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The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize and develop an event experience scale in the business event (trade shows) context.

Data were gathered from domestic and foreign exhibitors and visitors of the six countries from the international trade show events organized in the emerging economy of India.

An event experience scale comprised five dimensions (affective, cognitive, unique, physical and well-being association) associated with experiences emerged. Findings propose that event participants see trade shows as a business event to fulfil their meaningful goals as well as a platform that addresses their subjective pleasure.

Existing experiential practices in the trade show industry can be enhanced by improvising the dimensions found in the study. Practitioners may use the outcomes to enhance the effectiveness of trade shows.

The event literature on trade show experiences is still in its developing stage. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is one of the first attempts to conceptualize and develop a trade show event experience scale. This research conceptualizes trade shows as a tourism destination and adds a new unexplored dimension to business event literature.

This paper aims to explore the psychological motivations behind customers’ engagement with the brands and further investigate the effect of brand engagement on brand attachment and brand loyalty.

The theoretical model is tested with the data collected from 282 brand community members during offline brand community events, and structural equation modeling technique is used for statistical analysis.

The results indicate that brand psychological ownership and value-congruity act as important psychological motivations for customers to engage with the brands. A sense of brand attachment mediates the relationship between brand engagement and brand loyalty.

Current study was conducted on a single brand community. Future research testing and validating the proposed model for multiple brands across different product categories is suggested for the generalization of current study results. The identification and validation of psychological drivers of engagement can have major implications on the ongoing research on customer engagement concept.

An effectively instilled sense of psychological ownership and value similarity notion in customers can help managers in engaging customers and capitalize on their repurchases and recommendations along with their attachment to the brands.

The study is unique in terms of the brand engagement model depicting the psychological antecedents to engagement with the brands and identifying the mediating role of brand attachment between brand engagement and behavioral loyalty.

Travel and tourism is an imperative economic activity in most countries around the world. The industry has momentous indirect and induced impacts apart from its direct economic impact. The purpose of this paper is to test the applicability of brand interaction and perceived quality theory in the formation of brand trust, and the impact of affective commitment and brand trust toward advocacy intentions in the context of the Indian hospitality industry. This study also examines how emotional, and experiential hospitality brand relationship with the consumers can be developed in the emerging economies.

A total of 430 respondents participated in the study. Empirical evidence from depth interviews and data were garnered into a conceptual model. The proposed model was tested using structural equation modeling.

The findings reveal that perceived quality and brand interaction forms brand trust and trust is the key factor in establishing emotional (affective) commitment between the customer and the hospitality brand. The study also suggests that emotional commitment in customers help them in becoming brand advocates. The findings of the research will help hospitality brand strategists in developing successful branding strategies.

This research examines the advantage of customers’ relationship and their meaningful brand connections in the hospitality context. The study establishes a relationship among antecedents of trust, trust and commitment which can lead toward brand advocacy.

The findings provide insight for hospitality brand managers in developing effective branding strategies for their organizations. This study inspects the advantages of cultivating meaningful brand connections and relationships with consumers in the Indian hospitality sector.

This paper aims to examine the direct and indirect effects of tourists’ value on satisfaction and loyalty intentions in dark tourism.

This research was conducted using the data collected through a questionnaire survey from 403 tourists visiting a dark tourism destination in India. Data were analyzed using CFA and SPSS macro (Process).

The findings confirmed that tourists’ values have significant direct and indirect effects on loyalty intentions via satisfaction in dark tourism. Among specific value, the strongest direct and indirect influence of emotional value in dark tourism is the unique finding of this research.

This study would help the marketers, government, local authorities and relevant stakeholders operating in dark tourism to formulate policies and strategies to better serve this niche tourism.

This research is the first-known attempt to reveal the uniqueness of tourists’ perception of value in dark tourism. It could significantly add to the literature and practice of dark tourism.

Considering brand ownership as a cause of concern, this paper aims to propose a conceptual model portraying brand engagement as a function of members’ brand psychological ownership (BPO) and value-congruity and to investigate the effect of brand engagement on brand attachment and brand purchase intentions.

Data were collected from 275 brand community members who do not own the brand. Six different brand communities were shortlisted and offline events were targeted. For testing the hypothesised relationships, the authors used structural equation modelling.

The results indicate that BPO and value-congruity positively influence the brand engagement of the members, which further influences the brand attachment and brand purchase intentions. It is also observed that brand attachment mediates the effect of brand engagement on brand purchase intentions.

The primary limitation of this paper is the research context, which needs to be further replicated. The specific customer-segment approach of the study adds a new direction to the scope of brand engagement in the brand management domain.

The study shows that brand managers need to expand their focus from existing brand customers to non-customers as brand engagement subjects because the non-brand owners can also experience brand attachment and develop intentions to purchase the brand, if engaged.

The study endorses the role of psychological ownership theory in brand engagement research; explores the feasibility of brand engagement among “non-owner community members”; highlights the role of their engagement in enhancing attachment towards the brands and purchase intentions; and sheds light on the blurred boundaries between brand engagement and brand attachment.

