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Based on the key dimensions of the Metaverse environment (immersiveness, fidelity and sociability), this paper aims to develop the concept of sensory word-of-mouth (WOM) in Metaverse – the metaWOM. It attempts to upgrade the Reviewchain model and suggests the utilization of non-transferable tokens (NTTs) in curbing the explosion of fake WOM.

Following Macinnis’ (2011) approach to conceptual contributions, the authors browsed the currently available literature on WOM, Metaverse and NTT to portray the emergence of metaWOM.

By relying on Metaverse’s three building blocks, the authors map out the persuasiveness of metaWOM in the Metaverse-like environment. By incorporating NTT in the Reviewchain model, the authors upgraded it to provide a transparent, safe and trusted review ecosystem. An array of emerging research directions and research questions is presented.

This paper comprehensively analyzes the implications of a Metaverse-like environment on WOM and debates on technologies that can enhance the metaWOM persuasiveness. The proposed model in this paper can assist various stakeholders in understanding the complex nature of virtual information-seeking and giving.

This is the original attempt to delineate the sensory aspect of WOM in the Metaverse based on three crucial aspects of the Metaverse environment: immersiveness, fidelity and sociability. This paper extends the discussion on the issue of fake reviews and offers viable suggestions to curb the ever-growing number of fraudulent WOM.

This article aims to explore the potential of feminist phenomenology as a conceptual framework for advancing women’s entrepreneurship research and the suitability of interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) to the proposed framework.

The article critically examines the current state of women’s entrepreneurship research regarding the institutional context and highlights the benefits of a shift towards feminist phenomenology.

The prevailing disembodied and gender-neutral portrayal of entrepreneurship has resulted in an equivocal understanding of women’s entrepreneurship and perpetuated a male-biased discourse within research and practice. By adopting a feminist phenomenological approach, this article argues for the importance of considering the ontological dimensions of lived experiences of situatedness, intersubjectivity, intentionality and temporality in analysing women entrepreneurs’ agency within gendered institutional contexts. It also demonstrates that feminist phenomenology could broaden the current scope of IPA regarding the embodied dimension of language.

The adoption of feminist phenomenology and IPA presents new avenues for research that go beyond the traditional cognitive approach in entrepreneurship, contributing to theory and practice. The proposed conceptual framework also has some limitations that provide opportunities for future research, such as a phenomenological intersectional approach and arts-based methods.

The article contributes to a new research agenda in women’s entrepreneurship research by offering a feminist phenomenological framework that focuses on the embodied dimension of entrepreneurship through the integration of IPA and conceptual metaphor theory (CMT).

The study aims to examine the indirect relationships via application (app) brand self-relevance emotions and self-relevance that underlie the relationships between perceived value of mobile apps and (brand) love with respect to mobile apps. The study further investigates the moderating role of user–app relationship duration in the formation process of brand love for mobile apps from a dynamic and long-term perspective.

A multiple moderated-mediation model is developed and empirically tested with a sample of 396 users of popular Chinese mobile educational apps.

The study reveals that utilitarian value exhibits positive indirect relationships with brand love for mobile apps through increased positive self-relevance emotions. All three types of perceived value of mobile apps (utilitarian, hedonic and social) affect app brand love positively via self-relevance. These three types of perceived value were found to be serially linked to brand love through self-relevance and self-relevance emotions. Furthermore, empirical evidence is found for the moderating effects of user–app relationship duration.

By testing mechanisms simultaneously in an integrative model, this study investigates the reasons for app brand love that attract a user into a lasting relationship with an app and extends knowledge of the app brand love building process in inducing strong and positive brand–self connections. Our study also makes practical contributions by offering insights into delivering the most desired benefits to mobile app users according to different contextual conditions, in order to attract and retain users in a more cost-effective manner.

The purpose of this study is to understand the effect of different brand positions (underdog vs top dog) and comparative advertising on consumers’ brand attitudes. Additionally, this study also aims to demonstrate the effects of inspiration, self-relevance and empathy on the relationship between brand positioning and comparative advertising.

