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The present study investigates the nature of newly formed organizations and how internal communication influences these entities, where change is inherent. Organizational life for government contractors is unusual in that employees experience routine changes to upper management, company values, goals and objectives every few years, which leads to the creation of a new consortium that is loosely coupled. Such research provides insight beyond the single-entity organization, which tends to dominate most public relations and internal communication literature.

Given the lack of research exploring consortia and internal communication to get beyond the homogeneous organization, an in-depth case study methodology was the most appropriate approach. A multi-site government contractor was chosen as the research site, relying on interviews and focus groups (n = 77) to collect data.

Effective internal communication practices are even more important for consortia, like government contractors, since employees of these organizations are guaranteed to experience frequent change. Therefore, communicating to the unknown audience, building trust in the absence of a prior connection, and preparing for the unintended consequences are imperative to navigating the complexity surrounding consortia forming and cultivating employee buy-in.

This study presents new, transferable knowledge of internal communication during consortia forming, where to be successful, internal communication needs anticipate the unintended consequences and develop a strategy around the uncertainty. Such strategy is about welcoming diverse voices and actively listening to their preferred needs. In addition, a definition of the unknown audience is provided.

This paper aims to explore the internal processes that can enable firms to identify and effectively respond to brand crises, with various groups coordinating and cooperating with each other, and also propose a guiding framework relevant for both managers and researchers.

A grounded theory methodology was adopted. Data collection included open-ended interviews with 13 executives representing the integrated marketing communications (IMC) function, the integrated corporate communications function and external agencies supporting firms while navigating crises.

Results revealed a three-stage process of internal coordination efforts during crises: sensing or scanning the environment and gathering insights regarding crises, informing or disseminating these insights throughout the organization to create transparency and responding or reacting to the event via a coordinated effort.

The framework does not directly incorporate input from consumers or customer contact employees, both of which may be relevant.

Findings offer direction for managers to establish processes that prepare for and potentially reduce crises’ negative consequences. In addition, this study reveals the importance of decision-makers being vigilant regarding social media’s influence on such a process.

The conceptual framework moves beyond previous brand crisis research, provides insight into the processes firms use to successfully manage crises and reveals the relevant factors related to internal coordination.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the comprehensive, ongoing role of communication in an enterprise crowdfunding context, which has been largely overlooked.

A large public higher education institution in the Southeastern USA was chosen as the case study unit to illuminate an enterprise-wide crowdfunding program using a proprietary, in-house platform, compared to commercial sites like Kickstarter that do not let organizational leaders strategically plan and manage the platform and its communication functions. Such autonomy provides a richer landscape for studying organizational members’ communication and communication management related to an enterprise crowdfunding program.

The case study identified communication-related challenges to the fundraising program’s success such as limited project leader and funding recipients’ commitment to communicate with their social networks about the projects. Internal communication and conflicting expectations, largely ignored in current crowdfunding research, were seen as critical to program effectiveness.

This study adds scholarly and practical depth to knowledge of enterprise crowdfunding, a relatively new phenomenon in nonprofit and higher education fundraising. While not generalizable to all settings, findings can offer transferable guidance for organizations seeking to engage internal stakeholders related to new and innovative fundraising programs that require their active buy-in and participation.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the special issue theme by exploring customer response to automated relationship management tactics on social media channels.

A total of 17 in-depth interviews of young adults, ranging from the age of 19 to 26, were conducted. From this, customer journey maps were compiled incorporating socialbots as a valuable touch point along the service delivery cycle.

The research frames the socialbot as a valued customer service agent to young adults with some favouring this over telephone and email communication methods. Younger consumers respond positively to the quick resolution offered by the socialbot mechanism with most acknowledging that the bot is only able to manage simplified requests. Human-to-human customer relationship management is preferential when the query reaches critical mass.

Socialbots on Facebook Messenger provided the research context for this study; therefore, other platforms and owned website bots should be considered in future studies.

This research identifies the younger generation as a key target market for the development of customer service-related bots.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to examine the socialbot as an automated touch point in the customer journey and contributes knowledge to the growing body of literature focussed on artificial intelligence in customer service. Moreover, it provides valuable qualitative insights into how socialbots influence the customer experience and related outcome measures.

This new measure of consumer law of some forty‐odd sections, a short Act by present standards but as far‐reaching as any legislation since the war, establishes a code of conduct in commerce and trade which few will be able to ignore, from the manufacturer down to the counter‐hand. Operative from November 30th of this year, traders will require to urgently consider their sales practices, advertising, labelling and their trade descriptions; sales staff will need to be instructed in their new responsibilities. The new law is not just for consumer‐retailer transactions, but extends to trade between different branches of all trades, so that a retailer will be protected against misleading descriptions and misrepresentations by a manufacturer and the latter against misdescriptions of ingredients or components.

