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The purpose of this paper is to help develop the understanding of the nature of coopetition (collaboration as well as competition) and is set in the context of a Taekwondo organisation.

Interviews were undertaken with 25 instructors in various clubs within New Zealand’s “International Taekwondo” (ITKD) together with 25 students and supplemented with triangulation against secondary data such as websites and media reports.

The findings suggest that coopetition can be seen from various perspectives in order that the organisation as a whole benefits. Specifically, while the ITKD is a not-for-profit firm, individual clubs may compete for revenue from students joining them as opposed to rival clubs. However, clubs collaborate in various way such as once registered, students can train free at rival clubs and resources are to some extent pooled so the ITKD as a whole benefits, e.g. sending competitors overseas and bringing in senior people to undertake a promotion grading.

The contribution is to offer insights into the nature of coopetition at the sports marketing/entrepreneurship interface by suggesting that the potential paradox of collaboration and competition can be explained by considering the benefits to an overall organisation as opposed to individual clubs within it.

In the COVID-19 pandemic, consumers increasingly opt for, or are forced to, use home delivery services. The authors study retailers' decisions regarding “delivery mode”, which is about outsourcing (vs. insourcing) the delivery service to a traditional delivery company or an unbranded carrier and its effects on consumers' perceived overall quality, perceived hygienic quality, and subsequently, willingness to stay with the firm beyond the pandemic.

A pre-test, an experiment and a post-test were conducted with participants from the UK (Total N = 380).

The results of this study show that (1) in a pandemic, perceived hygienic quality overshadows perceived service quality as a key determinant of consumers' choices, and (2) while consumers have a relatively negative view of the hygienic level of unbranded carriers, they do not differentiate between traditional delivery carriers and retailer-branded carriers. Thus, they are equally interested in using the services of the latter ones.

This study shows that during a health crisis, consumers change their hierarchy of motivations to reflect the new protection motivations. The authors usher perceived hygienic quality as a variable that should be seriously considered as both a tactical and a strategic variable affecting the attractiveness of alternative home delivery methods and consumers' intentions to continue using them after the pandemic.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the reasons that tourists capture images of their trips on cameras or camcorders.

Over a period of approximately five years, the authors observed, photographed and interviewed tourists taking photos or videos in diverse international locations. Upon returning home, informants e‐mailed their trip photos together with descriptions of what the images meant and what they had done with them when at home. These data were archived and interpreted in line with the central research questions.

Why does almost every tourist carry a camera or camcorder? What are they doing making these images? And what do they do with them once they return home? The accompanying video conveys most of the findings, while the manuscript elaborates on certain theoretical points and provides contextualizing and supportive evidence from the literatures dealing with tourism and photography.

The paper suggests that the images form part of an identity project, serving as a means of conveying internal tales to the self rather than as a means of, beyond the immediate family, communicating with others. The images act as tools for displacing meanings that are too fragile and tenuous to be contained in the fragile present as Grant McCracken describes more generally with regard to tying hopes and dreams to places and times of the past and future.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the process of interaction with the Muslim customers in developing new Islamic financial services in a secular and non-Muslim majority emerging country, India.

Data were collected using a multiple case study methodology in which the service managers of 23 financial service firms and their customers were interviewed. A total of 46 managers and 31 Muslim customers provided data for this paper.

A service firm must interact with its Muslim customers to obtain key input and information for developing new Islamic financial services, particularly in a Muslim minority country. The Muslim customers are willing to work with the financial service firms for the purpose of new service development and are a good source of information for new Islamic financial services.

The paper has implications for the financial service firms interested in achieving growth and prosperity by developing and marketing new services to the growing population of Muslim customers in the emerging markets, particularly India.

The issue of customer interaction in new service development is a key concept in the extant literature, yet no study has explored this concept for the Islamic banking and financial products in a non-Muslim majority emerging market. This is the first paper that has applied the customer interaction in new service development theory to the interaction process of Muslim customers in a non-Muslim majority country and, thus, addressed a worthwhile research gap.

This paper aims to investigate how the emerging blockchain technology can tackle dark side or dysfunctional effects at different stages of the interorganizational relationship life cycle. The rationale for this study stems from the somewhat paradoxical causes of dysfunctional effects. In particular, concepts such as trust and cooperation that typically result in positive relationship outcomes may also lead to negative effects under certain conditions. This contradiction creates a governance headache for organizations in their quest for initiating, developing, maintaining and enhancing efficient interorganizational relationships.

The study draws upon multiple organizational theories (agency, signaling, transaction cost, population ecology, institutional) and develops a conceptual understanding of how blockchain can serve as a safeguard for tackling dark side effects in interorganizational relationships. Primarily, the paper outlines a set of research propositions that provides a platform for developing an actionable managerial decision framework. In addition, the authors conduct an automated textual analysis of qualitative blockchain expert opinion using the ALCESTE software and uncover salient themes about blockchain governance.

The blockchain ledger distributes trust among participants and keeps dark side effects at bay. Hence, blockchain can transform conventional approaches for handling dark side effects into value creating activities. The results of an automated textual analysis on a corpus of expert opinions provides preliminary support for several aspects of blockchain governance. Furthermore, the study articulates a decision framework that managers can use for optimal relationship governance and identifies several areas for future research.

This paper is conceptual in nature and draws upon multiple theoretical perspectives to outline a set of research propositions. Thus, lack of empirical testing is a current limitation. However, the findings from an automated textual analysis of expert opinions provide exploratory but encouraging support for the power of blockchain to tackle dark side effects.

Managers can deploy blockchain creatively while selecting interorganizational relationship partners. For example, provenance issues in organizations’ supply chains can be efficiently managed using blockchain. Likewise, organizations may also create efficient learning around blockchain to gain efficiencies in relationship management.

