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The growth in cryptomarkets has reinvigorated the research on illicit drug distribution due to the availability of large-scale data. This data has enabled researchers to ask new and detailed questions about how participants in these markets trust each other enough for the market not to collapse. This question deserves more attention because it has become a taken-for-granted notion that repeated transactions and social categories create trust. Whether online or on the street, economic exchanges under illegality are more uncertain than transactions in the legal economy. This puts higher demands on trust, as there is less information and the stakes are higher. In this chapter, the author presents definitions, typologies, and disciplinary contributions to the study of trust and examine how it has been operationalised in a sample of 13 peer-reviewed articles. These articles focus on three dimensions of trust: process-based trust that derives from repeated transactions with known partners; character-based trust measured by the networked reputation scores; and institutional-based trust in the platform and its administrators. In practice, the trust bases are intertwined. Drawing on the broader social science literature on trust, a mesolevel operationalisation that centres on networked reputation scores as embedded in processes and institutions can draw the research together in a multidisciplinary framework.

There are two major strategies for short video advertising which are KOL (key opinion leader) endorsement and in-feed advertising. The authors aim to research the effectiveness of these two strategies for heterogeneous sellers.

The study employed a data set of users from Douyin. Using an endogenous treatment model, the study empirically examines the two strategies' effectiveness in attracting product traffic for online retailors at a short video app Douyin (TikTok).

The results show that the performance of in-feed advertising is higher when the seller's product is of lower price and when the seller has smaller cumulative video exposure. In addition, KOL endorsement is effective regardless of the product price, but performs better when the seller has larger cumulative video exposure.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is one of the first to explore the interaction effects of two major advertising strategies, KOL endorsement and in-feed advertising on short video platforms. The findings provide important theoretical contributions and practical implications.

The popularity of social networks has created business opportunities to the electronic commerce environment, being recently named as social commerce. The purpose of this paper is to analyze – from the perspective of the consumer – the main factors and characteristics (personal or related to the products bought) that have influenced consumers to participate in social commerce buying, recommending, comparing and sharing information about products and services in online marketplace and communities.

The study is characterized as an exploratory descriptive research, operationalized through a survey, applied to 229 participants of the social network Facebook. The research involves a qualitative stage for identifying potential variables that influence the participation of consumers in social commerce, followed by a quantitative one, including data collection procedures, validation and data analysis.

The results show trust, perceived usefulness and information quality as the factors that most influence consumer participation in social commerce, being trust in the website the main predictor. Concerning the characteristics, the findings also show that more expensive products and products classified as computers and electronics use ratings, recommendations and comments online more intensively than books, travel, household appliances and fashion products.

As limitations of the study, the authors highlight the small number of interviews conducted during the qualitative stage, which may have left out other relevant factors of the analysis on consumers’ participation in social commerce. Another limitation refers to the selection of the participants of the study; all members of the social network Facebook are identified by the contact net of the authors – though it has been tried to enlarge this contact list by requesting the respondents to share the questionnaire link with their acquaintances, we should be cautious about the generalization of the results.

The study proposes an instrument to identify factors and characteristics that are taken into consideration by the consumers when participating in social commerce. Such a tool can be replicated by firms included in this type of commerce, in order to evaluate the behavior and perception of their customers about their performance in the online environment. This study also highlights trust, information quality and perceived usefulness of the website as the most influencing factors of the consumers’ participation in social commerce. In addition, the authors identified that more expensive products and products classified as computers and electronics seem to use more intensively ratings, recommendations and comments online provided by other people. This fact supports the research literature that (positive or negative) online recommendations influence the consumers purchase behavior, reducing uncertainties about the products and increasing credibility and trust.

Online food delivery applications (OFDAs) provide an expedient platform, and consumers’ access to food has been drastically altered, especially during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aimed to completely explore the attributes that influence consumers' purchase intention and how an app's aesthetics can evoke feelings that predict continuous usage intentions for OFDAs. The food industry, especially restaurants, heavily relies on mobile technology to facilitate critical online food delivery during the pandemic crisis.