The purpose of this study is to highlight the need for developing pricing capability (PC) for business-to-business firms to effectively manage and execute the pricing activities in the organization and succeed in a competitive market. Using the firms’ resource-based view, organizational learning theory and organizational capabilities literature, this study develops a conceptual framework in which market-focused learning and firm innovativeness are potential antecedents of PC and pricing value and business performance (BP) are consequences.

The authors conducted an online e-mail-based survey to collect primary cross-sectional data from the 127 Indian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The partial least squares structural equation modeling technique was used to empirically validate a conceptual framework as well as the research hypotheses.

The findings indicate that market-focused learning and firm innovativeness have a substantial influence on PC, which in turn positively affects both pricing value and BP. Moreover, pricing value demonstrates a partial mediating effect on the link between PC and BP.

This research has certain limitations, namely, using cross-sectional data and limited sample size. More empirical research on the antecedents of PC is required.

The empirical findings enlighten the SMEs on the significance of developing specialized PC in delivering superior pricing value to customers and achieving greater BP.

The existing literature lacks empirical data on the development and antecedents of PC, particularly in the SME context. The current study empirically examines the impact of market-focused learning and firm innovativeness on PC.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of tourists’ emotional experiences on predicting behavioral intentions via cognitive, affective and overall image in yoga tourism.

This study was conducted using data collected from 398 tourists visiting a yoga tourism destination in India. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were used in analyzing the collected data.

The study confirmed that specific tourists’ emotions act as a predictor of cognitive, affective and overall image. This in turn influenced the behavioral intentions of tourists. The effect of specific emotions on affective image was stronger than on cognitive image in yoga tourism.

The marketing campaign of yoga tourism should highlight the special benefits of yoga to activate, stimulate and influence tourists toward yoga tourism, thereby improving the flow of future tourists. It would also help in better positioning and promoting yoga tourism as a unique and distinct niche tourism market.

This study contributed to the literature by understanding the predictive power of specific emotions on behavioral intentions via, cognitive, affective and overall image in yoga tourism. As far as the authors’ knowledge is concerned, this study is first known attempt to investigate such relationships in tourism literature.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the applicability of Pay-What-You-Want (PWYW) pricing multi-channel retailing. Specifically, the impact of PWYW endogenous price discrimination on consumers’ price fairness perception of and reactions to PWYW is investigated.

Three empirical studies with different product categories were conducted through lab experiments with student sample using scenario-based experimental approach.

Results indicate the viability of PWYW with lower suggested external reference price. The impact of PWYW endogenous price discrimination is dependent upon the magnitude of price deviation from regular market price and product category. Consumers’ negative perceptions of price differentiation interacted with their underlying beliefs about the retailer’s cost of products across different channels. PWYW acceptance can be fostered in multi-channel by communication of additional-value generated in offline selling.

The current research is possibly the first to explore PWYW viability in the multi-channel context by exploring the consumer’s price perception process and critical consumer reactions through a well-structured research framework.

The purpose of this paper is to test the applicability of brand personality theory in the perspective of trade show events, and the influence of trade show event personality on exhibitor’s eudaimonic and hedonic happiness and advocacy intentions.

A total of 210 exhibitors (n=210) of three trade exhibitions, organized at Delhi, India participated in the study. A face to face survey method was used to collect the data.

The results of the study provide sustenance for the event personality and exhibitor’s eudaimonic and hedonic happiness model. The event personality factors significantly affected the meaningful and subjective happiness of exhibitor. Happiness was identified as a key influencer for advocacy intentions. Hedonic and eudaimonic facets of happiness had positive effects on exhibitor’s intention to participate, and word of mouth intention.

The current study provides event marketer a tool for measuring event personality. Event personality is vital to build the event equity and to position the event in the market to gain a competitive advantage over the other events. Happiness as a construct is being studied in various social science studies. This study has attempted to establish a relationship among exhibitor happiness, event personality, and advocacy intentions.

This study contributes to the management literature in two ways: first, Eudaimonic and hedonic happiness constructs have never been explored in the brand personality context. Thus, this research adds a new value to the brand personality literature. And second, the brand personality construct is used for the first time in trade show event context that will open a new domain in brand personality, and event research.

This paper aims to investigate consumer behaviour in response to social norms under pay-what-you-want (PWYW) pricing. Specifically, it explores the critical role of social norms such as norm priming and consumer prior trust in the retailer on consumers’ perceived price fairness, trust, willingness to pay, purchase intentions and intentions to spread negative word of mouth about the retailer.

Data on dependent measures were collected through the scenario-based online experimental approach and assessed using MANOVA analysis.

Results confirm the significance of norms by indicating the critical role of norm belief on consumer responses. Also, increasing the salience of norms by priming them usually intensifies negative behaviour, and pre-existing trust in the retailer serves as an imperfect cushion against consumer negative reactions to norm violation, but this effect is observed to be decreasing with increase in prior trust.

Further research should consider the contextual (time, place, media) influences and assumptions to increase the generalizability of the findings.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to explicitly examine the effects of social-norm compliance by sellers on consumer behaviour in the context of PWYW pricing.