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As the elderly population in Korea grows, sales of travel packages for elderly people are also increasing. Senior tourists should spend much time with other tourists because of the nature of package travel. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the significance of rapport with other tourists in the elderly tourist context. Specifically, the current study examined the relationship between other customer perceptions and rapport with other tourists. In addition, this study investigated the influences of rapport with other tourists on tour quality, tour satisfaction and word-of-mouth.

This paper collected data from 411 elderly tourists in Korea and conducted a structural equation modeling analysis to test nine hypotheses.

Physical appearance and suitable behavior positively affect rapport with other tourists and thus aid in increasing tour quality, tour satisfaction and word-of-mouth.

In service marketing, there is a general consensus that customers are influenced by other customers who use the same service facility because they recognize other customers as the environment of the service facility. The concept of other customer perceptions was applied to tourism marketing in this study in combination with another understudied concept, rapport. This study is one of the first, as per the authors’ knowledge, to apply those important concepts to the tourism industry in particular, although there has been a considerable body of research in the service marketing field. Consequently, the findings of this paper would be meaningful and useful for travel agencies when developing a marketing strategy to enhance rapport between tourists.

Recently, the hotel industry has increased its adoption of environmental management practices. Because the research on hotel environmental management often overlooks organizational factors, this study aims to investigate the effects of an environmental management strategy (EMS) on organizational citizenship behavior and tested the mediating roles of organizational trust and commitment in explaining those effects.

An online survey of US hotel employees yielded 373 complete responses. Data were analyzed with structural equation modeling.

EMS positively affected organizational trust and commitment, which ultimately influenced organizational citizenship behavior. Furthermore, organizational trust and commitment fully mediated the relationship between EMS and organizational citizenship behavior.

The results establish the foundation for applying EMS in organizational operations. The findings can benefit managers, as they show how hotel firms’ prosocial practices can enhance employees’ positive behaviors.

Despite the importance of employee attitudes and behaviors, little is known about the mechanism by which employees perceive the influence of an EMS on organizational citizenship behaviors. Therefore, the study examined organizational trust and commitment as mediators of the relationship between EMS and organizational citizenship behavior.

This study examined the effect of brand modernity on brand love. In addition, this study investigated how brand love affects behavioral intentions including intentions to use, word-of-mouth and willingness to pay more. Lastly, this study explored the differences between robot servers and human servers in the five concepts mentioned above.

Data were collected from 300 people who experienced robot servers and from 318 people who experienced human servers.

The results of data analysis revealed that brand modernity has a positive influence on brand love, which in turn positively affects intentions to use, word-of-mouth and willingness to pay more. Additionally, it was found that there were statistical differences with the mean value of the five concepts based on the type of employee, such as robot servers and human servers.

Unlike prior research, the difference between robot servers and human servers was investigated by focusing more on the brand in this study, and such findings can be considered as important theoretical implications of this study.