Further, in line with the purpose of the study and to test the hypotheses, the study used descriptive statistics, exploratory factor analysis and multivariate regression analysis.

The study demonstrates that the factors influencing the perception of undergraduate students toward research teaching nexus were identified using principal component analysis (PCA) with varimax rotation, conducted on 27 measurement items. In addition, the results of the multivariate regression analysis indicated that research-based, research-tutored and research motivation dimensions, significantly impact the graduate students' perception of research–teaching nexus.

The outcomes of this research may become valid input to HEI regulators, researchers and teachers while framing the policies and implementation of the same about the pertinent issues discussed in the paper. Further, it contributes to the existing theory that teaching–research quality and level of motivation are also the predominant factors influencing the teaching–research nexus among students. In addition, the outcome of this paper also supports HEIs to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs) at large.

This study contributes to the ongoing debate and scarce literature on research–teaching nexus at the higher education level. The factors derived in this paper propose a framework for aligning teaching and research in academic programs to create high-quality human resource in the nation.

This study aims to investigate how university students experience a skill transformation process aligned with the sustainable development goals (SDGs). This transformation occurs through their participation in a service-learning programme alongside an international volunteering project. The theoretical framework for understanding this skill transformation process is based on the “rite of passage”.

Qualitative methodology is adopted by conducting 23 online surveys with volunteers (virtual and onsite) and five with coordinators across the rite of passage phases. Volunteering was carried out in five Mayan indigenous communities in Mexico as part of an international cooperation project with the goals of supporting community-based tourism development and strengthening volunteers’ skills in accordance with the SDGs.

Results show that international volunteering programmes for university students significantly enhance their interpersonal and professional skills, demonstrating strong potential for implementing the SDGs. These programmes provide learning and education opportunities for both volunteers and local communities. Volunteers gain a broader perspective on gender equality and cultural barriers. Additionally, volunteering supports sustainable tourism, economic worth and collaboration among institutions. Both volunteers’ personal characteristics (educational level and sociocultural context), as well as their sociocultural context, influenced the perception of the skill transformation process and learning about the SDGs. Finally, a new educational university programme in volunteering aligned with SDGs is proposed.

This research examines the practical ramifications of incorporating volunteer programmes into university courses. Universities must include these initiatives in their educational systems as a means of enhancing student learning.

A new educational university programme in volunteering aligned with SDGs is proposed. This study suggests a shift in university mindset, as well as increased funding for training and adherence to the SDGs.

This study pioneers the rite of passage framework in an international volunteer tourism project facilitated by universities, emphasizing volunteering as a valuable tool for SDG implementation, considering the interrelationships between objectives.