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This study aims to focus on the dynamics in influencer-consumer relationships to understand how Generation Z consumers’ identification and social comparison with influencers shape their response to influencers’ branded posts. Specifically, this study investigates how perceived similarity and wishful identification lead to distinct social comparison mechanisms that affect Generation Z consumers’ self-improvement motives, which, in turn, drive their message engagement, brand attitudes and purchase intentions.

An online survey was conducted with 295 college students who are digital natives and whose purchase decisions are heavily influenced by social media influencers.

The study findings confirmed that perceived similarity positively influenced assimilative comparison emotions of optimism, admiration and aspiration while negatively influenced contrastive comparison emotions of envy, depression and resentment. Wishful identification positively affected both assimilative and contrastive comparison emotions. Both types of social comparison emotions further affected consumers’ motivations to follow the influencer for self-improvement, thereby enhancing their brand attitude, purchase intention and engagement behaviors.

This study is one of the earliest attempts to investigate the relationship dynamics between influencers and consumers from the lens of social comparison. The study examines the antecedents of perceived similarity and wishful identification, the mediators of upward comparison emotions and self-improvement motives and the brand evaluation outcomes of message engagement, brand attitude and purchase intention.

This study examines the effects of employees' personal social media posts on external publics' online engagement and offline word-of-mouth (WOM) intentions about a company. Specifically, it investigates how employee post characteristics including valence and content and employer reputation jointly influence publics' online and offline behaviors.

A 2 (post valence: positive vs. negative) × 2 (post content: organization-related vs. job-related) × 2 (employer reputation: good vs. bad) between-subjects experiment was conducted. Participants were asked to view a stimulus social media post created by a fictitious company employee, reflecting one of the eight experimental conditions on a random basis. After viewing, they were requested to report their online engagement intentions (i.e., “like,” “share” and “comment”) with the post and offline WOM intentions about the company.

The experimental results showed that participants expressed more “like” intentions when they viewed a positive post than a negative post. Further, they were more likely to “comment” on a job-related post as opposed to an organization-related post. In addition, a significant interaction effect between post valence and employer reputation on publics' online engagement was found, which in turn influenced their offline WOM intentions about the company.

This study is among the first empirical attempts to examine the effectiveness of employees' personal social media posts on external publics' online and offline behaviors. The experimental findings highlight the importance of managing employee relations from a corporate reputation perspective.

While the origin of Korean Industrial Relations goes back 150 years when the country opened its seaports to foreign countries, it didn’t emerge as a field of study until 1950s when academics began to write books and papers on the Korean labor movement, labor laws, and labor economics. In this paper, we sketch this history and describe important events and people that contributed to the development of industrial relations in Korea. Korean industrial relations in the early 20th century were significantly distorted by the 35-year-Japanese colonial rule (1910–1945). After regaining its independence, the U.S. backed, growth-oriented, military-based, authoritarian Korean government followed suit and consistently suppressed organized labor until 1987. Finally, the 1987 Great Labor Offensive allowed the labor movement to flourish in a democratized society. Three groups were especially influential in the field of industrial relations in the early 1960s: labor activists, religious leaders, and university faculty. Since then, numerous scholars have published books and papers on Korean industrial relations, whose perspectives, goals, and processes are still being debated and argued. The Korean Industrial Relations Association (KIRA) was formed on March 25, 1990 and many other academic and practitioner associations have also come into being since then. The future of industrial relations as a field of study in Korea does not seem bright, however. Issues regarding organized labor are losing attention because of a steadily shrinking unionization rate, changing societal attitude toward labor unions, and the enactment of new and improved laws and regulations regarding employment relationships more broadly. Thus, we suggest that emerging issues such as contingent workers, works councils and tripartite partnership, conflict management, and human rights will be addressed by the field of industrial relations in Korea only if this field breaks with its traditional focus on union and union–management relations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the efficacy of microbial elimination using different sanitizers in raw vegetables (cherry tomatoes, spring onions, Chinese chives, and chicory) and to analyze the efficacy of Escherichia coli O157:H7 reduction by type of sanitizer and vegetable.

To assess the sanitizing effects of microbial elimination by variety of vegetable, the samples were grouped into four different washing methods: control (no sanitizer), 100 ppm chlorine, 100 ppm electrolyzed water, and 200 ppm electrolyzed water after prewashing. Subsequently, quantitative microbiological experiments were conducted to assess aerobic mesophilic plate count (APC), coliform, E. coli, and Bacillus cereus, and sensory changes of the sanitized vegetables were tested. Thereafter, measurement of the sanitizing effects on bacterial reduction after inoculation with E. coli O157:H7 was conducted.

The microbial levels of four types of vegetables ranged from 3.37 to 5.24 log CFU/g for APC, 2.41 to 5.57 log CFU/g for E. coli, 0.25 to 5.40 log CFU/g for coliform, and 0.83 to 5.44 log CFU/g for B. cereus. After three types of sanitizing treatments, microbial reduction effects showed 0.94-1.84 log CFU/g for APC, 0.56-1.00 log CFU/g for E. coli, 0.18-1.26 log CFU/g for coliform, and 0.56-1.23 log CFU/g for B. cereus (p<0.05). In sensory evaluation, there were no significant differences in taste and flavor between with and without sanitizing treatments. Regarding bacterial reduction after inoculation with E. coli O157:H7, the microbial reduction on vegetables was shown to be in the range of 0.27-1.57 log CFU/g with 100 ppm sodium hypochlorite, 0.66-3.07 log CFU/g with 100 ppm electrolyzed water, and 0.79-2.55 log CFU/g with 200 ppm electrolyzed water. Chicory, cherry tomato, and spring onion showed significant reduction levels of E. coli O157:H7 after sanitation (p<0.05).

