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There is an increasing interest in the role of business orientations in relation to why organizations vary in e-marketing adoption. Nevertheless, there is still scant evidence on electronic marketing orientation (EMO) within the Small and Medium-sized Enterprise (SMEs) context. This paper aims to shed light on the key factors that affect the degree of e-marketing adoption among SMEs from an organizational orientation perspective.

The study uses a cross-sectional survey of just over 135 European SMEs. The constructs are measured using multi-item indicators to capture the underlying theoretical domains.

The results show that EMO in SMEs is a high order construct that consists of three main components, principally: management beliefs, initiation and implementation activities. The degree of EMO is primarily affected by perceived relative advantage and customer pressure.

The study focuses on for-profit SMEs in developed economies. Future researchers may replicate this study using qualitative methods in different contexts (i.e. developing countries) across several technologies and platforms (i.e. websites, internet of things, mobile applications and social media networks).

This study further extends the literature on EMO and provides answers to the questions related to the variation in SMEs’ e-marketing adoption. Practitioners can apply the EMO construct to evaluate their orientation towards e-marketing, and most importantly, to take the required remedial action to improve their performance in digital commerce.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of service failure severity on brand forgiveness and to investigate the moderating effects of interpersonal attachment styles and thinking styles on the service failure severity–brand forgiveness relationship.

The authors used retrospective experience sampling to collect the data and structural equation modeling (AMOS 24) to analyze 570 responses collected via an online survey.

This study shows that the service failure severity–brand forgiveness relationship is not always negative, as different conditions may amplify or weaken it. Specifically, a secure attachment style and holistic thinking weaken the negative impact of service failure severity on brand forgiveness, whereas an anxious attachment style and analytic thinking negatively amplify the relationship. An avoidance attachment style did not appear to play a role.

This study should help hotels fine-tune their segmentation, targeting and positioning efforts and may also help in implementing more focused recovery strategies.

This study provides insights into the role of psychological traits in amplifying/reducing the negative impact of service failure severity on brand forgiveness, thus showing the importance of developing the psychological profiles of customers beyond demographic profiling. The emotional and cognitive typologies of consumers are key to understanding the dependence of forgiveness on service failure severity.

Using the resource-based view (RBV), the purpose of this paper is to examine the potential mediation effect of customer relationship management capability, branding capability and service innovation capability on the established link between market orientation (MO) and hotel performance. It further investigates the complementarity between these capabilities in relation to hotel performance.

The survey data were collected from 216 UK hotels. AMOS 23 was used to analyse the research data.

The link between MO and hotel performance appears to be indirect via customer relationship capability, branding capability and service innovation capability. The three capabilities also appear to play different complementary roles when affecting hotel performance.

The current study offers hotel managers a ranking of the contribution of individual capabilities to hotel performance. It also helps them to make better investment decisions in developing the right capability combinations to enhance their hotel performance.

The research is based on integrating MO and RBV into a single framework to gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between MO and high-order marketing capabilities and how these factors shape hotel performance.

The purpose of this study is three-fold: first, to examine the extent to which service quality (SQ) affects the three components of emotional brand attachment (EBA) (brand passion, brand affection and self-brand connection); second, to investigate the extent to which these three components influence brand loyalty; and third, to test the mediation effect of the components of EBA on the SQ–loyalty relationship.

Survey data were collected from 355 respondents using an online panel in the UK. Smart PLS2.0 was used to analyze the data.

Three key findings emerge: first, compared to staff behavior, physical environment tends to have a stronger and more significant effect on the three elements of EBA. Second, brand passion and self-brand connection fully mediate the SQ–loyalty relationship, whereas brand affection partially mediates the same relationship. Finally, the SQ–EBA–loyalty relationship is significantly stronger for repeat visitors compared to first-time visitors.

Hotel brands need to design their facilities and décor and develop guest experiences based on symbolic values and deep emotional aspects. Offering employees customer care training and adopting a consumer-centric, relational, storytelling approach are particularly important to inspire and captivate hotels’ customers and to build and shape profound and enduring affective ties between the hotel brand and its customers.

The findings offer new insights through examining the symbolic consumption and emotional aspects of a guest’s hotel experience as mediators to the SQ–loyalty relationship. The findings also add to the growing body of knowledge of the antecedents of EBA through identifying physical environment and staff behavior as key determinants of EBA.

This study aims to: first, examine the effect of interaction orientation (IO) and brand orientation (BO) on marketing capabilities and small and medium enterprises' (SMEs') performance, and second, assess the complementarity effect of IO and BO on marketing capabilities and SMEs' performance.

A model was developed and tested using a survey methodology. Data were collected from 538 SMEs located in Qatar and analysed by structural equation modelling with AMOS.

First, IO affects SMEs' performance only indirectly via marketing capabilities, whereas BO affects SMEs' performance both directly and indirectly. Second, contrary to expectations, the complementarity between IO and BO produced a destructive/suppressive effect, rather than a synergistic effect, on both marketing capabilities and SMEs' performance, reflecting the importance of a trade-off to enhance both marketing capabilities and SMEs' performance.