A two-by-three factorial design was employed with brand positions (underdog vs top dog) and three types of comparative advertising (noncomparative, indirect comparative and direct comparative) as the independent variables. Inspiration serves as the mediator, while self-relevance and empathy act as moderators and brand attitude is the dependent variable.

The results show that different brand positions significantly affect brand attitudes, with respondents having a better brand attitude toward the underdog brand. Brand attitude is partially mediated by inspiration. Self-relevance moderates the relationship between brand positioning and brand attitude. However, brand positioning, comparative advertising and empathy do not have interaction effects.

This study contributes to a better understanding of the effect of psychological variables on brand positioning and comparative advertising.

The results suggest that the underdog setting requires a real and honest story because consumers will spot a fake underdog story, which will damage consumer trust in the brand and harm the brand image.

There is a lack of research using psychological variables to demonstrate the effect of being the underdog brand. This study contributes to the literature by employing psychological variables to illustrate the effect of underdog positioning. These findings can help brands develop branding positioning strategies.

This paper presents a comprehensive decision-making framework designed for family-owned hotels, specifically focusing on evaluating and selecting suppliers and strategic partners, with a particular emphasis on Iranian holding companies and five-star hotels.

The research emphasizes the unique position of family-owned hotels as not only commercial enterprises but also embodiments of tradition, personal touch and community engagement, which sets them apart in a competitive market. Through a detailed literature review, methodology and analysis, including fuzzy analysis and the TOPSIS method, the study systematically evaluates various criteria crucial for selecting suppliers and strategic partners.

The framework evaluates criteria such as price competitiveness, quality of products/services, reliability and timeliness, flexibility and scalability, communication and responsiveness, after-sales service and support, ethical and sustainable practices, technology and innovation, and compatibility with business culture. By integrating these parameters, the framework addresses both operational needs and strategic objectives, ensuring chosen suppliers and partners align with the hotels' core values and operational requirements.

The study offers valuable insights for family-owned hospitality businesses to navigate supplier and strategic partner selection, and opens avenues for future research, particularly in adapting to technological advancements, sustainability practices and the evolving dynamics of the hospitality industry.

The research underscores the significance of family-owned hotels in fostering tradition, personal connection and community engagement, contributing to the social fabric of the hospitality industry.

This paper provides a unique perspective on supplier and strategic partner selection, tailored for family-owned hotels and offers a comprehensive framework that integrates both operational needs and strategic objectives, ensuring alignment with core values and requirements.

This paper presents a new conceptualization of digital service anchored in a coconstitutive ontology of digital “x” phenomena, illuminating the pivotal role of the digital qualifier in the service context. Our objective is to provide a theoretically grounded conceptualization of digital service and its impact on the nature of the value cocreation process that characterizes digital phenomena.

Drawing from scholarly works on digital phenomena and fundamental principles of service-dominant logic, this paper delineates the essence of digital service based on the interplay between digitization and digitalization as well as the operational dynamics of generativity and its constitutive dimensions (architecture, community, governance).

The paper defines digital service as a sociotechnical process of value cocreation, where participants dynamically architect, govern and leverage digital resources. This perspective highlights the organic development of digital service and the prevalence of decentralized control mechanisms. It also underscores how the intersection between generativity’s dimensions—architecture, community and governance—shapes the dynamic evolution and outcomes of digital services.

Our conceptual framework sheds light on our understanding of digital service, offering a foundation to further explore its nature and implications for research and practice, which we illustrate using the case of ChatGPT.

This study aims to empirically test how sponsored video customization (i.e. the degree to which a sponsored video is customized for a sponsoring brand) affects video shares differently depending on influencer characteristics (i.e. mega influencer and expert influencer) and brand characteristics (i.e. brand establishment and product involvement).

This study uses a unique real-world data set that combines coded variables (e.g. customization) and objective video performance (e.g. sharing) of 365 sponsored videos to test the hypotheses. A negative binomial model is used to analyze the data set.

This study finds that the effect of video customization on video shares varies across contexts. Video customization positively affects shares if they are made for well-established brands and high-involvement products but negatively influences shares if they are produced by mega and expert influencers.

