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This study aims to investigate the impact of Internet use on household financial market participation and portfolio choice.

Based on the Chinese General Social Survey 2017 (CGSS2017), this study empirically explores whether Internet use affects household financial market participation in China with an Endogenous Switching Probit model.

The results show that households using the Internet are more likely to invest in financial markets. Further research shows that households with high Internet use are significantly more likely to participate in financial markets than households with low Internet use. From the perspective of household portfolio choice, Internet use has a certain role in increasing the probability of portfolio diversification. However, among households that have invested in financial markets, those with a high-frequency use of the Internet do not show an impact on portfolio diversification.

This study complements existing research about the impact of Internet use or not on household financial market decisions and portfolio choice, expands the knowledge on the household financial market choice from the respective of the degree of Internet use.

This study aims to examine the influence of procedural capabilities for public procurement participation on small and medium enterprises’ (SMEs) sales performance in Tanzania. Also, the study establishes the interaction effect of internet marketing capabilities on the relationship between procedural capabilities and sales performance.

The authors conducted confirmatory factor analysis and PROCESS macro for simple interaction analysis to analyse cross-sectional data that were obtained through questionnaire from surveyed SMEs’ managers. The included SMEs are those that are involved in supplying goods, services and works to public entities in Dodoma, Tanzania.

The findings reveal that procedural capabilities for participation in public procurement enhance SMEs to improve sales performance. Also, there is a significant and positive relationship between internet marketing capabilities and sales performance. Lastly, internet marketing capabilities strengthen the relationship between procedural capabilities and sales performance.

This study is a wake-up call to SMEs to better comprehend public procurement procedures and e-business practices to use the available public procurement opportunities. It is argued that SMEs should invest in technology to market their businesses through social media and online platforms. According to the study, SMEs may benefit from improving their sales performance by fully utilising their internet marketing capabilities and participating in public procurement opportunities.

This study adds to the two main streams of literature that emphasise harnessing public procurement opportunities for SMEs (through public procurement participation) and leveraging internet marketing capabilities for SMEs to improve their sales performance.

As internet banking service marketing platforms continue to advance, customers exhibit distinct behaviors. Given the extensive array of options and minimal barriers to switching to competitors, the concept of customer churn behavior has emerged as a subject of considerable debate. This study aims to delineate the scope of feature optimization methods for elucidating customer churn behavior within the context of internet banking service marketing. To achieve this goal, the author aims to predict the attrition and migration of customers who use internet banking services using tree-based classifiers.

The author used various feature optimization methods in tree-based classifiers to predict customer churn behavior using transaction data from customers who use internet banking services. First, the authors conducted feature reduction to eliminate ineffective features and project the data set onto a lower-dimensional space. Next, the author used Recursive Feature Elimination with Cross-Validation (RFECV) to extract the most practical features. Then, the author applied feature importance to assign a score to each input feature. Following this, the author selected C5.0 Decision Tree, Random Forest, XGBoost, AdaBoost, CatBoost and LightGBM as the six tree-based classifier structures.

This study acclaimed that transaction data is a reliable resource for elucidating customer churn behavior within the context of internet banking service marketing. Experimental findings highlight the operational benefits and enhanced customer retention afforded by implementing feature optimization and leveraging a variety of tree-based classifiers. The results indicate the significance of feature reduction, feature selection and feature importance as the three feature optimization methods in comprehending customer churn prediction. This study demonstrated that feature optimization can improve this prediction by increasing the accuracy and precision of tree-based classifiers and decreasing their error rates.

This research aims to enhance the understanding of customer behavior on internet banking service platforms by predicting churn intentions. This study demonstrates how feature optimization methods influence customer churn prediction performance. This approach included feature reduction, feature selection and assessing feature importance to optimize transaction data analysis. Additionally, the author performed feature optimization within tree-based classifiers to improve performance. The novelty of this approach lies in combining feature optimization methods with tree-based classifiers to effectively capture and articulate customer churn experience in internet banking service marketing.

