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This paper aims to answer questions pertinent to whether or not services provided by smart hotels are really what customers are looking for, as well as to ascertain what are some unintended experiences guests may encounter. In essence, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first in the field to acknowledge the paradox of smart service.

This inquiry adopts a qualitative approach with data-driven from online customer reviews and semistructured interviews. Thematic analysis was undertaken to interpret review comments.

Results point to a new phenomenon, which is coined as the smartness paradox. In particular, customers on one hand enjoy an array of smart-infused experiences that jointly offer patrons a sense of a futuristic lifestyle. On the other hand, smart devices superimpose a number of hindrances that bring guests dismay and annoyance.

This investigation brings smart service failure to the fore to highlight several key failure themes that could jeopardize the entire operation with debased customers’ satisfaction and loyalty inclination.

The smartness-paradox framework used in the present inquiry entails both approach and avoidance consequences customers enact depending on their smart experiences.

This study aims to investigate the effect of the virtual spokesperson type on the consumers' preference for new products. To meet the consumer needs of Generation Z, virtual spokespeople have become new assistants in brand marketing. However, how virtual spokespersons drive consumer preference for new products is minimally understood.

This research conducts three experiments to investigate the influence of virtual spokesperson type on consumers' preference for new products.

The research shows that, for radically new products, competent virtual spokespersons improve consumers' perception of self-efficacy and thus consumers' preference; for incrementally new products, warm virtual spokespersons improve consumers' perception of social connection and thus consumers' willingness to buy.

This study broadens research on brand spokespersons and virtual spokespersons. This research also enriches and expands research on the consideration of new product types in brand spokespersons.

The physical filmmaking landscape has been transformed by the emergence of digital platforms that foster interaction and dialogue. The accessibility and affordability of mobile production tools have empowered anyone with a mobile phone to become a media content creator. Accordingly, this paper aims to present a multi-method approach for creating phygital projects that involve people as active participants rather than mere subjects who collaborate with the researchers to tell their stories.

Research participants can embrace diverse roles, serving as co-researchers, content creators, curators and collaborators. The authors use various engagement strategies with the research participants, who are often marginalized or underrepresented, to encourage their participation and give them agency and creative control. Thus, we also use a participatory action research approach to help advocate for the participants’ facial equality concerns.

Collaborative videography embraces the mosaic of voices expressing intricate social issues. In this project, research participants with “facial differences” explain their experiences in facing society.

By experimenting with participatory frameworks and combining physical interactions (such as in-person meetings) with digital platforms like Zoom and social media, the authors suggest a multi-method approach that honors the authentic stories of the research participants, effectively engages the audience and explains how phygital research methodologies can be used in interpretive consumer research, particularly in co-creating films that capture strong visuals.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is experiencing growth and prosperity worldwide because of its convenience and other benefits. However, AI faces challenges related to consumer resistance. Thus, drawing on the user resistance theory, this study explores factors that influence consumers’ resistance to AI and suggests ways to mitigate this negative influence.

This study tested four hypotheses across four studies by conducting lab experiments. Study 1 used a questionnaire to verify the hypothesis that AI’s “substitute” image leads to consumer resistance to AI; Study 2 focused on the role of perceived threat as an underlying driver of resistance to AI. Studies 3–4 provided process evidence by the way of a measured moderator, testing whether AI with servant communication style and literal language style is resisted less.

This study showed that AI’s “substitute” image increased users' resistance to AI. This occurs because the substitute image increases consumers’ perceived threat. The study also found that using servant communication and literal language styles in the interaction between AI and consumers can mitigate the negative effects of AI-substituted images.

This study reveals the mechanism of action between AI image and consumers’ resistance and sheds light on how to choose appropriate image and expression styles for AI products, which is important for lowering consumer resistance to AI.

The purpose of this study is to understand how and why consumers engage in market-shaping activities on behalf of firms.

This study uses a combination of archival, netnographic and interview methods to examine how consumers responded to the entry of Tesla into the U.S. automotive market.

Consumers are driven to engage in supportive institutional work by the culturally resonant ideologies embodied in Tesla’s strategic orientation. This work takes both discursive and practical forms and sees consumers adopting responsibilities typically associated with other actors, including activists and sales professionals.

In developing an account of an understudied phenomenon – consumers’ firm-supportive market shaping – this research extends theorization around institutional work and cultural branding.

This study aims to empirically investigate the pathway to value co-creation intentions through social media marketing, social support and COVID-19 perception in the tourism context with a specific focus on Couchsurfing community.

A survey was conducted from foreign and domestic travellers who used Couchsurfing platform for their recent travel, and were approached using an online survey (n = 229) and structural equation modelling used for hypothesis testing.

The findings indicate that value co-creation intentions follow a pathway through social media marketing and social support. Moreover, Couchsurfing community social support mechanisms play a crucial role in value co-creation intentions.

This study significantly contributes by taking Couchsurfing as a social networking application that provides both informational and functional support to the hardcore and active tourism and hospitality community.

Fashion retailers have increasingly adopted consumer-facing in-store technology (CFIT) to enhance the customer experience/service provision. This paper aims to explore managerial experiences and sociotechnical implications of introducing these technologies into organizational working processes.

This study draws on interpretive analysis of semi-structured interviews with 74 senior fashion retail industry practitioners, technology providers and consultants to understand managerial perspectives on technological innovation issues.

Endogenous and exogenous factors act as drivers or barriers to CFIT adoption and are influenced by strategic and tactical motives. Key issues that retail managers encounter include challenges in aligning technology implementation with retailer brand image to manage risk and reputation, with additional complexity arising from different internal and/or external actors involved, as well as required levels of change in organizational structure.

This study contributes an empirically derived framework identifying reasons for – and the drivers/barriers influencing – fashion retailers' CFIT adoption, classifying three broad approaches to CFIT adoption: embedded, transformative and opportunistic.

This study aims to investigate how art events can enrich novice visitors by transforming their practices.

This research uses an interpretive case study of the art exhibition “1/1/1/1/1” in the Oppenheim gallery in Wroclaw. It draws on multiple sources of evidence, namely, novice visitors’ interviews, observation including photo studies and content analysis of art-makers’ mediation sources. This study is an example of contextual theorizing from case studies and participatory action research with researchers as change agents.

The evidence highlights that aesthetic values and experiences are contextual to practices and are transformable into other values. The findings illustrate the role of practice theory in studying how art-makers inspire the transformation of practices, including values driving the latter.

The findings provide implications for transformations of co-creating contextual values in contemporary visual art consumption and customer experience management.

Practical implications to arts organizations are also provided regarding cultural mediation conducted by art-makers. Exhibition makers should explain the meanings of the particularly visible artefacts to allow visitors to develop a congruent understanding of the meanings. The explanations should not provide ready answers or solutions to the problem art-makers suggest to rethink.

The social implication of our findings is that stakeholders in artistic ventures may undertake adequate, qualified and convergent actions to maintain or transform the defined interactive practices between them in co-creating contextual aesthetic values.

The study provides new insights into co-creating values in practices in the domain of contemporary art exhibitions by bringing the practice theory together with an audience enrichment category, thus illustrating how novice visitors get enriched by transforming their practices led by contextual values of “liking” and “understanding”.