Search results

With the development of the internet and mobile technology products, revolutions are experienced in consumer behavior. Consumers of the digital age browse the other users’ experiences and thoughts before purchasing a product or service. The use of social media (SM) platforms, which are getting stronger day by day, is also preferred by companies so as to convey any message to the target audiences. SM platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are the most outstanding and commonly used channels through which companies reach the target audiences. Sharing, especially including visual elements, supplies the highest level of interaction with the target audience. However, the internet bloggers/vloggers (video blogger), phenomena, influencers or SM marketers have a significant impact on the consumers of the digital age with their channels on the internet and their sharing in SM accounts. Tourism companies are not indifferent to the increasing importance of SM. Thus, they prefer working with SM influencers or bloggers by conveying the info and messages to their consumers to perceive their products and services. The influencers can spread the messages of the companies to wider consumers that companies might never be able to reach. For some years, the inclusion of influencers as part of a communication and marketing strategy has become more common and necessary for the promotion of a destination, airline or hotel group. This has been generated due to important factors such as trust, which has been the best ally of influencers: in most cases people give higher levels of credibility to what is said and done by instagramers, youtubers, bloggers, twitterers, etc. In recent years, it is one of the hottest new ways to affect potential guests’ buying decisions and create high-quality content without the excessive costs of most marketing efforts.

The concept of integrated marketing has been recognized as a key factor in marketing literature. Integrated marketing has changed from being a customer-centric system to a customer-facing process and is the past, present, and future of marketing. This type of marketing helps build brand awareness and equity in order for people to know, trust and ultimately choose your brand over competitors. It ensures that a message is communicated via different platforms according to a specific strategy. Integrated marketing has now become more important than ever before and focusing on the customer and their requirements involve a more integrated view with a big emphasis on digital, traditional and the physical world all working together. If practiced properly, integrated marketing approach is a healthy balance that can yield unlimited results beneficial to the organization’s goals. This approach should be practiced not only for one department but also all departments at hotel companies should be included.With that in mind, hotels have begun applying this notion as part of their everyday outreach. Specifically, marketing methods and strategies will vary from hotel to hotel and some significant factors to analyze and research prior to drafting are: property size, management structure, type of ownership and type of hotel (luxury, business, hi-tech, economy, etc.), area demographics and psychographics, as well as the dynamics of the internal and external environment. The need for studying integrated marketing in the hotel context has been emphasized in this research which revealed that marketing strategies are crucial for hotel companies to raise their brand value and equity. In this respect, it is stressed that strategies can shape a positive hotel brand perception within the customer’s mind.

Departing from Turkish national debates around Islam, national belonging, and homosexuality during 2008–2011, this paper shows how “LGBT rights” discourses ultimately worked to position Muslim headscarf activists as against LGBT activists by rendering complex positions that do not follow easy “for vs. against” LGBT rights political formulas as “homophobic.” In return, this foreclosed potential solidarities differently injured citizens could have formed against increasing neoliberal state violence. I show that the multitude of Muslim women’s positions on the issue of LGBT rights complicates easy religious/secular binaries and illuminates how it is not only human rights discourses but also their “Western” critiques that travel transnationally. This story also contributes to current debates on postsecularism by illustrating how the same national context can house both liberal rights frameworks that can be used against pious Muslim subjects, and a monopolization of a definition of Islam for state power. Finally, I offer “politics of cruelty” and “right to sin” as alternative frameworks for imagining social justice outside of liberal rights-based politics.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the services management literature by identifying a sequence of the different processes of knowledge management (KM) to create customer service value.

The context for the research hypotheses is the Spanish banking industry. The authors conducted a study including 76 banks and 1,832 customers of these banks. This paper uses the partial least squares method to conduct the data analysis.

The authors find support for all the hypotheses proposed in the model. The results show that service firms that are able to apply more knowledge or apply knowledge more effectively are likely to generate more benefits for their customers, and/or reduce their sacrifices, contributing significantly to a higher perception of service value.

The study focusses on one particular industry in a single point in time. A longitudinal analysis of a variety of service industries would enrich the study.

It is argued that KM constitutes a key capability for service firms for the delivery of service value. According to the research, if service firms want to improve the application of knowledge, it is important to focus on knowledge retention while they create new knowledge.

Although a considerable amount of research has been carried out in the fields of KM and customer value, there has been less research that has taken both into consideration simultaneously. This paper addresses this gap in the literature.

