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The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of physical environment design (PED) and its antecedents on consumers’ emotional well-being (EWB). Drawing on place identity and emotional theories, the study aims to provide a new perspective to retail store experiences.

A survey of 800 respondents was conducted in London, out of which 764 responses were constructively used. The data was collected from international retail outlets, and structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data.

The empirical results show that PED has a positive effect on consumers’ EWB. Among the antecedents, visual identity does not have any significant effect on PED and EWB. In contrast, communication had a significant effect on PED but did not have any effect on EWB, and further, cultural heritage had a positive effect on both PED and EWB. Further, moderator analysis identifies the boundary conditions under which specific theories hold.

The value of this paper lies in its potential to be used for creating the perfect design planning in retail stores. Significant implications for managers and researchers are highlighted.

This paper presents an innovative approach to develop the principles of retail store’s PED to support the EWB of consumers.

The study aims to explore the theoretical framework of Halal B2B marketing in the metaverse, develop a conceptual framework for future research, identify challenges and opportunities, including technological, cultural and compliance aspects, and provide insights for the effective integration of the metaverse into Halal B2B marketing practices.

The research employs a comprehensive literature review, examining works on halal marketing, Islamic business ethics and technology adoption in Islamic markets. The study also identifies key stakeholders in Halal B2B marketing within the metaverse, such as Halal businesses, Muslim buyers, technology developers, regulatory bodies and others, and discusses their unique challenges and contributions.

The study presents a conceptual framework depicting the interaction among various stakeholders in Halal B2B marketing within the metaverse. It identifies opportunities such as enhanced customer engagement, global market expansion and innovative branding, and discusses challenges including technological disparities, cultural sensitivities and Halal compliance.

The conceptual framework delineated in this paper succinctly outlines the potential challenges confronted by diverse stakeholders in building the digital Halal market ecosystem within the metaverse. These frameworks augment the understanding of the metaverse as an evolving digital technology for brands operating within this digital space. This contributes to both theoretical and practical insights into the integration of the metaverse into business operations. While the metaverse holds promise for immersive and interconnected digital experiences, it also comes with several limitations and challenges that need to be taken into account.

The research introduces a framework that elucidates the professional relationships among key entities: Halal B2B brands aiming to enter the metaverse for brand promotion, buyers seeking business opportunities within the metaverse, and technology developers responsible for establishing the required infrastructure. This framework offers a succinct portrayal of the stakeholders' positions, delves into potential opportunities within the metaverse, and scrutinises the inherent challenges associated with these possibilities.

The metaverse empowers Halal enterprises to provide tailor-made experiences that resonate with the preferences of Muslim consumers. It offers scope for personalised marketing, emphasising its potential as a pivotal element in the triumph of Halal B2B marketing within the metaverse. In the realm of Halal marketing, cultural and ethical alignment holds paramount importance. The metaverse provides opportunities for devising marketing approaches that are attuned to Islamic cultural and ethical values.

The study results in several recommendations that could help Halal B2B brands effectively leverage the metaverse's potential and cater to Muslim consumers' needs innovatively. These are: (a) Invest in Metaverse Infrastructure by partnering with technology developers or invest in virtual spaces tailored to Halal products; (b) Tailor Marketing Experiences through creating immersive experiences aligned with Muslim consumers' preferences; (c) Ensure Cultural and Ethical Alignment by consulting religious scholars to ensure marketing respects Islamic values; (d) Foster Business Opportunities by facilitating virtual trade shows and marketplaces for Halal products; (e) Educate Stakeholders by organising workshops to introduce the metaverse's potential benefits; (f) Address Challenges Proactively by tackling privacy, accessibility and regulatory issues head-on; (g) Collaborate with Industry Partners and work with other Halal brands and tech partners to drive innovation.

This study explores the impact of ethical and authentic leadership on employees' workplace perceptions, focusing on organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB), trust in leader, commitment, employee voice and empowerment in independent hotels across two contrasting Global Leadership and Organizational Behaviour Effectiveness (GLOBE) clusters: Germanic and Middle-Eastern clusters. It examines how national culture influences these relationships in the hospitality industry.

Data were collected from 1,678 employees in independent hotels in the Germanic European cluster (Germany and the Netherlands) and the Middle-Eastern cluster (Qatar and Turkey) using selective and snowball sampling techniques. Hypotheses were tested using two-stage structural equation modelling.

Ethical leadership significantly affects employee voice in Germany and the Netherlands but not in Qatar and Turkey. Authentic leadership positively influences employee voice in Qatar, Turkey and Germany but does not significantly impact trust in leader in any of the four countries. The study underscores the role of cultural dimensions, particularly power distance, in shaping these relationships.

