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This study aims to focus on the internal audiences of a nation brand, i.e. the citizens of a country and is built on the theoretical premise that migration intentions (MIs) prevalent among the skilled and educated elite of a home country signifies a weak nation brand.

Through the theoretical support of the migration motive theory of push and pull (Richmond, 1993), nation branding theory (Anholt, 2006) and the two-construct country image model (Roth and Diamantopoulos, 2009), the authors constructed a framework that incorporates the relationship between affective and cognitive country images of both home and migrant country and migration motives and intentions to migrate.

The findings reveal that push and pull factors are strongly affected by the images of the home country and the migrant country, respectively and strong home country images are associated with weak MIs, while the opposite is true if a strong migrant country image is possessed. Further, evidence of the dominance effect of cognitive images in complex decision-making environments such as migration was also provided. Moreover, the results also suggest significant differences between Chinese and Pakistani respondents.

This study guides nation branding researchers by opening up a debate on self-images and conceptually independent attitudinal constructs of country image. For policymakers in developing countries, the results reveal that they should primarily strengthen their internal brands and focus on cognitive images to stem the flow of brain drain.

This study takes the traditional country image debate to migration discourse, moves it forward, contextualizes it as a function of a nation’s brand strength and provides evidence that confluence of migration studies with the theoretical stream of nation branding can provide significant explanations for migrant behavior.

In September 2019, Booking.com changed from the smiley-based scoring system (2.5–10) to the purely 10-point evaluation system (1–10). The smiley-based service evaluation is based on the multi-dimensional (M-D) system, whereas the purely 10-point service evaluation is based on the single-dimensional (S-D) system. This paper aims to focus on how a change in review posting policies impacts service evaluations regarding review generation and distribution.

The authors exploit the natural experiment using Booking.com when the site changed its scoring system from a multidimensional smiley-based service evaluation system to an S-D scoring system. The authors collected online reviews posted on two travel agencies (Booking.com and Priceline.com) between September 2019 and October 2020. A quasi-experimental approach, Difference-in-Differences, was used to isolate the impacts of the new scoring system from the impacts of the change in the service evaluation environment, i.e. COVID-19.

The change in the scoring system considerably alters review distributions by decreasing the portion of positive reviews but increasing the portion of highly positive reviews. Using the theory of emotion work (Hochschild, 1979, 2001), DID is also the reason that the former M-D smiley-based system could have underrated, highly positive reviews of services. Using the information transfer theory (Belkin, 1984), the authors reason the asymmetric transfer of information when users consume reviews from the older (M-D) system but are required to generate reviews on a newer (S-D) system.

The findings would provide online review platform management with a deeper understanding of the consequences of changes in service evaluations when the scoring system is changed.

Though the change in the scoring system would affect how customers evaluate the services of hotels, the causal impacts of switching to the new S-D scoring system have not yet been thoroughly covered by prior hospitality and service evaluation literature, which this research aspires to do.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the significant contribution of emotions along with other conventional loyalty drivers on the loyalty intentions.

The influence of three conventional loyalty drivers, i.e., value equity, brand equity, relationship equity on loyalty intentions was investigated by further exploring the moderating effects of negative and positive emotions. A sample of 834 Pakistani consumers in the supermarkets and banking industries was studied employing store-intercept survey design.

Consumer behavior is driven by emotions in both the supermarkets and banking context. Thus, in order to better predict customer loyalty intentions, the emotional component is crucial and should be included along with other cognitive components.

Since customers’ emotional responses throughout service delivery are strongly linked to loyalty, therefore supermarkets and bank service managers need to make sure that the customers experience with their services as pleasurable as possible and for this purpose, customer service employees need to be trained in order to better understand the customers’ emotional responses during the course of service delivery process.

The present study complements the existing literature regarding the role of emotions in service settings and offers a new point of view for the linkage among emotions, customer equity drivers and customer loyalty intentions.

The purpose of this paper is to use the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) paradigm to understand how the source characteristics of the local and foreign food vloggers impact perceptions associated with the consumption setting of food vlogs (FVs), that is, experiential value and authentic value, cultivate the experiences of parasocial interaction (PSI) and how they are channelized into behavioral and attitudinal dispositions of food tourists.