Several businesses have begun to use memes as part of social media marketing. Although memes have been independently explored through various theories, their use in social media marketing has not yet been explored. This study analyzes theories used to study memes and suggests popular marketing theories to do the same for memes in social media marketing.

This study employed a mixed methodology. We used the Scopus database and the SPAR-4 protocol to gather, organize, and evaluate the literature. A bibliometric analysis was performed to understand the themes explored in the literature. Manual content analysis was performed to identify the theories used to elucidate study memes.

We profiled meme research through a bibliometric analysis. Relevance theory, Rhetoric theory, Theories of humor, Evolutionary theory, and the theory of conceptual blending are the most frequently used theories in meme literature. Furthermore, we found that the marketing theories used to study memes are limited.

The findings of this study will benefit academia, marketers, and social media managers by offering a comprehensive picture of theories used in meme research. It also suggests new avenues for conducting future research on memes based on identified theories.

This is one of the first known studies to employ both bibliometric and content analyses to review theories in meme literature. Furthermore, we suggest marketing theories and research questions to explain meme marketing.

The growth of social media globally has led to brands adopting memes as a tool for communication. They have influenced digital culture, politics and marketing. This study aims to highlight the research gap in meme literature by profiling and science mapping.

This study has performed a bibliometric analysis of research papers on memes from the Scopus database. The authors profiled the literature and found the most relevant journal, author and document. Science mapping techniques such as thematic analysis, thematic evolution and co-citation of papers with content analysis were used.

Profiling of literature revealed that the most relevant journal, based on a number of papers and citations, is New Media and Society. The top researcher on memes is Shiffman L (seven papers), and the most cited author is Menczer F (717 citations). The paper titled “Towards A Unified Science of Cultural Evolution” has the highest number of citations (402). Thematic mapping revealed “Social Movements” and “Twitter” are the currently trending themes. The co-citation analysis clustered the literature into two. The first cluster elucidates the theoretical underpinnings of memes, while the second cluster explicates the various contexts in which memes are studied.

This study will be vital to researchers hoping to study internet memes by providing directions for future research. Furthermore, the insights from this study will enable social media managers to use memes effectively.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study seems to be the first to use bibliometric analysis to profile and map meme literature. This study provides a new perspective for meme researchers to explore memes and suggests marketers implement novel meme-based strategies in their marketing communications.

This paper aims to conduct research to examine the impact of Internet adoption on the productivity of firms in non-urban China.

The study investigates the impact of Internet adoption on firms' productivity in non-urban China. More specifically, the authors conduct a comprehensive and rigorous study while addressing concerns related to firm-level endogeneity by utilizing firm-level panel data. Information on firms in non-urban areas is collected from China's Annual Surveys of Industrial Firm data. For robustness, the authors implement the instrumental variables approach and propensity score matching estimations to strengthen the evidence for suggestive causal inference. Furthermore, the authors also examine the mechanisms and group heterogeneity.

Evidence indicate that the adoption of Internet technology positively impacts the total factor productivity (TFP) of firms in non-urban areas. According to the heterogeneity analysis, the marginal effect of Internet adoption is more significant and pronounced for labor-intensive, private and small-scale manufacturing firms. Moreover, additional evidence suggest that Internet adoption is beneficial for non-urban firms in expanding their business and enlarging their market. It has also been found that the positive effect of Internet adoption on firms' TFP is amplified by expanding public infrastructure.

The current study supports that the informatization strategy benefits non-urban firms and promotes rural revitalization. The findings suggest the possibility of firms borrowing market size from the closest cities and supporting the ongoing policies of investing in broadband infrastructure to narrow the urban-rural digital gap in China.

The purpose of this study is to examine the variables affecting college students’ consumption behaviour in the context of the internet celebrity economy and the We Media environment.

In this study, five independent variables − perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, attitude, We Media environment and internet celebrity marketing, as well as one mediating variable, consumption intention, are used to analyse college students’ consumption behaviour.

This study concluded that all five independent variables have positive relationships with the consumption intention and that the consumption intention also has a positive relationship with the consumption behaviour.

This study expanded the technology acceptance model and theory of planned behaviour model, which could provide insights for future research on consumption intention and behaviour. In addition, this study gives guidance for businesses considering to join this new industry in the internet celebrity economy.

