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The chapter proposes to investigate online reputation of hospitality brands and its measurements. Brand reputation is generally defined as an overall appraisal of a company by its stakeholders, which is the result of the company's past actions and predictions about the company's future (Ferguson, Deephouse, & Ferguson, 2000). Being viewed as the opinion shared among a group of stakeholders (Dowling, 2008), it plays an important role in the tourism industry. With the progress of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs), reviews and user-generated contents of destinations and of hospitality companies together with the related emerging brand reputation can influence consumers' behaviors and choices. Brand reputation analysis could be more useful in the hospitality brand management when integrated with brand image and brand identity analysis, mainly because in tourism businesses and destinations, brands are typically affected by an inherent fragility determined by the service nature of products (Casarin, 1996). According to Biel (1991), the meanings that consumers assign to a brand are synthesized into brand associations formed by the components perceived to underlie the brand's image. As well as brand reputation, strong, positive and unique associations reinforce a brand and increase its equity that requires significant internal brand identity efforts, which should create a corresponding brand image through integration in overall marketing programmes (Keller, 2003). It makes sense to develop an analytical research approach that compares online brand reputation (OBR) with brand association matching as a measure of the alignment between brand identity and brand image in hospitality companies. This comparative analysis emerging from brand reputation, brand image and brand identity analysis can reveal divergent situations (i.e., high brand reputation and low brand association matching) and orient brand managers in reviewing online brand communication. Brand reputation and brand image analysis will be contextualized in an online community as a social setting that is considered to be a new type of market (Muniz & O'Guinn, 2001). We focus on hospitality online communities populated by consumers and other actors such as influencers and bloggers: their brand perception could be separately compared with brand identity that we will extract from company communications including presentational information and brand-related press releases found on websites, nonfinancial narrative from annual reports, and interviews with managers published in mainstream media sources. In our analysis we will focalize on a cluster of luxury hospitality companies integrating a netnographic and text-mining techniques. We will use both the techniques in order to (1) extract and study brand associations in terms of brand reputation, brand image, and brand identity; (2) develop indicators of brand reputation and brand association matching; and (3) discuss their utility in the management of the hospitality company brands.

Retail marketing is in the midst of an evolution. The paradigm is shifting from a product-centric to a consumer-centric focus, with a particular emphasis on understanding how consumers transition from harboring an interest in a product to actually purchasing that product. In response, shopper marketing, and in-store marketing (ISM) in particular, have emerged as important mechanisms to influence shopper behavior in brick & mortar and online retail environments. The academic literature is replete with work on what factors of ISM influence shopper behavior. In this chapter, we categorize prominent streams of findings on ISM into firm, customer, competitor and product characteristics of ISM and examine how the notion of a “store” is evolving from bricks to clicks – namely from physical formats to online shopping experiences. Insights from this chapter will help retailers and store managers identify what their customers respond to within a physical store, how technology is changing the way they can capture information on customers, and how shopper behavior is evolving in response to brick & mortar and online retail environments.

This chapter has three central goals: First, it aims to introduce the concept of consumers’ online brand endorsements, which we define as consumers’ intentional, public, and positive online affiliations with brands (e.g., liking a brand page on Facebook). Second, it provides an overview of the drivers and consequences of this phenomenon. Third, it answers the question whether and when the broadly adopted marketing strategy of consumers’ online brand endorsements is feasible.

To accomplish these goals, we conducted a general review of the literature.

We identified three different drivers of consumers’ online brand endorsements: Identity-related drivers, brand-related drivers, and community-related drivers. Based on the literature we suggest that from the perspective of the endorsing consumer, online brand endorsements have the potential to be a two-sided sword.

The greater potential of this marketing technique appears to rely on the fact that consumers’ online brand endorsements are broadcasted to a gigantic network of other consumers and their potential to be contagious.

Consumers’ online brand endorsements are a new phenomenon and therefore quite understudied. Still, many brands have social media marketing strategies that aim to acquire huge amounts of endorsements by their consumers. This chapter contributes to our knowledge about the underlying mechanisms of consumers’ online brand endorsements. Moreover, it shows how and when consumers’ online brand endorsements can be a feasible marketing strategy.

This chapter aims to shed light on the role that a sustainable orientation plays in strengthening the relationships between global consumers and online brands. Despite many previous studies about the importance of sustainability considerations for national consumers’ brand commitments and purchase intentions, there is a lack of empirical studies focussing on this relationship from a global consumer perspective. A pre-study (consisting of focus group discussions) and a widely distributed international survey with responses from 74 countries show mixed results. Whereas the results from the focus groups imply that a sustainable orientation influences both global consumers’ purchase intentions and brand commitments towards online brands, the survey results imply that global consumers’ sustainable orientations do not affect purchase intentions directly, even though they influence brand commitments. An implication of these results is that an international online brand’s possibility to portray a sustainable orientation plays an important role in strengthening the relationship with global consumers, especially regarding brand commitment.

