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Increasingly brands are performing several activities on social media in order to alter consumer consumption towards their offering. However, limited studies have attempted to understand as how activities on social media influence usage intentions and brand loyalty. Thus, this study aims to examine the influence of social media marketing activities (SMMA) on brand experience and its association with continued usage intentions (CUI) and brand loyalty.

The study conceptualized a research model by using the theoretical premise of stimulus-organism-response theory. SMMA acts as stimulus, four (sensory, affective, behavioral and intellectual) elements of brand experience act as organism, and CUI and brand loyalty act as response. A survey-based questionnaire is used to collect data from 309 respondents. The hypothesized associations of research model were examined using the structural equation modeling approach.

Results of the study are in line with hypothesized associations among constructs. Results suggest that SMMA is associated with all four elements of brand experience. Also, affective, behavioral and intellectual aspects of brand experience are associated with CUI which influence brand loyalty. The moderating role of education on hypothesized association and the mediating role of organism are also confirmed.

Using stimulus-organism-response theory, this study confirms that SMMA are associated with sensory, affective, behavioral and intellectual aspect of brand experience which has not been examined so far. Also, the novel findings of study add to existing literature of SMMA, brand experience and brand loyalty. The study further contributes to literature by showing the moderation effect of education.

Exploratory search activities are ubiquitous in various information systems. Much potentially useful or even serendipitous information is discovered during the exploratory search process. Given its irreplaceable role in information systems, exploratory search has attracted growing attention from the information system community. Since few studies have methodically reviewed current publications, researchers and practitioners are unable to take full advantage of existing achievements, which, in turn, limits their progress in this field. Through a literature review, this study aims to recapitulate important research topics of exploratory search in information systems, providing a research landscape of exploratory search.

Automatic and manual searches were performed on seven reputable databases to collect relevant literature published between January 2005 and July 2023. The literature pool contains 146 primary studies on exploratory search in information system research.

This study recapitulated five important topics of exploratory search, namely, conceptual frameworks, theoretical frameworks, influencing factors, design features and evaluation metrics. Moreover, this review revealed research gaps in current studies and proposed a knowledge framework and a research agenda for future studies.

This study has important implications for beginners to quickly get a snapshot of exploratory search studies, for researchers to re-align current research or discover new interesting issues, and for practitioners to design information systems that support exploratory search.

This research aims to examine how consumer minimalism (CM), self-conscious feelings (such as consumer guilt (CG) and consumer pride (CP)) and the inclination to use rental services interact. It also looks at how attitudes toward pro-environmental advertisements affect these relationships as a moderator, recognizing the importance of pro-environmental advertising in influencing consumer behavior.

This study employed a quantitative methodology to investigate the aforementioned associations. Survey questionnaires are used to collect data, which is then analyzed using AMOS 25 and Process Macro to generate meaningful insights.

The findings indicate that the willingness to use rental services is directly associated with CM, while self-conscious emotions (SCEs) play the role of a mediator in this relationship.

It is essential to recognize the limitations of this study. There may be other variables at play, but the research focuses on SCEs (CG and CP) and their role as mediators. The findings must be interpreted based on the selected research methodology and sample size. Future research could investigate additional variables and enlarge the sample size to increase generalizability.

Targeted marketing can leverage CM, SCEs and willingness to use rental services. Recognizing the moderating effect of attitude toward pro-environmental advertisements can help create more effective campaigns promoting environmental behavior.

Underpinned by SCEs, the current study is one of the initial studies to explain how CM encourages responsible environmental behavior through access-based consumption models.

Motivated by the wide application of procurement strategies in retailing, this paper aims to examine the effect of procurement strategies on decisions and profits and strategic inventory (SI) is considered.

The game-theoretic models are developed under a two-period fresh product supply chain (FSC), and consist of the mode of purchasing products only in the first period without SI (Scenario S), the mode of purchasing products in every period without SI (Scenario T) and the mode of purchasing products in every period with SI (Scenario TS).