This study extends the influencer marketing literature by focusing on a new media modality – sponsored video. Drawing on the multiple inference model and the persuasion knowledge theory, this study teases out different conditions under which video customization is more or less likely to foster audience engagement, which both influencers and brands care about. The chosen research setting may limit the generalizability of the findings of this study.

The findings suggest that mega and expert influencers need to consider if their endorsement would backfire on a highly customized video. Brands that aim to engage customers with highly-customized videos should gauge their decision by taking into consideration their years of establishment and product involvement. For video-sharing platforms, especially those that are planning to expand their businesses to include “matching-making services” for brands and influencers, the findings provide theory-based guidance on optimizing such matches.

This paper fulfills an urgent research need to study how brands and influencers should produce sponsored videos to achieve optimal outcomes.

Effective customer journey design (ECJD) is considered a key variable in customer experience management and an essential source of brand meaning and pro-brand behavior. Although previous research has confirmed its importance for driving brand attitudes and loyalty, the role of consumer-brand identification as a social identity-based influence in this relationship has not yet been discussed. Drawing on construal level and social identity theories, this paper aims to investigate whether effective journeys and the resulting overall journey experience are equally powerful in driving brand loyalty among customers with different levels of consumer-brand identification.

The present article develops and tests a research model using data from the European and US service sectors (N = 1,454) to investigate how and when ECJD affects service brand loyalty.

Across two cultural contexts, four service industries and 33 service brands, the results reveal that ECJD is a crucial driver of service brand loyalty for customers with low consumer-brand identification. Moreover, the findings show that different aspects of journey effectiveness positively impact the valence of customers’ experience related to those journeys – a process that is ultimately decisive for their brand loyalty.

This study is unique because it generates theoretical and practical knowledge by combining the literature streams of customer journey design, customer experience and branding. Furthermore, this work demonstrates that consumer-brand identification is a critical boundary condition to be considered in the relationship between ECJD and brand loyalty in services.

Modernization and the rise of living standards have introduced new variants of traditional foods, from their tastes to the way they are enjoyed. This study aims to explore and examine the impacts of both traditional and modern marketing stimuli on restaurant choice intention for experiencing culinary traditions, hence answering the question of how traditional and modern aspects live together to bring about the most desirable experience for customers of traditional cuisine.

Based on the stimuli-organism-response (S-O-R) theory and mixed research methods, a model linking service quality dimensions, perceived value and restaurant choice intention is formulated and tested on quantitative data from 431 customers of Gen Y and Gen Z, given the case of Vietnamese Pho.

The findings show that food quality demonstrates the strongest impact on restaurant choice intention, followed by authenticity and nostalgia marketing. These relationships are partially mediated by perceived value. Hygiene risks and perceived value are also found to directly affect restaurant choice intention. Nevertheless, our findings are quite different between Gen Y and Gen Z customers.

This research provides crucial strategic implications for restaurant managers when it comes to serving traditional foods for different generations.

This study responds to the existing gap by examining and comparing the impacts of traditional and modern marketing stimuli on restaurant choice intention through the mediating role of perceived value. Our study also actively contributes to the ongoing multigenerational research stream by affirming the moderation role of generations (Gen Y and Gen Z) in those relationships.

Design is an important construct in the retail environment literature. Yet, the measures used for design have not followed appropriate scale development procedures. The purpose of this study is to provide a conceptual definition and then develop a scale for retail environment design (RED).

Interviews with both consumers and marketing researchers are used to generate a potential list of items. Using four different studies, these items are refined, and the RED scale is offered.

This study develops and validates the four-dimensional RED scale to measure the design of retail environments. The dimensions are functional, aesthetic, lighting and signage.

The newly developed RED scale will allow retailing researchers to measure lighting and signage qualities as part of retail design, measure design of retail environments more accurately and allow different studies to be compared.

The newly developed RED scale will allow retailers to better understand customers’ perceptions of the four dimensions of design. Retailers spend significant time and money designing and redesigning retail environments. The RED scale will enable managers to ensure these significant investments create competitive advantages and an appropriate return on investment.

A scale to measure retail environment design is developed. The scale includes two dimensions (lighting and signage) that are not typically investigated.