This research contributes to the literature by investigating the effects of ethical and authentic leadership on key organisational variables in culturally diverse contexts within the hospitality industry. The findings highlight the necessity of considering national culture in leadership practices and suggest practical implications for independent hotels to adapt their leadership approaches to enhance employee outcomes. Future research should explore cultural dimensions as moderators in organisational relationships.

This research aimed to explore the commonalities and differences in the type of information provided on corporate websites in relation to their employment brand equity.

Mixed methods of content analysis, ANOVA and regression analyses were employed to answer the research questions. The data were collected from multiple sources, including the websites of a sample of forty companies listed as the US Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work in 2012 and information presented on Fortune’s website as well.

Employment brand equity hardly showed any significant impact on either company’s job growth or reputation in the ranking as an “employer of choice”.

The results indicated some practices to make a company’s employment brand outstanding and how its web presence reflected its “brand” and presence for potential employees. They are useful for HR practitioners concerned with building an employee brand. For example, the more highly ranked companies in the Fortune 100 tend to provide more forms of online support related to employment opportunities.

Using brand equity theory from the marketing arena and applying this within the human resources management area, this study suggests that “employment brand equity” became a major factor that many companies and organizations should focus on to enhance their standing with job seekers, particularly talented ones. Nearly a decade before the COVID-19 pandemic, the best companies to work for in the US had paid attention to digitalization via websites and social media, to attract talent (and support employees).

The objective of this exploratory study was to investigate the communication themes that retailers should prioritise to convey terroir store brands’ (TSBs) authenticity and the impact of their authenticity on several variables (i.e. value, attitude, trust, intentions and effective purchases). TSBs combine a variety of products that adhere to stringent standards associated with a terroir. Charters et al. (2017) referred to a terroir as “a resource based on unique physical origins and shared cultural personification that shape a product’s benefits into a meaningful value proposition” (p. 755). Three communication themes were studied: the ingredients’ origin, traditional local recipes and the producer’s history in a region (terroir).

An experiment was conducted in a store laboratory. A total of 420 consumers representative of the French population were randomly assigned to four independent groups in a between-subjects study design. They shopped in the store laboratory with a section dedicated to a TSB. Each of the independent samples in this experiment was exposed to posters in the store laboratory related to the three communication themes studied. The control group did not see any posters.

The study showed that the level of TSB authenticity was highest for the communication theme related to the traditional local recipes of the culinary dishes offered by the TSB. Next came the theme related to the ingredients’ origin, followed by the producer’s history in the terroir. Moreover, for the communication theme related to the traditional local recipes, TSB authenticity had a direct impact on value, trust and intentions. Moreover, the link between intentions and effective purchases of TSB products has only been established for this specific communication theme.

First, this study adds to the limited research on TSBs’ authenticity and identifies the communication themes retailers should use to promote such brands. It also proposes an integrative model of the consequences of TSBs’ authenticity in the retailing field that highlights the direct and indirect links (through value, attitude, trust and intentions) between authenticity and consumers’ effective purchases. Finally, it indicates the kind of discourse on TSBs that conveys their authenticity.

Brand gestalt has emerged as a crucial concept in marketing and branding, denoting the holistic perception and overall impression that consumers develop about a brand. This concept gains significance as it serves to measure the overall identity of a brand. Despite its importance, both empirical and theoretical exploration of this concept remains limited, particularly in the context of place branding. The present study aims to bridge the theoretical gap surrounding the interplay between brand gestalt, tourist attitude and loyalty within the city branding domain. In particular, it aims to comprehensively explore the dimensional impact of city brand gestalt (CBG) on tourist attitude, satisfaction and loyalty.

The primary data were collected through a self-administered online questionnaire containing 35 items, developed and adapted from the literature review. A total of 314 samples of Bitung City visitors were recruited, resulting in a 79% response rate. Structural equation modeling was performed using SmartPLS 3 to validate the research hypotheses.

The findings of the study indicate that CBG has a substantial and positive influence on tourist attitudes, satisfaction and loyalty. Furthermore, it was discovered that tourist attitude and satisfaction play a partial mediating role in the relationship between CBG and tourist loyalty.

This study is a seminal contribution to understanding the link between CBG, tourist attitude, satisfaction and loyalty. It offers valuable insights for city destination management in designing strategies and interventions to foster positive tourist attitudes, increase satisfaction and sustain loyalty. In particular, it emphasizes the necessity of ongoing investments in maintaining a positive holistic brand experience (i.e., brand gestalt) that aligns with evolving expectations. The study highlights the need to develop a compelling narrative and consistent messaging tailored to the target audience's values and aspirations. Additionally, it underscores the importance of providing exceptional sensory experiences that appeal to the target audience.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this study is among the first to examine the role of brand gestalt in the context of city branding. Understanding the holistic interaction of the four brand gestalt elements – story, sensescape, servicescape and stakeholders – is crucial for fostering tourists' positive attitudes, satisfaction and loyalty toward urban destinations. The proposed CBG model offers a conceptual framework to guide future research in city branding.