Conducting the calculating and comparing, some major findings can be concluded. In general, two-period purchasing strategies (Scenarios T and TS) promote a higher freshness-keeping effort than the single buying strategy (Scenario S). Regarding the pricing strategy, SI and Scenario S can both contribute to obtaining a lower wholesale price, the retailer's pricing is relatively complicated and hinges on the consumer's sensitivity to freshness-keeping effort and the holding cost. Besides, comparing the sales quantity and the profit, the authors find that Scenario TS stimulates more demands and brings more profits for the manufacturer. However, Scenario TS is not the optimal selection for the reason that SI sometimes hurts the retailer and even the whole supply chain. Whereas, when the holding cost is in a certain range, Scenario TS will lead to a win-win situation.

The main findings of this study can give the enterprises some advice on the procurement strategies of fresh products and the decisions of pricing and the freshness-keeping effort.

The development of information technologies has led to a considerable transformation in human resource management from conventional or commonly known as personnel management to modern one. Data mining technology, which has been widely used in several applications, including those that function on the web, includes clustering algorithms as a key component. Web intelligence is a recent academic field that calls for sophisticated analytics and machine learning techniques to facilitate information discovery, particularly on the web. Human resource data gathered from the web are typically enormous, highly complex, dynamic, and unstructured. Traditional clustering methods need to be upgraded because they are ineffective. Standard clustering algorithms are enhanced and expanded with optimization capabilities to address this difficulty by swarm intelligence, a subset of nature-inspired computing. We collect the initial raw human resource data and preprocess the data wherein data cleaning, data normalization, and data integration takes place. The proposed K-C-means-data driven cuckoo bat optimization algorithm (KCM-DCBOA) is used for clustering of the human resource data. The feature extraction is done using principal component analysis (PCA) and the classification of human resource data is done using support vector machine (SVM). Other approaches from the literature were contrasted with the suggested approach. According to the experimental findings, the suggested technique has extremely promising features in terms of the quality of clustering and execution time.

This chapter of the book aims to introduce multiobjective linear programming (MLP) as an optimum tool to find the best quality engineering techniques (QET) in the main domains of supply chain management (SCM). The importance of finding the best quality techniques in SCM elements in the shortest possible time and at the least cost allows all organizations to increase the power of experts’ analysis in supply chain network (SCN) data under cost-effective conditions. In other words, this chapter aims to introduce an operations research model by presenting MLP for obtaining the best QET in the main domains of SCM. MLP is one of the most determinative tools in this chapter that can provide a competitive advantage. Under goal and system constraints, the most challenging task for decision-makers (DMs) is to decide which components to fund and at what levels. The definition of a comprehensive target value among the required goals and determining system constraints is the strength of this chapter. Therefore, this chapter can guide the readers to extract the best statistical and non-statistical techniques with the application of an operations research model through MLP in supply chain elements and shows a new innovation of the effective application of operations research approach in this field. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is a supplemental tool in this chapter to facilitate the relevant decision-making process.

Working mothers experienced dramatic changes to their daily routines during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many began to work from home as they simultaneously tried to balance work demands with tending to their children. The purpose of the current study was to examine working mothers’ experiences during the pandemic.

In order to examine working mothers’ experiences of telework during the pandemic, we conducted a focus group study. 45 working mothers participated, and they answered questions about their experiences.

Three themes emerged from the focus groups: (1) motivation shifts amongst working mothers; (2) difficulty balancing roles as mother and employee; and (3) workplace expectations and support. Many mothers reported that their overall motivation as employees had decreased and that they experienced difficulty in fully attending to their work and their child(ren)’s needs. As mothers navigated the stress of working during the pandemic, they reported varying levels of workplace support and many credited working with other parents as a primary contributor to feeling supported.