This article reviews the quantitative marketing literature on artificial intelligence (AI) through an economics lens. We apply the framework in Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence to systematically categorize 96 research papers on AI in marketing academia into five levels of impact, which are prediction, decision, tool, strategy, and society. For each paper, we further identify each individual component of a task, the research question, the AI model used, and the broad decision type. Overall, we find there are fewer marketing papers focusing on strategy and society, and accordingly, we discuss future research opportunities in those areas.

There is a rising number of Asian brands expanding to Western nations. However, one of the biggest challenges is their reputation of inferior quality. The objectives of this research are to examine the U.S. consumers’ quality perception of Asian brands and what steps can be taken to improve their perceived quality to ultimately influence patronage intentions. This study also considers how age influences U.S. consumers’ perceived quality and patronage intentions.

An online experiment using 328 U.S. female subjects was conducted to examine how quality cues (brand origin and product design) influence their perceived quality of Asian brands. The study also examines how age (due to different levels of exposure of Asian brands) moderates the relationship between product cues and perceived quality.

The findings showed that there was a difference between the younger (Generation X and Y) and older (Baby boomers and Swing) group’s perceived quality of these Asian brand origins, namely Japan and China. Product design had an impact on perceived quality, but age was not a moderating factor.

Chinese and Japanese brands can use these differences in perception of brand origins to market accordingly. Product design cues can also be used effectively to both age groups by Asian brands to improve the perceived quality of U.S. consumers.

This research provides novel insight on U.S. consumers’ perceived quality and patronage intentions from different Asian brand cues. The study also contributes to the body of literature on how the relationship between specific Asian brand cues and perceived quality may differ as a function of age.

The digitalization process has been influential on the way marketing is conducted. However, luxury brands have not yet fully channeled the benefits of the integration of various touchpoints. The aim of this chapter is to provide insights into building a luxury fashion omnichannel strategy through the integration of online and offline consumer journeys, based on the emerging needs and lifestyles of different luxury consumer segments. Accordingly, exploratory research is designed to understand luxury consumer typologies and luxury fashion shopping journeys. In-depth interviews were conducted for data collection in Istanbul, with 16 participants. Grounded theory coding was used for analyzing the data. Findings revealed four-consumer typologies –Luxury Beginners, Nouveaux Riches, Conservatives, Established Luxury Consumers. Luxury fashion journey map covering three major steps – pre-purchase, purchase, and post-­purchase – was illustrated based on the usage of both digital and non-digital channels and agents through the journey with discussions to present consumer differences. The results of the study add to the current literature and provide an omnichannel roadmap for the practitioners.

Customer experience is increasingly recognized as a source of competitive advantage. Customer experience refers to customers' responses and reactions to cues within touchpoints along customer journeys. Nowadays, customers often interact with online touchpoints – such as social media, websites, or e-commerce – in their customer journeys. Given that customer experience is multidimensional, this chapter addresses the following question: How can sensorial experiences be triggered in online touchpoints? Based on a review of the literature on customer experience and sensory marketing, four challenges in triggering sensorial experiences in online touchpoints are identified: (1) limited sensorial cues, (2) lack of thematic congruence between online and offline touchpoints, (3) sensory overload, and (4) lesser control over sensorial cues. Then, two routes through which organizations can trigger sensorial experiences in online touchpoints are proposed: (1) directly influencing sensations through sensory-enabling technologies, and (2) indirectly influencing sensorial perceptions through the use of sensory and nonsensory cues. The chapter closes with a presentation of a model that describes the process of triggering sensorial experiences in online touchpoints as well as a checklist of relevant questions for practitioners who wish to do so.

This research aims to explore the impact of augmented reality (AR), the digital technology that superimposes virtual elements in a real environment, on consumers in the context of experiential marketing. Specifically, this study proposes a research model based on the stimulus-organism-response model, which considers AR media characteristics as external stimuli, consumers’ value perceptions as the organisms, and purchase intentions as the responses. The research model was tested with 248 consumers using structural equation modelling. The results show that informativeness, ease of use, and telepresence have positive effects on consumers’ utilitarian value perception and that telepresence and interactivity have positive effects on hedonic value perception. Overall, this study contributes to the growing body of knowledge on AR and provides actionable insights for managers implementing digital transformation strategies and AR applications in marketing practices.