Following a survey research design, a sample of 418 participants with an interest in food-related touristic journeys was analyzed. Both Pakistani and foreign FVs about Peshawar, a historic city situated on the ancient silk route, were selected for a common reference point.

The reception of Pakistani and foreign food vloggers differed significantly, implying that source characteristics, especially perceived similarity with the food vlogger, are an essential factor in the case of FVs. FVs’ authentic and experiential values significantly nurtured the experiences of PSI and positively influenced viewers’ evaluation of vlogs. The experiences of PSI cultivated visit intentions towards a destination. However, their relationship with the destination’s food image was not significantly related. The favorable reception of FVs was positively associated with the destination’s food image and visit intentions.

The findings provide tourism and hospitality managers with suggestions on how to appreciate and incorporate the marketability of FVs into their destination marketing campaigns.

This study opens up new avenues of scholarly debate by comparing the local and foreign food vloggers’ source effectiveness in cultivating PSI experiences and resultant attitudinal and behavioral changes. This study adds to the emergent research stream of understanding the food vlogger–viewer relationship through the S-O-R framework.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the role of financial advice on investor trading behavior by analyzing the influence of advisor personality.

The study utilized the Big Five personality framework from Costa and McCrae (1992) to measure personality traits of advisors and examined the data collected from 314 stock investor–advisor dyads. Personality traits of advisors were measured by the NEO-Five Factor Inventory (Costa and McCrae, 1989). Confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to assess the fitness of the Big Five model. We followed two-stage least square method for estimating endogenous covariate by employing instrumental variable analysis. Probit model was used to evaluate the moderating influence of advisor personality traits on the association between the usage of financial advice and trading behavior.

The authors found that financial advice positively impacts investors’ stock trading frequency. The authors also provide empirical evidence that financial advice is more likely to increase trading frequency when advisor personality tends to be openness, conscientiousness and agreeableness. On the other hand, information acquired from financial advisors causes fewer adjustments in investors’ portfolios when the personality of advisors is likely to be extraverted and neurotic.

The theoretical model in our study seeks to explain that a psychological factor, namely, advisor personality, influences the way an investor interprets information signals from financial advice, which, in turn, influences the investor’s decision to trade in securities.

This research suggests that characteristics of advisors other than those of investors can be of relevance for policy makers in their attempts to improve their business in the financial services industry.

Survey-based studies in finance are lacking. This study adds to the existing literature of behavioral finance that accounts for the observed variations in investors’ financial decision making explained by psychological factors. No previous study has been conducted so far exploring variations in the impact of financial advice on investors’ stock trading behavior by the Big Five advisor personality, and this paper strives to fill this research gap in Chinese stock market.

The implementation of customer equity drivers (CED) as a crucial marketing tactic to surge customer loyalty intentions has received a considerable importance in the literature. However, most of the research done in the past has mainly centralized around western societies. To make it even more interesting is the fact that the significance of customer emotions has been ignored by the previous studies. Therefore, the purpose of this paper to explore the impacts of CED on loyalty intentions along with exploring the moderating role of customer emotions (positive emotions and negative emotions).

A sample of 661 Chinese banking customers was collected by making the use of store-intercept survey design. The gathered data were then utilized to empirically validate the proposed model by making the use of hierarchical moderated regression.

Loyalty intentions were found to be driven by emotions of Chinese banking customers. Consequently, in order to better forecast the loyalty intentions of the customers, the emotional aspect is vital and therefore should be incorporated along with other cognitive aspects (value equity, brand equity and relationship equity).

The managers of the banks should make every effort to make the visit of their customers as pleasant as possible as the emotional responses of customers have a significant impact on the formation of loyalty intentions.

The current study holds its unique contribution by including emotions in the service-oriented settings.

This paper aims to show how the relative global status of a country influences its internal country reputation and resulting social cognitions of citizens.

The theories of social identity and collective self-esteem were employed to explain how self-assessment and evaluations of a country’s reputation are regulated by social concepts and vice versa. The structural equation modeling technique was employed to estimate the conjectural relations.