This study revealed that different sanitization methods are required for different types of vegetables. Electrolyzed water treatment (100 ppm) is a more effective and safe method of washing raw vegetables. Given that the main purpose of sanitizing fresh-cut produce is to maximally reduce microorganism levels, different methods of sanitizing fresh-cut produce with an adequate washing method should be used according to vegetable type.

The purpose of this paper is to compare customer experience (CE) between digital and traditional South Korean bank users and its relationship with customer satisfaction (CS).

A survey of bank customers was conducted, and an ANOVA test was performed to compare the means of CS between digital and traditional bank (TB) users as well as four dimensions of CE, such as usefulness, convenience, employee-customer engagement (ECE) and security. The ordinal regression analysis was also performed to test the moderation effect of digital bank (DB) use on the relationship between CE and satisfaction.

The means of usefulness were higher among DB users than TB users. By contrast, ECE and security means were lower for digital than TB users. The ordinal regression analysis indicated that DB use had a moderating effect on the relationship between convenience and CS and the relationship between ECE and CS. DB use encouraged increased positive relationships between convenience and CS, and moderated the relationship between ECE and CS in a negative direction.

ECE and security for DBs is weak. Therefore, bank executives need to improve these areas through real-time customer services and adding authentication procedures.

Unlike previous studies, this study proposed a model that reveals differences in CE between traditional and DB users. It explored the effects of CE on CS to contribute to the continued development of South Korean DBs.

Numerous scales have been developed and utilized in the tourism and hospitality field, yet, their psychometric properties have not been systematically reviewed and evaluated. This gap compromises researchers' ability to develop better measures and improve measurement decisions. In this current study, 56 scales were identified and evaluated in terms of their psychometric properties. It was found that most scales were imperfect in measuring tourism and hospitality domains, and most scales did not provide explicit information about the scale development procedures that were adopted. The scale development procedure and psychometric properties of the reviewed scales are summarized, evaluated, and recommendations are made for future tourism and hospitality scale development.

This study aims to explore the role of restaurant experienscape in affecting diners' emotions and satisfaction with solo dining, considering the moderating role of solo dining willingness and public self-consciousness (PSC).

In total, 403 Korean customers who had dined alone at restaurants in the past three months participated in this study. Structural equation modeling, including multiple group analysis, was conducted to examine the hypotheses.

The dining atmosphere influenced solo diners' positive emotions but not their negative emotions. Responses from other guests and the interactional fairness of employees affected solo diners' negative emotions but not their positive emotions. Food sensory influences both positive and negative emotions. This study found that PSC significantly moderated the effect of the dining atmosphere on positive emotions, and solo dining willingness significantly moderated the impact of food sensory on positive emotions.

This study suggests that restaurant managers should pay close attention to providing fair service to all customers by training and educating employees because the unfair treatment that solo diners receive from employees affects focal customers' negative emotions.

The experienscape model was applied to the solo dining context based on Mehrabian and Russell's (1974) stimulus–organism–response paradigm and Pizam and Tasci's (2019) experienscape concept, which reflects the growing trend in solo dining.

This study aims to examine how information asymmetry, which refers to an information gap between a firm’s management and its investors regarding the firm’s true value, influences firms’ dividend and investment decisions in the restaurant industry. This study also investigated the moderating role of a firm’s level of franchising in the relationship between information asymmetry and these behaviors of restaurant firms.

This study used generalized method of moments panel regression analyses. Principal component analysis was also used to create a composite index of information symmetry.

This study demonstrated that in asymmetric information environments, restaurant managers tend to reduce dividend payments. In addition, this study showed that information asymmetry leads to restaurant managers’ investment inefficiency. However, the investment inefficiency of the restaurant industry was found to decrease as restaurant firms’ level of franchising increases.

Firms’ dividends and investment decisions are of great interest to investors because these decisions heavily influence investors’ wealth-maximization goals. By shedding light on the previously unrecognized determinants of dividend and investment behaviors in the restaurant industry, this study helps individual investors to make informed investing decisions.

Conflicting arguments can be made regarding the impact of asymmetric information environments on the dividend and investment behaviors of restaurant firms. This study aimed to verify these as-yet unclear relationships in the restaurant industry.

Trust has emerged as a crucial research topic in the sharing economy. However, scholarship on trust in sharing accommodation remains limited. By using stakeholder theory, this study aims to provide a systematic framework for integrating trust among multiple stakeholders and identify potential knowledge gaps and future research directions for trust in sharing accommodation.

The authors select papers using a combination of multiple keywords from EBSCOhost and Web of Science. The analysis includes 172 journal papers published between 2011 and 2021. The authors conduct a systematic review through thematic content analysis, and each paper is analyzed using manual coding.

The analysis shows that key stakeholders for trust building in sharing accommodation include consumers, hosts, platforms, residents and governments, with most studies focusing on the consumer perspective. The study integrates various trust antecedents and outcomes from the above multistakeholder. Second, this study summarizes the most commonly used theories, and more diversified theories could be applied to future research. Third, this study finds that most studies use quantitative methods, and researchers should introduce more integrated methodologies such as machine learning on a large scale. Furthermore, the current research disciplinary paradigm should be extended to multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to promote innovation in trust research. Finally, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought both challenges and opportunities to industry as well as researchers, and more institutional rather than commercial perspectives need to be addressed.

The study contributes to the trust and the sharing economy literature by providing a systematic framework for integrating trust from multistakeholder perspectives. The study also points out several future research directions by combining micro and macro multistakeholder perspectives, identifying more diversified theories and methodologies and specifying multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches.

The study advances knowledge by providing a systematic framework for integrating trust among multiple stakeholders and proposing future research directions for trust in sharing accommodation.