As a “unicorn” devoted to the rural market, Huitongda has gone through a major evolution since its establish-ment in 2010 from a rural home appliance distributor, a supply chain platform, an O2O service platform to an industry Internet platform of the rural e-commerce ecosystem, based on its deep understanding of the pain points in the rural market and operational experiences. After 2017, as the platform scaled with more vendors, Huitongda was no longer satisfied with selling a single product from urban to rural areas, but was committed to promoting the two-way flow of diverse commodities between urban and rural areas. It also set out to promote employment by entering the rural human resource market, expanding the single-industry O2O service platform to a complete multi-industry ecosystem. In 2018, with a service network covering over 17,000 townships across 20 Chinese provinces, Huitongda's sales reached RMB 35 billion yuan, enabling over 500,000 rural dwellers to start their own businesses or to find employment.

However, the depth, breadth and complexity of the rural industry Internet gradually multiplied, as more member stores joined the business ecosystem with more valuable commodities and services. As a rural industry Internet network owner, how could Huitongda better tap into digitalization in order to support its industry Internet business model and the huge network? How can it further widen the network boundaries to drive more business innovations and maximize network value?

The smart destination can be defined as a destination that deploys information communications technologies (ICTs) and other technological tools for interactive/participative engagement with prospective visitors. The rationale is to enhance the residents' quality of life as well as the tourists' experiences of the destinations they visit. This chapter discusses about digitization strategies and on marketing superstructures affecting destinations. It advances a conceptual framework through the development of an Attracting, Stay, and Return (ASR) Model that is suitable for smart destinations. It relies on descriptive case studies to conceptualize smart tourism destinations. This contribution reiterates the importance of having a well-designed website that presents appropriate content to entice the prospective travelers' curiosity about destinations. It offers valuable insights and advances new knowledge on smart marketing approaches that are intended to increase the destination management organizations' outreach with tourists at each stage of the ASR Model.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an integrative picture of the state of the art of the literature on digitalisation of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) as an enabler for their internationalisation process and as a comprehensive view of the specific domains impacted by digital technologies as well as their repercussions on the international outreach.

A systematic review which leverages a descriptive analysis of extant literature and an axial coding technique has been conducted to shed light on the current knowledge and to identify primary research areas and future research lines.

The research indicates that digitalisation impacts the internationalisation of SMEs in three specific domains: (1) internationalisation through the adoption of information and communication technologies (ICT) technologies and e-commerce platforms; (2) international expansion through the digitalisation of value chain activities and (3) international outreach through knowledge acquisition on digital platforms.

The value of this study is threefold. First, the authors attempt to systematically review the literature on SMEs digitalisation and internationalisation and provide a holistic perspective on the intertwining of these two research streams. Second, the authors propose a novel conceptualisation on the dimensions of SMEs digitalisation as enablers to internationalisation. Third, the authors put forward promising future lines of research.

1. Digitalisation represents a pivotal strategy that allows companies to build new strategic capabilities and is a propeller for SMEs internationalisation.

2. Through e-commerce, SMEs could compete at the same level of multinational companies but enduring lower costs of expansion.

3. Digital platforms allow SMEs to enhance the learning processes about international markets through an immediate access to relevant information.

4. Digital entrepreneurship has enabled SMEs to develop new configurations of value chain activities, evolving their business model or reaching new markets.

5. SMEs are changing the “business as usual” paradigm offering digital tools to build modular architectures that are scalable and agile in their evolution ability.

Digitalisation represents a pivotal strategy that allows companies to build new strategic capabilities and is a propeller for SMEs internationalisation.

Through e-commerce, SMEs could compete at the same level of multinational companies but enduring lower costs of expansion.

Digital platforms allow SMEs to enhance the learning processes about international markets through an immediate access to relevant information.

Digital entrepreneurship has enabled SMEs to develop new configurations of value chain activities, evolving their business model or reaching new markets.

SMEs are changing the “business as usual” paradigm offering digital tools to build modular architectures that are scalable and agile in their evolution ability.