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This paper aims to examine how modern, digital era customers in a business-to-consumer (B2C) setting prioritize salesperson-customer orientation attributes when evaluating their expectations regarding interactions with salespeople, as well as their impact on positive and negative word-of-mouth. In addition, the research further investigates which negative salesperson attributes have an impact on overall customer experience and satisfaction.

Role theory and expectancy-disconfirmation theory form the theoretical foundation for two mixed-method studies. Study 1 is an exploratory content analysis of online consumer reviews and social media word-of-mouth related to consumer experiences with salespeople. Study 2 is a three-round Delphi study investigating which salesperson orientation attributes are most important to the customer in B2C interactions.

The results uncover which salesperson customer orientation attributes are essential for modern consumers and how they differ as a function of context (retail, direct-selling and follow-up) and how they contribute to the generation of digital word-of-mouth.

This paper expands B2C sales interaction literature by exploring the need for differing sales attributes based on the differential function of the shopping environment.

“Prosumers” (combining “producer” and “consumers”) describes consumers’ ability to openly share their product/service experiences and thereby drive sales and digital marketing. Understanding what motivates active prosumers to engage in electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) and share or review their hotel experiences online can help organizations empathize with consumers and use their messages to co-create value. Identifying prosumers’ motivators can enable companies to properly target them as resources for review or consumer feedback studies. This paper aims to investigate the influence of motivators (intrinsic and extrinsic), service quality and age on consumers’ eWOM communication behaviors.

A panel of 204 travelers was surveyed regarding their hotel travel experiences, propensity to write online reviews, preferred review-writing platform, motivations for writing reviews and impressions of service quality. To test the hypotheses, a multivariate regression analysis was performed with eWOM as the dependent variable. Differences in eWOM as a function of preferred review platform were also tested using ANOVA, with a multiple comparison analysis that underlines the differences between prosumers who prefer different types of review platforms and their eWOM behaviors.

Both intrinsic and extrinsic motivators, as well as service reliability, had a significant influence on eWOM behavior, while service tangibility had a negative relationship. Additionally, prosumers’ engagement in eWOM about their hospitality experience differed according to their preferred review platform.

The findings of the analysis underline the importance of consumer motivations and of satisfaction with service quality in the context of digital review behavior. For marketing and hospitality research, this shows the benefits of including not only individual characteristics and demographics when analyzing review behavior but also elements such as perceptions of service quality. Given the differences in how the dimensions of service quality affect consumers’ engagement in online review behavior, this represents a very important topic for research and can be included in future studies that analyze the consumer review behavior model.

Regarding the implications for practitioners, this study highlights the important role played by consumer satisfaction with service in the hospitality industry and its effect on their involvement in online reviews. Managers should be focused constantly on offering great service to their guests, while, at the same time, offering them motivations to engage in posting positive reviews about their vacation. Moreover, as the results of this study imply that various dimensions of service quality have a different impact, managers should focus especially on the aspects that consumers consider important and constantly include in their reviews, such as the tangibles dimension. The results of this study also have the potential to provide to businesses more information to improve the social aspects of vacationing, which can not only improve perceptions about service quality but can also have a positive influence on consumers’ motivations.

This paper develops a better understanding of what motivates people to engage in the eWOM communication behavior of writing online hotel reviews, by showing the effect of consumer motivations and service quality variables on prosumers’ engagement in online review behavior.

This paper aims to evaluate and structure the basic heuristics consumers use in evaluating word-of-mouth (WOM) about luxury hotel brands while analyzing the impact of deception in online consumer reviews.

The research used a two-study mixed-methods approach, using interpersonal deception theory and social proof theory as lenses to conduct our analysis. For the first study, a qualitative conceptual mapping analysis was conducted, examining online consumer reviews to identify key concepts and their relationships in the context of luxury hotel brands. In the second study, the themes were further examined using a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to analyze their causal complexity and association between variables to determine how they influence the perceived helpfulness of online reviews for luxury hotel brands.

The results underline the importance of functional, objective variables, such as the number of reviews and stars, as social proof heuristics and other factors, including clout, authenticity and analytic tone, as interpersonal communication heuristics. Therefore, consumers use a combination of social and interpersonal communication heuristics to extract information from reviews and manage deception risk.

The paper contributes to the consumer–brand relationship literature by assessing the heuristics consumers use in evaluating online reviews and provides additional information for research in online reputation management.

This study’s results can help marketing practitioners and brand managers manage their online reputations better. It can also aid managers in improving their messaging on hotel websites to entice consumers to complete bookings. Heuristics play an essential role in such messaging and understanding them can help marketers appeal directly to their target market.

This study contributes to the literature on consumer–brand relationships by providing a framework of heuristics that consumers use when evaluating luxury service brands and contributes to WOM and online reputation research by highlighting factors that may make online reviews more helpful.

Social media influencers (SMIs) are becoming a powerful force within the marketing and branding landscape, with several leading brands opting to use SMI endorsements for their products and brands. Extant SMI literature has primarily focused on the influence mechanism exerted by SMIs on their followers. Less is known about how followers view their favorite SMIs. This study aims to explore the SMI–follower relationship from the follower’s perspective and examine the underlying attachment mechanism.

First, a qualitative study was conducted to explore the attributes that individuals consider following an SMI and ensure that it is consistent with the literature review. This was followed by a survey-based quantitative study where a structural equation modeling technique was used to test the hypotheses using 508 SMI followers.

Followers find the SMI as a source to fulfill their intrinsic needs, that is, need to escape or self- improvement. The findings of this study suggest that followers attribute glamor, fun and connectedness to the SMIs driven by their need for self-improvement and fun with their need to escape. Finally, these attributions influence the overall perceived image of the SMI in followers' minds.

