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The purpose of this paper is to investigate how peer-to-peer word-of-mouth (PPWOM) conversations evolve over time because of the dynamic social nature of the community in which they take place.

This study analyzed PPWOM conversations in an online community website for new and expectant mothers. Two data collection phases were undertaken during a four-year period. In phase I, messages were collected for a one-month period from five different bulletin boards (i.e. cross-sectional data) and at two points in time (i.e. semi-longitudinal). In phase II, a full longitudinal study was conducted, and the complete text of all messages of a newly formed bulletin board was captured for a nine-month period. The corpus of messages was examined in line with the basic tools of ethnomethodology and conversation analysis.

This research developed a typology of PPWOM genres and showed that these genres change over the community lifespan. The findings confirmed that the levels of social cohesiveness and the interaction communicative motives are the main factors that distinguish different PPWOM genres.

This research has offered a new perspective into the study of PPWOM, and hopefully it will serve as a starting point for a broader dialogue regarding the social context in which PPWOM is exchanged.

In contrast to traditional word-of-mouth research, this study demonstrated that PPWOM conversations go much beyond the exchange of functional information, and instead serve numerous social and emotional goals.

Robotic coronary artery bypass (rCABG) is a relatively novel and less invasive form of surgery. A yearlong direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) campaign was initiated to provide the community with information regarding rCABG, increase awareness and recruit patients. To optimize information content and ensure appropriate messaging for future campaigns, this study aims to analyze the campaign effectiveness and compared service quality perceptions and clinical outcomes, following surgery across DTCA-responder and control groups.

The institution initiated an rCABG program and one-year DTCA campaign. The authors prospectively documented all rCABG referrals prompted by these ads (DTCA-responder group) and concurrent referrals from medical providers (controls). Groups were compared according to baseline characteristics, perioperative outcomes, patient satisfaction (HCAHPS survey) and functional capacity at three weeks (Duke Activity Status Index). At six months, both groups were surveyed for patient satisfaction and unmet expectations.

There were 103 DTCA responders and 77 controls. The subset of responders that underwent rCABG (n = 54) had similar characteristics to controls, except they were younger, less likely to have lung disease or to be scheduled as an urgent case. Both groups had similar 30-day clinical outcomes, functional capacity recovery and overall satisfaction at three weeks. Follow-up interviews at six months and four years revealed that the DTCA group reported more unmet expectations regarding the “size of the skin incisions” and “recovery time” but no concern about “expertise of their surgeon”.

The DTCA campaign was effective at recruiting patients. The specific focus of the ads and narrow timeframe for decision-making about CABG lends confidence that the incremental cases seen during the campaign were prompted primarily by DTCA. However, differences in unmet expectations underscore the need to better understand the impact of message content on patients recruited via DTCA campaigns.

This is one of the first studies to provide real-world direct empirical evidence of patients’ clinical and attitudinal outcomes for DTCA campaigns. Furthermore, the findings contradict prevailing beliefs that DTCA is ineffective for prompting surgical referrals.

In order to understand how specific communities might develop over time, it is important to take into account how the broader phenomenon of online consumer communities is itself situated in a bigger social context. As a whole, online communities can be seen as micro-social groups (Maffesoli, 1996) that exist at the “forgotten” level in consumer research (Bagozzi, 2000). This micro-social level, between individual and macro/cultural levels, is the level at which interactions and communications between people take place (Cova & Cova, 2002).

Mastering aesthetics is a precious source of competitive advantage in creative industries. In fashion, innovation is reflected by how and how much styles change. Elite designers claim to be the only endogenous force shaping fashion innovation season by season. Yet, each season, fashion critics vet the new collections these designers introduce, assessing what is original as opposed to reworked and uninspired, in this way playing a fundamental role as gatekeepers in setting taste within the industry. In this research, we document how stylistic innovation, vis-à-vis the styles premier design houses introduced each season, is impacted, among the others, by the specific exogenous force of critics' assessments of designers' past work. Our data, which include 61 measures detailing the styles introduced by 38 prestigious Italian and French design houses over a nine-year period, suggest designers move further away from styles reviewed less favourably while adhering more closely to styles reviewed more positively. Additionally, the styles a designer introduces are shown to depend on critical assessments of competing designers' styles, revealing how design houses attend to each other's work. This work documents the strong correlation between style dynamics and critics' feedback. It also has important implications for any company trying to find a balance between independence and conformity in setting its own unique positioning into the market.

I'VE said it before, and I'll say it again: Eastbourne is an excellent place for a conference, and I set out for it after five years' absence with the hope that its handsome and genial presence would produce something better than the mixture of ordinary, obvious and sometimes inaudible papers that have been a constituent of more than one intervening conference. That towns can affect such occasions is no doubt a farfetched conceit, but they certainly affect me; as soon as I arrived the environmental magic worked, and old friends and new faces were seen in the golden light of perfect autumn weather.

By celebrating tourism destinations through cruise collections, luxury brands open to new influences. They may develop deeper connections with certain geographical areas, but may also challenge the quintessentially national dimension of luxury brand culture. The best example of synergies between a luxury fashion brand and tourism destinations are the Christian Dior cruise collections with Maria Grazia Chiuri at the helm. This chapter is to understand how cruise collections may enhance luxury fashion houses' brand culture through the connections they develop with tourism destinations. Further, the chapter assesses the extent to which destinations can benefit from the exposure provided by luxury fashion brands' cruise collections.

The purpose of this paper is to define a new and broader concept of spirituality called holistic spiritual capital (HSpC), which encompasses and identifies the dimensions proposed by various authors and to propose a metric scale for HSpC and its validation.

The analysis is based on a survey of 201 residents of Spain administered in May, 2015. Exploratory factor analysis and a subsequent confirmatory analysis were conducted using structural equation modeling (SEM) techniques with EQS software.

Four dimensions reflect the latent construct of HSpC in different ways: health, creativity, morality and religiosity.

The measurement of HSpC should be considered relevant to organizations, but not merely because it may be a tool to increase productivity. Ethical climate influenced organizational commitment and hence it enhances performance indicators.

The proposed scale encompasses in a unique instrument some dimensions considered previously in the literature independently.