Conventional approaches for managing dark side effects in interorganizational relationships rely mainly on ex post governance strategies. By contrast, this paper supplements the extant approach by discussing ex ante strategies that can be deployed at different stages of the interorganizational relationship cycle, e.g. initiation, maintenance/development and termination to better address dark side effects.

The present study seeks to investigate how individual and organisational consumption is affected when dealing with small and medium‐sized enterprise (SME) organisations from emerging economies.

Using ethnographic in‐depth interviews, data were collected from 20 Indian UK‐based “buyers” who have either previously bought or are currently buying from organisations based in India. Investigates the perceptions surrounding challenges and/or benefits held by these 20 SMEs. Identified areas such as inter‐cultural blending, community support, country‐of‐origin effects, generational shifts and finally, attitudes towards quality, price, consistency, and branding.

Findings indicate that the respondents did not vary at all on their collective perceptions about buying from emerging economies, specifically, India. The over‐riding issue that was highlighted many times over was one of “trust in the relationship” between buyer and seller. Findings also suggest the need to take a holistic view on the whole arena of “marketing paradigms for emerging economies”. Despite a climate of increased globalization, an intensification of international contact of businesses, increased travel of executives, and an enlarged overseas education by Indians, there still seems to be a vast gap between the perceptions that are held by India‐based executives and their UK counterparts (high cultural distance).

Conclusions outline information that may potentially be useful to Indian suppliers for use as a reference guideline when entering relationships with UK‐based customers, of either a similar or indeed dissimilar cultural background.

Adds to existing knowledge of how individual and organisational consumption is affected when dealing with SME organisations from emerging economies.

This study aims to summarize the important contextual influences East Asian philosophy may have on marketing strategy and consumerism.

A qualitative approach is used to deconstruct (1) the literature on marketing as a contextual discipline, (2) East Asian philosophical underpinnings and their personal and institutional manifestations in East Asian marketing contexts, and (3) the implications for non-East Asian marketers. This essay includes a brief introduction to the manuscripts in this special issue.

Ancient philosophical wisdom shared by East Asian societies can shed light on how marketing activities and consumer behavior intertwine within East Asia and beyond. Three ancient philosophies (i.e. Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism) heavily influence East Asian societies through personal and institutional-level cultural manifestations in marketing contexts.

Although the three discussed East Asian philosophical schools are not exhaustive, they lay a foundation for future discussions about how alternative marketing-related theories and frameworks may complement ones grounded in western historical and cultural contexts.

This essay initiates an overdue academic discussion about relying on non-western historical and cultural contexts to globalize the marketing discipline further.

This study aims to investigate a neglected phenomenon, conceptualized as “brand-bullying.” The study aims at defining the brand bullying phenomena with adolescents who are actively experiencing brand bullying. Potential impacts of brand bullying experience on adult consumption behaviors are also investigated.

This paper provides a literature review of brand bullying and uses two qualitative analyses with adolescent and adult consumers through face-to-face interviews.

Study-1 found five different styles of brand bullying behavior with adolescents. Study-2’s findings revealed four distinct styles of brand bullying coping behaviors in adulthood. Study-2 also found that brand-bullying’s negative effects could continue after the bullying process is long over and has the potential to cause consumer brand hate (in the form of brand avoidance and disgust) and can cause conspicuous consumption patterns in adulthood in the future. The study further reports that neither the economically unfortunate nor the wealthy are immune to brand bullying.

This is the first study to investigate the brand bullying concept and its expression among adolescents, as well as its impact on adult consumption behaviors. The study is among the first to report the negative impact of brand bullying on adult consumer behaviors and consumption patterns in adulthood from a consumer psychology perspective.

The financial technology (FinTech) era has brought a revolutionary change in the financial sector’s customer experiences at the national and global levels. The importance of artificial intelligence (AI) in the context of FinTech services for enriching customer experiences has become a new norm in this modern era of technological advancement. So, it becomes crucial to understand the customer’s perspective. The current research ranks the factors and sub-factors influencing customers’ perceptions of AI-based FinTech services.

The sample size for this study was decided to be 970 respondents from four Indian cities: Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai. The Fuzzy-AHP technique was used to identify the primary factors and sub-factors influencing customers’ experiences with AI-enabled finance services. The factors considered in the study were service quality, trust commitment, personalization, perceived convenience, relationship commitment, perceived sacrifice, subjective norms, perceived usefulness, attitude and vulnerability. The current research is both empirical and descriptive.

The study’s three top factors are service quality, perceived usefulness and perceived convenience, all of which have a significant impact on customers’ experience with AI-enabled FinTech services discussing sub-criteria three primary criteria for customers’ experience for FinTech services include: “Using FinTech would increase my effectiveness in managing a portfolio (A2)”, “My peer groups and friends have an impact on using FinTech services (SN3)” and “Using FinTech would increase my efficacy in administering portfolio (PU2)”.

The current study is limited to four Indian cities, with 10 factors to understand customers’ preferences in FinTech. Further research can focus on other dimensions like perceived ease of use, familiarity, etc. Future studies can have a broader view of different geographical locations and consider new tech to understand customer perceptions better.

The study’s findings will significantly assist businesses in determining the primary aspects influencing customers’ experiences with AI-enabled financial services. As a result, they will develop strategies and policies to entice clients to use AI-powered FinTech services.

Existing AI research investigated several vital topics in the context of FinTech services. On the other hand, the current study ranked the criteria in understanding customer experiences. The research will substantially assist marketers, business houses, academicians and practitioners in understanding essential facets influencing customer experience and contribute significantly to the literature.