This study uses qualitative and quantitative approaches to picture SMIs as human brands from a follower's need fulfillment perspective.

A major part of knowledge management for knowledge-intensive firms such as professional service firms is the increasing focus on thought leadership. Despite being a well-known term, it is poorly defined and analysed in the academic and practitioner literature. The aim of this article is to answer three questions. First, what is thought leadership? Second, what tensions exist when seeking to create thought leadership in knowledge-based organisations? Third, what further research is needed about thought leadership? The authors call for cross-disciplinary and academic–practitioner approaches to understanding the field of thought leadership.

The authors review the academic and practitioner literature on thought leadership to provide a rich oversight of how it is defined and can be understood by separating inputs, creation processes and outcomes. The authors also draw on qualitative data from 12 in-depth interviews with senior leaders of professional service firms.

Through analysing and building on previous understandings of the concept, the authors redefine thought leadership as follows: “Knowledge from a trusted, eminent and authoritative source that is actionable and provides valuable solutions for stakeholders”. The authors find and explore nine tensions that developing thought leadership creates and propose a framework for understanding how to engage with thought leadership at the industry/macro, organisational/meso and individual/micro levels. The authors propose a research agenda based on testing propositions derived from new theories to explain thought leadership, including leadership, reducing risk, signalling quality and managing social networks, as well as examining the suggested ways to resolve different tensions.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, they are the first to separate out thought leadership from its inputs, creation processes and outcomes. The authors show new organisational paradoxes within thought leadership and show how they can play out at different levels of analysis when implementing a thought leadership strategy. This work on thought leadership is set in a relatively under-explored context for knowledge management researchers, namely, knowledge-intensive professional service firms.

The purpose of this paper is to report a three-study effort that aimed to explicate the brand entification construct, a post-anthropomorphic attribution that results from user-brand interaction on Twitter. Entified brands are not merely humanlike, they are viewed as human celebrities with an elevated social status.

A testable conceptual framework, hypotheses and measurement scales for explicating the brand entification construct are derived from focus groups. The framework is tested using two separate surveys; the first surveyed college going, Millennial users of Twitter, the second surveyed a nationwide sample of Twitter using Millennials.

The fear of being ignored (FOBI) emerges as the key antecedent of brand entification. Elevation in healthy narcissism emerges as its key consequence. Twitter users experiencing elevated narcissism are found to defend entified brands when they receive negative tweets from other users.

All constructs and measurement scales reported in the data are new, the evidence of linkages between the antecedents and consequences of brand entification are similarly unprecedented; both reflect the theoretical contributions of the study. Further testing of scales, and replication of results using multiple samples of Twitter users are essential before formalized theory and widely generalizable findings emerge.

Shaping Twitter-users’ sense of healthy narcissism emerges as the key challenge for managers aiming to build brands via Twitter communication. Stimulating users’ FOBI emerges as a key entry-way in this process.

The paper reports the first empirical investigation of the brand entification construct in the context of Twitter-using Millennials.

The arts and health agenda has experienced considerable expansion in the UK in recent years, against a backdrop of increasing social inequality and rising incidence of mental health problems. This paper explores the role of community arts in combating social and mental health inequalities as exemplified by one particular project, Art in Mind, in Nottingham, which is funded by England's New Deal for Communities programme and is designed to promote mental health. In describing Art in Mind's conceptualisation and implementation, attention is given to the importance of developing community networks that are designed to build social capital for participating groups and individuals, in order to combat health and social inequalities.

This study aims to explore if, with increasing consumer empowerment, consumers are actively pulling content through a multitude of platforms rather than relying on media owners to dictate their product choices. How do media owners and content producers move toward a more reciprocal and interactive business strategy to deal with the change?

The study was qualitative and exploratory in nature and utilized in-depth and semi-structured interviews of media consumers and experts.

Consumer behavior has changed due to increased product control, in terms of type and occasion, across all income levels. The value of curatorship has increased and social media has fundamentally changed consumption patterns. Using the Berthon et al. model of response functions, we found that, content producers often suffer from inertia and operate with an Isolate strategy. The second most common approach is that of Follow or customer orientation. There is limited engagement with the innovation orientations of Shape and Interact. It is best for the industry to move toward an Interact model, accepting that consumers sometimes wish to create and at other times wish content to be effortlessly provided to them.

This study adopted a qualitative approach of industry experts and consumers within a single context. The further implications would be to develop the Interact strategy in more detail, especially toward the end of how to get media providers to change their current orientations.

Business models of product producers in the new business environment seek to be more consumer-centric. This must not be done at the expense of an innovation orientation.

There has been a lot of discussion on the need to change business models in the wake of changed consumer behavior. The current paper provides guidance on how to respond to the new media world.

Organizations can benefit significantly from the growing capabilities of the internet. As the Web facilitates purchasing and reduces the costs of marketing, companies can connect with customers through the use of storytelling. This study aims to examine how small businesses leverage the use of storytelling to engage with customers and drive revenue and online reputation management.

Both qualitative and quantitative insights are offered in two studies. In Study 1, interviews were conducted with business owners to explore the efforts made by their companies to connect and engage with consumers online. Study 2 builds on the findings from Study 1 and uses survey methodology to test a model which outlines how storytelling can foster engagement with customers.

Results indicate that story content is positively related to emotional content and the personal connection an individual feels toward a firm’s products. Furthermore, user-generated content moderates the relationship between story content creation and personal connections. Findings also demonstrate that personal connection is essential to customer engagement. Ultimately, engagement can lead to revenue generation from social commerce as well as increased reputation management activity.

This research demonstrates how small businesses can use the power of storytelling to immerse and transport audiences in such a way that customer beliefs and attitudes toward the firm are impacted in a favorable way. By telling its brand story well, firms have the power to increase the value of their products.