The authors explain their approach to teaching literatura infantil (children’s literature) in Spanish to bilingual teachers pursuing their master’s degree in bilingual education at a university in South Texas. In this Self-Study of Teacher Education Practice (S-STEP) research, the authors investigated how teachers can transform their practice and come to value their students’ abilities to interpret literature. They engaged the teachers in projects using quality children’s literature. The projects were carried out by graduate inservice teachers teaching Spanish/English bilingual students studying at different grade levels. Some teachers taught along the Texas/Mexico border and others taught in a large metropolitan school district in central Texas. The authors used their analysis of the inservice teachers’ projects as data to inform their own practice as teacher educators. In the first project, the bilingual teachers engaged their students in exploratory talk that allowed them to bring their backgrounds and experiences into discussions of what they read. The second project challenged the teachers to consider the importance of the images in high-quality illustrated children’s books. The teachers asked their students to read the images and expand their understanding of the books by considering more than the words in the texts. In the final project, the teachers guided their students through Ada’s stages of creative dialogue using children’s literature. The authors describe the projects in detail and give examples from four different teachers showing what they learned about teaching children’s literature and how they changed their perspectives about what their emergent bilingual students could do. Although only four teachers are highlighted, they are representative of students taking the course and engaging in the projects over three different semesters.

The purpose of this paper is to provide novel theoretical insight into service delivery system (SDS) design. To do so, this paper adopts a customer journey perspective, using it as a frame to explore dimensions of experience quality that inform design requirements.

This study utilises UK Patient Opinion data to analyse the stories of 200 cancer patients. Using a critical incident technique, 1,207 attributes of experience quality are generated and classified into 17 quality dimensions across five stages of the customer (patient) journey.

Analysis reveals both similarity and difference in dimensions of experience quality across the patient journey: seven dimensions are common to all five journey stages, from receiving diagnosis to end of life care; ten dimensions were found to vary, present in one or several of the stages but not in all.

Limitations include a lack of representativity of the story sample and the impossibility to verify the factual occurrence of the stories.

Adopting a patient journey perspective can improve the practitioner understanding of the design requirements of SDS in healthcare. The results of the study can be applied by managers to configure SDS that achieve a higher quality of patient care throughout the patient journey.

This paper extends existing literature on SDS design by adopting a customer journey perspective, revealing heterogeneity in experience quality across the customer journey currently unaccounted for in SDS design frameworks. Specifically, the findings challenge homogeneity in extant SDS design frameworks, evidencing the need for multiple, stage-specific SDS design requirements.

This study aims at understanding how consumers engage with and perceive value in “spectacular” versus “spontaneous” designs of tourist experiences. Building on the idea that experiences unfold over time through consumers' interactions with multiple touchpoints composed of assemblages of material and interpersonal elements, how these designs can be conducive to various dimensions of the consumer experience value is shown.

A qualitative comparative “embedded case study” (Yin, 2018) of the tourist experiences at In Vino (pseudonym), a traditional winery located in the Vale dos Vinhedos (Valley of the Vineyards) in southern Brazil, was conducted. Based on initial archival research into relevant and noteworthy experiences, two distinct tourist experiences for In Vino were designed. Both experiences were implemented, and participant observations and interviews with participants were conducted.

The two experiences effectively lead visitors to unique and separate interpersonal, temporal and materially engaging experiences. Both generated educational, entertainment, esthetic and escapist value when well executed, and the comparative analysis by the authors helped in outlining a potential combination of the characteristics of spectacular and spontaneous designs that can enhance authenticity value for tourists.

This study provides practical information to help companies develop positive consumer experiences in tourism by employing different combinations of temporal, material and interpersonal elements to emphasize different types of value. It also suggests guidelines for what to do and what to avoid in order to create this value.

This paper shows that it is the very union of elements from two apparently antagonistic types of encounters that provides positive values in tourism-related experiences. It also extends the notion of authenticity as an outcome that can potentially be perceived in both types of experiences. Finally, it introduces guidelines on how to manage the different values in order to help companies offer a positive tourist experience.

As the number of imitator brands has risen, so too have legal actions for trademark infringement and passing off, because of consumer confusion, unfair misappropriation of brand owners’ intellectual property, and lost sales revenue. However, recourse to the law is time‐consuming, expensive, and can be unpredictable because of the highly subjective and inconsistent ways in which brand confusion is measured and proven. The formulation of more standard measures of marketplace confusion would have significant time and cost advantages for market researchers and lawyers. Using data from key informant interviews with expert legal professionals, critiques the current measures of consumer confusion and shows that in UK law confusion must result in mistaken behavior and any measure of behavior must be taken in situ within shopping environments. Shows most important legal measures of confusion, namely, subjective judicial analysis and witness testimony, to be methodologically flawed. Discusses implications for manufacturers, brand owners and legal policy and practice.