The findings from the current study add to the growing body of literature documenting the dark side of teleworking for mothers who struggled immensely with work–life balance. This study builds on past research by allowing mothers to share their experiences in their own words and offering suggestions for how organizations can support mothers in navigating these ongoing challenges as teleworking continues to remain prevalent. The narratives collected hold important implications for practices and policies to best support the needs of mothers as they continue to work and care for their children within the home.

Do luxury consumers negatively evaluate digital interactions (website and social media) by international luxury brands? The topic has received much debate. The authors argue that luxury brand personality (modern vs. traditional), which encompasses a more stable form of brand identity in global markets, affects evaluations of digital interactions. They further investigate the role of self-brand connection in this process.

Three experiments on Prolific use a European sample and manipulate a single factor between subjects (modernity: less vs. more; traditionality: less vs. more) of French luxury brands and measure evaluations as the dependent variable. Two studies assesses self-brand connection (continuous) as a moderator (studies 2a, 2b). Study 2b rules out some alternative explanations, with culture (independent vs. collectivist) as an independent variable. A fourth study, using a North American sample on CloudResearch, assesses the effect of personality manipulation (more modernity vs. more traditionality) on consumer evaluations of an Italian brand, and assesses ubiquity perceptions as a mediator.

Consumers evaluate digital interactions of international luxury brands less favorably when luxury brand personality exhibits more (vs. less) modernity or less (vs. more) traditionality. Perceptions of ubiquity mediate these relationships. When self-brand connection is high, this effect is attenuated.

The research sheds light on the debate on whether luxury brands should create digital interactions in international markets, given that these global brands operate in multiple channels. Findings show that luxury brands can develop strategies based on aspects of their brand identity, a less malleable feature of brand identity within global markets. Additionally, the research contributes to the conversation about a global luxury market. In short, the findings offer evidence in favor of brand identity (personality) influencing the digital channel strategy a brand should undertake in international markets, first, followed by consumer needs.

Although extant literature exists on luxury consumption, limited studies have focused on motivation and values to consume luxury brands among athletes. The study aims to uncover the motivations that guide athletes’ decision-making processes to consume luxury brands.

The study utilized the theory of prestige consumption to develop a model. The model posits that bandwagon, snob and veblen motivations guide athletes to seek social and conspicuous values in their consumption of luxury brands. A survey-based questionnaire approach was used to collect data from 343 athletes from Turkey by considering brands from different product categories.

Findings indicated that bandwagon and veblen motivations are associated with social and conspicuous values. The findings also suggested that bandwagon, snob and veblen motivation are positively associated with luxury consumption intentions. Also, the social and conspicuous values of athletes determine their intentions to consume luxury. The mediating effects of social and conspicuous values are also confirmed.

The study's findings are first to empirically examine the influence of motivations on social and conspicuous value among athletes. The results show that the luxury consumption motivations of the athletes have a strong role in their intention to purchase luxury products. The findings also offer novel managerial implications.

Social media facilitates the communication and the relationship between healthcare professionals and patients. However, limited research has examined the role of social media in a physicians' online return. This study, therefore, investigates physicians' online economic and social capital return in relation to physicians' use of social media and consumer engagement.

Using ordinary least squares (OLS) regression with fixed effects (FE) and panel data collected from Sina Weibo and Sina Health, this study analyzes the impact of physicians' social media use and consumer engagement on physicians' online return and the moderation effect of professional seniority.

The results reveal that physicians' use of social media and consumer sharing behavior positively affect physicians' online economic return. In contrast, consumer engagement positively impacts physicians' online social capital return. While professional seniority enhances the effect of physicians' social media use on online economic return, professional seniority only enhances the relationship between consumers' sharing behavior to the posts and physicians' online social capital return when professional seniority comes to consumer engagement.

This study reveals the different roles of social media use and consumer engagement in physicians' online return. The results also extend and examine the social media affordances theory in online healthcare communities and social media platforms.