Search results

This study aims to provide an in-depth understanding of investors’ cognition and decision-making process with regard to internet financial products. The objective is to effectively guide users’ rational investments.

First, based on grounded theory, this study develops a tool for measuring users’ perceived value (PV) of internet financial products via in-depth interviews. Then, after comprehensively considering users’ environmental, individual and psychological characteristics, this study proposes a theoretical model of internet financial product investment decisions based on the PV of users. Finally, an empirical study is conducted on 693 valid sample data from e-commerce and online banking financial platforms.

The empirical results suggest that network externalities influence users’ financial behavior by herding (HE) (imitating others and discounting their own information) and PV. PV and HE are key factors in users’ investment decisions with regard to internet financial products. Moreover, users’ self-efficacy (SE) and platform type play moderate roles in the influence mechanism.

The research conclusions provide valuable references for designing financial products and establishing regulatory rules, which will help the internet financial industry to grow soundly and innovatively.

This study uncovers the mediating effect of HE and PV between network externalities and users’ investment intentions in the context of internet financial products. In addition, the moderating effect of users’ SE and platform types is revealed.

Extending the elaboration likelihood model (ELM), this study investigates the impact of social media influencers (SMI) on consumer well-being (CW) as well as the influence of CW on purchase intention.

A between-subjects experiment (macro- vs mega-influencer) was conducted to assess the proposed hypotheses. A total of 190 consumers participated in the experiment, and SmartPLS 3.3 was used for multigroup analyses.

Overall, argument quality (AQ), source's credibility (SC) and influencer's kindness positively predict CW, and CW predicts purchase intention. It was also found that SC is more important when information comes from a mega-influencer, whilst kindness is essential for a macro-influencer.

The results of this study imply that CW should be an essential component of influencer marketing strategy. Marketing managers should hire credible and kind influencers who can produce quality arguments. Additionally, the selection of SMI (macro- vs mega-influencer) should be aligned with the marketing objective and type of persuasion required.

This is one of the early attempts to extend ELM by introducing influencer kindness as a peripheral cue. Moreover, the study offers novelty by examining the effects of influencer characteristics (AQ, SC and kindness) on CW and comparing these effects across macro- and mega-influencers.

藉著擴展詳儘可能性模型, 本研究擬探討網絡紅人對消費者福祉的影響, 以及消費者福祉對購買意圖的影響。

研究人員進行被試間實驗 (中網紅對大型網紅) , 以對提出的假設進行評價。190名消費者參與實驗, 研究人員使用SmartPLS 3.3 進行多群組分析。

總的來說, 論點品質、來源可信度和網紅的仁慈體貼, 均能積極預測消費者福祉, 而消費者福祉亦可預測購買意圖。研究人員亦發現, 若資訊是來自大型網紅的話, 來源可信度則更形重要, 而對中網紅來說, 仁慈體貼則是不可或缺的。

研究結果暗示, 消費者福祉應是網紅市場營銷戰略的基本要素。市場經理應僱用可靠、仁慈體貼、並能提出優質論點的網紅。而且, 網絡紅人 (中網紅對大型網紅) 的挑選, 必須與營銷目標和說服的種類互相協調。

本研究為早期的嘗試, 利用引進網絡紅人的仁慈體貼作為周邊線索, 來擴展詳儘可能性模型。另外, 本研究探討網絡紅人的特徵 (論點品質、來源可信度和仁慈體貼) 會如何影響消費者福祉; 研究人員亦跨中網紅和大型網紅, 對這些影響進行比較, 就此而言, 本研究提供了創新的研究意念。

The study aims to analyze the relationship between tourists' satisfaction and their sense of belonging in a specific cultural destination by also investigating the moderating role of their on-site involvement, both offline (on-site activities at the destination) and online (social media activities). A further objective lies in exploring the relationship between tourists' sense of belonging and their adoption of environmentally responsible behavior while at the destination. Finally, the paper attempts to determine whether said behavior can predict tourists' pro-environmental behavior and recommendation intention.

To reach these objectives, a survey and a structural equation model, based on a sample of 647 visitors of an important world Heritage site UNESCO (i.e. Urbino), have been adopted.

Findings reveal a positive influence of sense of belonging on satisfaction and environmentally responsible behavior, which, in turn, influences pro-environmental behavior and Recommendation intention, thus triggering a virtuous process in the tourists' formation as responsible and loyal travelers. Moreover, results underline how the relationship between satisfaction and sense of belonging is significantly strengthened when tourists' on-site activity involvement increases. Conversely, the moderating role of social media involvement is not supported.

The present study offers important implications for different actors in the tourism sector, such as policy makers, destination marketing organizations (DMOs) and tourism operators.

The present study explores the role of social media involvement, specifically during the tourist's holiday.

This study enriches the empirical evidence in the cultural tourism through an analysis focused on the tourists' perspective, especially by investigating the relationship between satisfaction and emotional constructs (i.e. sense of belonging) that are able to bring environmental and loyalty benefits to the destination. Moreover, although existing research has highlighted the positive influence of the tourists' involvement on their experience, there is a paucity of studies jointly analyzing the on-site and online activities in the sustainability field.

The Chinese market represents an increasingly popular destination for wine firms and recent opportunities derive from the growth of e-commerce. The aim of this paper is to understand the impact of digital platforms on wine firms' internationalisation in China by adopting the service ecosystems approach.