This study aims to investigate gendered meanings of food and its relationship with identity management for Turkish university students’ food practices and beliefs.

Methodologically, both qualitative and quantitative approaches were used in this study as a complementary way. Data were collected from a total of 711 university students.

Taken together, the findings strongly support gender-based food stereotypes as consistent with previous literature with some cultural variations. As another important finding, gendered associations of foods are stronger than those of non-alcoholic beverages among Turkish university students.

In terms of original contribution, this study not only provides valuable information about young consumers’food beliefs and practices in terms of gender-based stereotypes and identity management, but also enriches the current literature, specifically focusing on Turkey, which has a completely different cultural background as compared to Europe, the USA and the Far East. To the best of authors’knowledge, this is the very first study on this subject specifically focusing on Turkish consumers’ gift-buying behaviors through the internet channel.

The purpose of the study is to systematically review the literature of indirect cost of financial distress to understand its scope, measurements, impact size and determinants to synthesis with future research agenda.

Five-step process of systematic literature review (SLR) as applied by Opoku et al. (2015) is used. SLR extracted 47 studies of indirect cost after applying specified search criteria. Data regarding measurement, impact size and determinants are presented and summarised in specified tables.

SLR showed that the study of indirect cost in developing countries is a literature gap. It is also found that opportunity loss, operating profit loss, market loss and risk premium are most studied indirect costs using legal definition or ex ante proxy of financial distress. However, future studies are recommended to use both non-linear leverage and ex ante proxy of financial distress. Future studies are also suggested to use the moderation technique while studying the determinants of indirect cost.

Literature selection is based on specific search criteria that can miss some of the other related literature.

The indirect cost of financial distress is more costly and difficult to measure due to its complex concealed effects. A detailed literature of indirect cost is needed to understand the construct that eventually will help to define the future research agenda. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no SLR of indirect cost is provided yet. Therefore, the outcome of this research will be valuable for both academicians and practitioners.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a comprehensive, delineated and integrated conceptual model which includes organizational learning capability, innovation and organizational performance (OP). Then, an empirical investigation is undertaken to test the relationships among the proposed study model variables.

In total, 274 questionnaires were completed and returned. Statistical techniques employed included confirmatory factor analysis to examine the validity of the measurement model, and structural equation modeling to test the hypotheses.

The findings of this study suggest that OLC influences innovation and innovation affects OP. Finally, the results show that OLC affects OP indirectly through innovation (mediator).

Future research should pay more attention to the influence of different mixture (variables) of influences on innovation and also examine other consequences of introducing innovation in organizations. In addition, more empirical papers supporting (or rejecting) the results in different contexts would be welcomed, especially longitudinal studies.

The results of this study help managers to ascertain the managerial practices that can be employed as well as determine the level of effort and resources necessary to enhance OLC. Additionally, managers should shed additional light on the innovation’s positive implications for OP.

This study focuses on the conceptualization of OLC and effects of these capabilities on innovation. It conceptualizes innovation as a multidimensional construct and tests its relationship with OP. Finally, the relationship between learning capability and OP, although implied, needs to be addressed empirically in the research literature, an objective that this study tries to achieve.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the mediating effect of learning capacity in the relationship between the social media usage by the construction of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and their business performance in Nigeria.

A quantitative survey technique was used to collect data from the owner/manager of construction SMEs in Nigeria. The partial least square structural equation modeling was used in the assessment of the measurement model and structural model to assess the validity and reliability of the measures and to evaluate the hypotheses proposed in the conceptual model.

Empirical findings indicated a significant positive relationship between learning capacity and performance of SMEs. Similarly, the use of social media is significantly and positively associated to the business performance of SMEs. It has also been shown that learning capacity is a mediator of the relationship between social media and SME performance.

The data for the study is are all from a single industry and a related line of business, so it could be more interesting to include more companies across sectors or industries. The finding contributes to the ongoing debate on the effect of social media on business performance. It also defined the need for the owner/manager of SMEs to understand and appreciate the effect of social media through the organization's learning potential to gain a sustainable competitive advantage.

There are a number of theoretical and practical implications for academics and practitioners who are interested in further studies of organizational social media. The research presents a quantitative study on the effect of social media adoption on the organizational performance of the construction industry. This study confirms the mediating role of learning capability in the relationship between the use of social media and performance of SMEs operating in the construction industry.

This study empirically examined the relationship between social media adoption and the SMEs learning capability and business performance by evaluating a hypothesized conceptual framework to establish the relationships.