The data for this study are gathered from 477 food consumers located in the federal capital territory (FCT) of Islamabad, Pakistan, through convenient sampling by developing a self-administrated online survey. SmartPLS is used for structural equation modeling to test the proposed research model and perform bootstrapping and algorithmic analysis.

Our findings revealed that perceived value positively predicted consumers’ purchase intentions. Moreover, perceived value mediates the association of information quality, familiarity, time-saving, usability and reputation with purchase intentions and fear of COVID-19 moderates the relationship between perceived value and purchase intention.

This research work has significant implications for researchers, web developers, app designers, delivery services, restaurants and other enterprises as it demonstrates the importance of aesthetically pleasing OFDAs in eliciting positive emotions and bolstering consumers’ intentions to continue using the app for efficient food delivery services.

This study expanded the application of the technology acceptance model (TAM) and attention, interest, desire and action (AIDA) by examining consumers’ purchase intentions in the context of OFDAs. Further, the successful utilization of TAM enhanced the understanding of consumer perceptions and behavioral intentions about the usage of OFDAs.

This study aims to investigate consumer behaviour towards online shopping, which further examines various factors limiting consumers for online shopping behaviour. The purpose of the research was to find out the problems that consumers face during their shopping through online stores.

A quantitative research method was adopted for this research in which a survey was conducted among the users of online shopping sites.

As per the results total six factors came out from the study that restrains consumers to buy from online sites – fear of bank transaction and faith, traditional shopping more convenient than online shopping, reputation and services provided, experience, insecurity and insufficient product information and lack of trust.

This study is beneficial for e-tailers involved in e-commerce activities that may be customer-to-customer or customer-to-the business. Managerial implications are suggested for improving marketing strategies for generating consumer trust in online shopping.

In contrast to previous research, this study aims to focus on identifying those factors that restrict consumers from online shopping.

Cryptomarkets or darknet marketplaces host multiple ‘vendors’ selling a variety of illicit products. The most sold and sought products on such markets are illegal drugs. These markets use cryptocurrencies as a payment system and provide participants with anonymity through their location on the dark web, and in recent years they have seen continuous growth in revenue and exchange. Existing literature has provided various explanations for this growth, but in 2017 the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction and Europol concluded in their 2017 ‘Drugs and the Darknet’ report that current interpretations of trends are not sufficient. This chapter will provide an alternative explanation for this phenomenon by considering web-based drug selling and purchasing in terms of trends towards ‘Uberisation’ and ‘McDonaldisation’ and applying Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital to the discussion of the dynamic cultures of consumption and different subcultures of the drug world.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role that positive emotional experiences play in the generation of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) and the influence both variables have, together with customer satisfaction and brand reputation, on customer loyalty in the context of hospitality services.

An online survey has been conducted including customers of an important hotel chain in the holiday up-market segment. The study sample is composed of 878 customers from Germany and the UK. The model has been tested using partial least squares technique.

Results indicate that positive emotional experiences have a positive effect on satisfaction, eWOM generation and company reputation. This study identifies the provision of emotional experiences as a powerful generator of positive eWOM in the hospitality context and it states that customer satisfaction, in itself, does not guarantee positive eWOM generation.

Designing unique, tailor-made, memorable experiences can become a key element to increase loyalty and, particularly, to foster the generation of recommendations, that is positive eWOM, in the hotel industry.

The study makes a contribution on the antecedents of customer satisfaction, eWOM engagement and loyalty in the specific context of hotel services.

Este trabajo analiza el papel que juegan las experiencias emocionales positivas en la generación de eWOM y la influencia que ambas variables, junto con la satisfacción del cliente y la reputación de la marca, ejercen en la lealtad del cliente en el contexto de los servicios hoteleros.

Se ha realizado una encuesta online a los clientes de una importante cadena hotelera de categoría media-alta del segmento vacacional. La muestra estaba compuesta por 878 clientes de Alemania y Reino Unido. El modelo ha sido analizado mediante Mínimos Cuadrados Parciales (PLS).