Circular supply chain management (CSCM) is considered a promising solution to attain sustainability in the current industrial system. Despite the exigency of this approach, its application in the food industry is a challenge because of the nature of the industry and CSCM being a novel approach. The purpose of this study is to develop an industry-based systematic analysis of CSCM by examining the challenges for its application, exploring the effects of recognised challenges on various food supply chain (FSC) stages and investigating the business processes as drivers.

Stakeholder theory guided the need to consider stakeholders’ views in this research and key stakeholders directly from the food circular supply chain were identified and interviewed (n = 36) following qualitative methods.

Overall, the study reveals that knowledge, perception towards environmental initiatives and economic viability are the major barriers to circular supply chain transition in the UK FSC.

This research provides a holistic perspective analysing the loopholes in different stages of the supply chain and investigating the way a particular circular supply chain stage is affected by recognised challenges through stakeholder theory, which will be a contribution to designing management-level strategies. Reconceptualising this practice would be beneficial in bringing three-tier (economic, environmental and social) benefits and will be supportive to engage stakeholders in the sustainability agenda.

This study aims to explore the role of the linguistic style used in the brand-posted social media content on consumer engagement in the Fintech domain.

A total of 3,286 tweets (registering nearly 1.35 million impressions) published by 10 leading Fintech unicorns in India were extracted using the Twitter API. The Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) dictionary was used to analyse the linguistic characteristics of the shared tweets. Negative Binomial Regression (NBR) was used for testing the hypotheses.

This study finds that using drive words and cognitive language increases consumer engagement with Fintech messages via the central route of information processing. Further, affective words and conversational language drive consumer engagement through the peripheral route of information processing.

The study extends the literature on brand engagement by unveiling the effect of linguistic features used to design social media messages.

The study provides guidance to social media marketers of Fintech brands regarding what content strategies best enhance consumer engagement. The linguistic style to improve online consumer engagement (OCE) is detailed.

The study’s findings contribute to the growing stream of Fintech literature by exploring the role of linguistic style on consumer engagement in social media communication. The study’s findings indicate the relevance of the dual processing mechanism of elaboration likelihood model (ELM) as an explanatory theory for evaluating consumer engagement with messages posted by Fintech brands.

This study explores how predictor variables (value congruence and customer–AI-assisted exchanges) lead tourism businesses to meet customer needs through contactless technology and enhance their willingness to pay more.

The research model was designed from the perspective of consumer-brand relationships and acceptance of AI device use. This study collected and analyzed 647 valid questionnaires using the structural equation modeling (SEM) approach.

The findings indicate that value congruence and customer-AI-assisted exchanges (CAIX) affect intimacy. Intimacy affects satisfaction and the willingness to pay more for contactless technological services. Moreover, brand trust and sensory brand experience play a role in moderating contactless technological services.

Effective interactions between customers and AI-assisted services significantly contribute to overall satisfaction. When AI systems can understand and respond appropriately to customer queries, needs, and preferences, they enhance customer experience and satisfaction levels, increasing overall customer satisfaction with AI services.

This study aims to explore the influence of perceived value, enjoyment and novelty of fast-food chains’ smart retailing technology (SRT) on Filipino consumers’ attitude and loyalty.

Purposive sampling was used in identifying the respondents (N = 343). The participants were composed of consumers of the leading fast-food chains in the Philippines, where SRT using self-service ordering kiosks is being implemented. The hypotheses were explored using partial least squares path modeling, and predictive-causal was the study’s research design.

The results reveal that, among the factors, perceived enjoyment substantially contributes to the formation of favorable consumers’ attitude toward SRT. Moreover, perceived value was found to have a moderate effect on attitude while perceived novelty showed small impact. In terms of consumers’ attitude and loyalty, the two variables were found to have large positive and significant relationship. The moderation analysis shows that consumers’ attitude toward SRT has medium indirect effect on the relationship between perceived enjoyment and loyalty, while there is small indirect influence on the links between perceived value and loyalty, and between perceived novelty and loyalty.

As more and more fast-food establishments are adopting the use of SRT via self-ordering kiosks, the present study is the only study in the Philippine context that explores how perceived value, enjoyment and novelty affect consumers’ attitude and loyalty.