The authors carried out a case study of Italian premium wine firms from the Valpolicella area by collecting 27 semi-structured interviews with key informants that operate at the micro-, meso- and macro-levels of the internationalisation ecosystem. Italian wine firms were selected as the focus of the analysis, given the recent sales growth of their products in the Chinese market.

Results show that digital platforms hold a key role in the wine firms' internationalisation in China, intervening with resource integration mechanisms, alignment to the cultural context and mediating firms' digital presence in the market. The platformisation dynamics also reveal the existence of enablers and constraints in the firm internationalisation through digital platforms.

The authors aim to contribute to the marketing literature by analysing how digital platforms influence the wine firms' internationalisation in China through an original perspective, i.e. the service ecosystems lens.

The study adopts the service ecosystems approach to understand the internationalisation of wine firms in the Chinese market through digital platforms.

The study investigated the effect of marketing communications’ dimensions on brand loyalty in the banking sector.

The study adopted the quantitative research approach which relied on the explanatory design due to the nature of the hypotheses tested. The convenience sampling technique was used to pull 377 customers of a branch of a commercial bank in Ghana. Furthermore, the PLS-SEM technique was deployed to assess the measurement model and test the research hypotheses.

Results show that the following dimensions of marketing communications are significant predictors of brand loyalty: direct marketing, public relations and sales promotion. The exception is advertising, which had an inverse relation with brand loyalty.

The results provide significant pointers to banks’ management that they should deploy a variety of marketing communication channels other than intensive advertising to reach and persuade customers.

The study illustrates the latest effort to extensively provide insights into how commercial banks could leverage marketing communication tools to sustain loyalty in an emerging economy that is intensively competitive.

This study examines the role of technology as a driver of sustainable tourism perceptions among Generation Z.

The work considers the perspective of locals in Pakistan and uses a multi-method, multiphase embedded research design approach.

The research findings demonstrated that technology has a positive correlation with the environmental, socio-cultural and economic dimensions of sustainable tourism perception among Generation Z. Therefore, technology could be considered a dimension of sustainable tourism perception for locals, but perceptions differ significantly depending on the size of the city of the participant. The results of the experimental design phase that utilized picture stimuli demonstrated a linear relationship between technology and sustainability and enhanced their definition and implementation for developing countries.

This research diverges from most past research on these topics by focusing on Generation Z, for whom digital media and technology play a crucial role and for whom these technologies are positively correlated with sustainability and its overall perception. Implications for policies and practices for emerging country governments are provided.

This study aims to focus on a key unanswered question about how digitalization and the knowledge processes it enables affect firms’ strategies in the international arena.

The authors conduct a systematic literature review of relevant theoretical and empirical studies covering over 20 years of research (from 2000 to 2023) and including 73 journal papers.

This review allows us to highlight a relationship between firms’ international strategies and the knowledge processes enabled by applying digital technologies. Specifically, the authors discuss the characteristics of patterns of knowledge flows and knowledge processes (their origin, the type of knowledge they carry on and their directionality) as determinants for the emergence of diverse international strategies embraced by single firms or by populations of firms within ecosystems, networks, global value chains or alliances.

Despite digital technologies constituting important antecedents and critical factors for the internationalization process, and international businesses in general, and operating cross borders implies the enactment of highly knowledge-intensive processes, current literature still fails to provide a holistic picture of how firms strategically use what they know and seek out what they do not know in the international environment, using the affordances of digital technologies.

Given the importance of the growing segmentation of ageing consumers and their increasing interaction with the Internet, digital marketing scholars are becoming more interested in this market. Prior research needs to pay more attention to this market in many contexts of digital marketing. This study aims to provide insights into ageing consumers’ content usage, content typology choices, and online brand advocacy (OBA).

Semi-structured interviews were applied, and 16 consumers from Southern Europe aged 55+ were included. The interviews were transcribed and examined following the principles of content analysis.

According to the research, older consumers display their usage and concerns regarding online content. They have different decision-making processes depending on whether they are purchasing products or services. Likewise, their choices of content typology vary based on the utilitarian or hedonic product category.

This study contributes to the literature by providing insights into this growing segmentation and proposing an OBA framework for older consumers related to content marketing. Finally, the study suggests that older consumers are passive online and active offline brand advocates.

This chapter explores the disruptive potential of the Internet to transform illicit drug markets while also challenging stereotypical depictions and superficial understandings of supply and demand. It argues that the digital transformation of illicit drug markets combines, on one hand, a reconfiguration of the scope and impact of how sellers, buyers, and other actors interact within and upon digitally mediated retail drug markets and, on the other hand, continuing trends in the embeddedness of market structures in cultural, economic, political, and legal realms. We develop conceptual ideas for studying the architecture of digital drug markets by drawing on interdisciplinary approaches to digitalisation, markets, and drugs. To understand the functioning of online drug markets, we first need to understand digitalisation. Thus, we draw on scholarship on the digital transformation of society and, second, put forward an understanding of markets that considers how personal relations and social structures enhance and restrict market exchange. Thus, we draw on economic sociology. Third, we build on and extend social science research on illicit drug markets which points out that drug markets exhibit significant variations over time and across jurisdictions. The introduction aims to provide a research agenda that can help us to explore ongoing digital transformations of illicit drug markets. It expands and deepens scholarship on the technological, structural, economic, and cultural factors underlying the resilience and growth of digital drug markets. It also goes beyond a concern with just one type of digital drug market into wider forms of digital environments.