Los resultados indican que las experiencias emocionales positivas tienen un impacto positivo sobre la satisfacción, la generación de eWOM y la reputación de la empresa. El estudio demuestra que la provisión de experiencias emocionales positivas constituye un poderoso factor generador de eWOM positivo en el contexto de los servicios hoteleros, mientras que la satisfacción del consumidor no garantiza, por sí misma, la generación de eWOM positivo.

El diseño de experiencias únicas y memorables puede convertirse en un elemento clave para aumentar la lealtad y, en particular, fomentar la generación de recomendaciones positivas (eWOM) por parte de los clientes en el contexto de los servicios hoteleros.

Este trabajo realiza una contribución al estudio de los precursores de la satisfacción del cliente, la generación de eWOM y la lealtad en el contexto específico de los servicios hoteleros.

Experiencias emocionales, eWOM, lealtad, satisfacción, reputación, hoteles

Trabajo de investigación

This chapter explores the disruptive potential of the Internet to transform illicit drug markets while also challenging stereotypical depictions and superficial understandings of supply and demand. It argues that the digital transformation of illicit drug markets combines, on one hand, a reconfiguration of the scope and impact of how sellers, buyers, and other actors interact within and upon digitally mediated retail drug markets and, on the other hand, continuing trends in the embeddedness of market structures in cultural, economic, political, and legal realms. We develop conceptual ideas for studying the architecture of digital drug markets by drawing on interdisciplinary approaches to digitalisation, markets, and drugs. To understand the functioning of online drug markets, we first need to understand digitalisation. Thus, we draw on scholarship on the digital transformation of society and, second, put forward an understanding of markets that considers how personal relations and social structures enhance and restrict market exchange. Thus, we draw on economic sociology. Third, we build on and extend social science research on illicit drug markets which points out that drug markets exhibit significant variations over time and across jurisdictions. The introduction aims to provide a research agenda that can help us to explore ongoing digital transformations of illicit drug markets. It expands and deepens scholarship on the technological, structural, economic, and cultural factors underlying the resilience and growth of digital drug markets. It also goes beyond a concern with just one type of digital drug market into wider forms of digital environments.

This study aims to develop and validate a scale for measuring online fashion brand recognition (OFBR).

Given the existing literature on brand, multiple stages of studies were conducted as a part of the scale development process. The OFBR scale was validated by a step-by-step process following the scale validation methodology suggested in the specialised literature.

The results demonstrate the 25 items of five unique factors that form the OFBR construct and confirm the strong validity of the construct. This finding suggests that the five-dimensional approach (online brand familiarity, online visual simplicity, online aesthetic attraction, online brand emotion and online social reputation) plays important role to form OFBR.

A valid and reliable OFBR scale provides a foundation for broadening the understanding on the important constructs that form OFBR, which is essential for online fashion retailing. Knowledge of the crucial antecedents that influence consumers towards online fashion products can enhance marketers’ capability to position their brands towards their target markets.

The relevance of this study lies in validating the scale for measuring OFBR for the first time in the literature on online fashion brand.

Este estudio tiene como objetivo desarrollar y validar una escala para medir el reconocimiento de marcas de moda online (OFBR).

Partiendo de la literatura de marca, se llevaron a cabo múltiples estudios como parte del proceso de desarrollo de la escala. La escala OFBR fue validada en un proceso de diversas etapas siguiendo la metodología de validación de escalas sugerida en la literatura especializada.

Los resultados demuestran los veinticinco ítems de cinco factores únicos que forman el constructo OFBR y confirman la validez del constructo. Este hallazgo sugiere que el enfoque de cinco dimensiones (familiaridad con la marca online, simplicidad visual online, atracción estética online, emoción de la marca online y reputación social online) juega un papel importante en la formación de la OFBR.

Una escala OFBR válida y fiable proporciona una base para ampliar la comprensión de los constructos importantes que forman OFBR, lo cual es esencial para la venta de moda online. Conocer los antecedentes que condicionan al consumidor al comprar productos de moda online puede mejorar la capacidad del vendedor para posicionar su marca en el mercado objetivo.

El interés de este estudio radica en la validación de la escala para medir la OFBR por primera vez en la literatura sobre la marca de moda online.

Artículo de investigación