The groups which people belong to are their primary source of pride and self-esteem. But if a country is negatively stereotyped on the global stage, it weakens the ability of people to live their nation’s brand. A formidable nation’s brand can only be constructed if people are deeply involved and committed to it.

The results of this study have implications for policymakers, nation’s branding experts and researchers to focus on internal branding of nations. The academicians and researchers should focus more on the internal audiences in their role as a “communication medium” to external audiences. A more purposeful internal branding will promote community strengthening and enable people to act as a mouth piece in communicating a desired experience to external audiences.

The existing nations branding literature does not show how relative global status of a country influences self-assessment and evaluations of people’s associations with that country. The present study aims to fill this gap by drawing on the theories of social identity, self-categorization and collective self-esteem to show how people’s self-perception in negatively perceived countries is regulated in relation to their country’s relative global status and its influence on resulting social cognitions.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the connection between the degree of religiosity and the product involvement level in determining the various constructs of consumer behavior.

On the basis of a small survey, clothes were selected as a high involvement product, and snacks were selected as a low involvement product. A modified version of Sproles and Kendal's Customer Style Inventory scale was used to profile the behaviour of consumers, using confirmatory factor analysis approach. Worthington et al.'s Religious Commitment Inventory scale was used to measure the religiosity levels. Data were collected from students of five universities located in different regions of Pakistan.

Consumer behaviour varies with the level of involvement and the degree of religiosity. In the case of high involvement product category, the highly religious group was found to be less recreational, fashion conscious and impulsive in their shopping orientations. It was also determined that the higher religious group was more socially influenced in making purchase decisions, more conscious about their lifestyle and less confused by information over choice, as compared to the less religious group. In the case of the low involvement product category, it was determined that religiosity negatively influenced the brand consciousness of consumers. The results indicated that higher religious consumers were less impulsive and did not give much consideration to advertisements in making purchase decisions; but it was opposite for the less religious consumers. Highly religious consumers in the low involvement product category were also found to be more socially influenced and not as confused by excessive information in making their purchase decisions. Overall, it was established that in order to better understand the intricacies of the behaviour of consumers, their purchasing habits should be studied in the context of varying levels of religiosity and product involvement.

This study focused on youth only, so results derived might not be generalized to the other segments of the population.

The current study aims to understand how religiosity and involvement level complement each other in determining the behaviour of consumers and whether the level of religiosity equally determines the behaviour of consumers in the low involvement product category and high involvement product category or not. No previous study has been conducted to explore this dimension of consumer behaviour, and this paper categorically strives to fill this gap.

This paper seeks to explore the influential role of religion in developing a nations brand and discusses the possibility of re-positioning the brand Pakistan as a “Sufi country” that is coherent with the cultural values and social realities of the country.

The paper follows a case study approach in delineating the image problem encountered by Pakistan and describing how governments in Pakistan related country branding efforts with the religious sentiments to foster their motives. This paper also follows an inductive approach in making a theoretical explanation about promoting Pakistan's image as a “Sufi country”.

The negative image of Pakistan is gaining worldwide currency due to the absence of proactive management by government and relevant stakeholders. Pakistan as a Sufi brand has a potential to grow into a strong country brand. Branding Pakistan as a Sufi country would not only pave the way for forming a different set of associations that would be positively contradictory to the current militancy and extremism oriented perceptions associated with Pakistan, but it would also benefit her as a tourism destination.

This paper is basically a policy recommendation regarding the reconstruction of brand Pakistan around the Sufi theme that is fairly consistent with the prevailing disposition of Pakistani society, in contrast to the current image of Pakistan cultivated in the World's media as a country with the terrorist roots. With thousands of Sufi Khanqahs, tombs and shrines spread throughout the country conforming to the ancient Islamic architecture with shades of Mughal artifacts presents with a significant ‘spiritual tourism’ opportunity provided with proper management and planning.

The present study makes significant contribution to the theory of nation's branding by discussing the potential role of religion in developing a nation's brand, a topic that hasn't been profoundly inquired. Moreover it discusses the reputation management of a country brand in a crisis, a topic that hasn't been adequately studied.