To the authors' knowledge, this is the first paper to examine the complementary effect of BO and IO on marketing capabilities and performance.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to examine the differential effect of two cognitive (i.e. product experience, outcome focussed) and two emotional experiences (i.e. surprise and immersion) on customers’ cognitive outcomes (i.e. satisfaction, trust and value), and customers’ emotional outcomes (i.e. passion, connection and affection); and second, to test the differential effect of customers’ cognitive and emotional outcomes on switching resistance loyalty (SRL).

Survey data were collected from 843 respondents using an online panel in the UK. Structural equation modelling was employed to analyse the data (AMOS 18.0).

First, cognitive experiences had a more significant effect on customers’ cognitive outcomes compared to their effect on customers’ emotional outcomes. Second, emotional experiences had a more significant effect on customers’ emotional outcomes compared to their effect on customers’ cognitive outcomes. Third, the impact of customers’ emotional outcomes on SRL was not significantly higher compared to that of customers’ cognitive outcomes. Fourth, the indirect effect of cognitive experiences on SRL was significantly higher, compared to that of emotional experiences.

The key contribution of this research stems from examining the differential effect of cognitive and emotional experiences on different consumers’ cognitive and emotional outcomes, thus providing deeper insights into the nature of the relationship between such variables.

This research examined the factors affecting several types of student engagement, namely agentic, behavioral, emotional and cognitive engagement. Specifically, it examined the effect of e-learning system usability on student engagement and explored teacher behavior's possible intervening impact on this relationship.

Data were collected from 418 students studying at different specializations at Omani private academic institutions. This study employed a quantitative methodology and utilized the Smart-PLS for data analyses.

The findings showed that e-learning system usability influenced significantly and positively agentic, behavioral and cognitive engagement. However, the link between e-learning system usability and emotional engagement was not significant. Moreover, teacher behavior mediated the relationship between e-learning system usability and the four types of engagement.

This study improves one’s understanding of how the interaction of e-learning system usability and teacher behavior affects several aspects of student engagement. It also helps higher education administrators and policymakers by exploring the influential effects of e-learning systems usability and teacher behavior on facilitating students' engagement.

This chapter investigates the effect of customer orientation and CRM organization on hotel financial performance. A model of enhancing hotel financial performance through customer satisfaction practices was tested. Customer satisfaction was hypothesized to be a mediator in the relationships between customer orientation and CRM organization and the result being financial performance. The sample consisted of 54 hotels that was made up of three 5-star, fifteen 4-star, and thirty-six 3-star hotels in Ghana. A quantitative deductive approach was employed to gather data using cross-sectional survey, which was analyzed using PLS-SEM to check the validity, reliability and factor loading of the data. The findings revealed that, CRM organization enhances customer satisfaction and financial performance of hotels. Also, customer orientation showed significant positively related to customer satisfaction in the hotels. Surprisingly, the effects of CRM organization and customer orientation on financial performance through customer satisfaction were insignificant. Thus, customer satisfaction failed to mediate the effect of CRM organization and customer orientation on the financial performance of hotels. This suggests that though an effective CRM organization enhances customer satisfaction, it directly affects the financial performance of hotels. The outcomes have useful implications for CRM implementation on hotel financial performance in Ghana.

Limited knowledge exists on the difference in the antecedents and outcomes of relationship quality's cognitive and emotional aspects for e-retailers. This research tests how utilitarian and hedonic shopping values differentially affect “cognitive and emotional” relationship quality components and how the latter differentially affects word-of-mouth and brand evangelism.

Online survey data were collected from 450 Jordanian online shoppers. Structural equation modeling (AMOS 24.0) was employed to analyze the data.

First, e-retailer's informativeness and transaction convenience (i.e. utilitarian values), drive more strongly cognitive than emotional relationship quality, whereas e-retailer's escapism and social presence (i.e. hedonic values) drive more strongly emotional than cognitive relationship quality. Second, emotional relationship quality has a strong significant effect on brand evangelism, whereas cognitive relationship quality's effect is insignificant. Third, there are no statistically significant differences concerning the effect of cognitive and emotional relationship quality on word-of-mouth.

The findings of our research are expected to enhance our understanding of e-retailer relationship quality, its emergence and consequences. They would also provide e-retailers with guidance on how to execute growth strategies by focusing on specific types of brand relationship quality, on the other hand.

This paper aims to examine small- and medium-sized enterprises’ (SMEs) strategic capabilities in terms of their marketing and management capabilities, their sources of environmental uncertainty and their organizational capabilities. Additionally, to what extent the effect differs across two sectors (manufacturing and service).

Partial least squares structural equation modeling was used to conduct multigroup analysis for the two sectors. Data was collected from a sample of 315 Omani SMEs, 166 from manufacturing and 149 from services.

The results show that strategic capabilities have a significant positive effect on customer satisfaction. However, the effect differs between manufacturing and service SMEs; the effect is greater in service than in manufacturing SMEs. Furthermore, the effect of organizational capabilities on customer satisfaction was found to be positive. However, the effect is higher in manufacturing as the difference is statistically significant.

Due to the growing importance of the service and manufacturing SMEs in developing countries and their considerable involvement in economic development, it is important to understand the characteristics of the strategic capabilities in both sectors. Thus, according to the authors’ knowledge, this paper is one of the first to propose a comprehensive framework that measures collectively the direct impact of strategic capabilities, organizational capabilities and environmental uncertainties on SMEs customer satisfaction and effectiveness.