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This study offers an understanding of vulnerable populations' experiences of actual use of mobile banking and their expectations of mobile banking (MB).

Data were generated from MB customers and bankers using online reviews, focus groups and semi-structured interviews, as a mix of methods and sources can provide rich and in-depth understanding.

The affordance of MB for vulnerable populations is explained in four concepts: meaning, material, competency and usability. Recommendations that could further engage and improve the service quality of MB apps for vulnerable populations include customization and personalization of services, access to the digital health data of members of vulnerable populations, audio-based option selection and touchscreen options, and enhancement of service and performance standards.

It is suggested that retail bankers should improve the service quality and performance of their MB apps by considering the recommendations drawn from vulnerable people's experiences. This study discusses implications for retailers.

This study applied social practice theory and affordance of technology theory to understand how those in vulnerable populations experienced MB apps; the results could be used to improve the accessibility, performance and service quality of MB apps.

This research conceptualizes service recovery process (SRPs) within pre-recovery, recovery and post-recovery. This study aims to provide a summary of factors and strategies with respect to SRPs. Also, this research highlights different responses by organizations to SRPs. These responses are synthesized in this research in the context of SRPs.

This study provides a systemic literature review that considers only studies that have been published within the past 11 years to highlight the different response options used today. This study only selected papers that are included in a rigorous review process such that they explicitly contribute towards practice, theory and policy.

The pre-recovery is about the awareness of the problem whereby communication between the customer and organization is initiated to resolve the issue, and it provides a critical foundation for the recovery expectations. The recovery phase concluded with either a satisfactory resolution of the problem or when the customer gives up on his/her query due to another failure of the organization. Post-recovery encompasses the period in which the recovery efforts have concluded, and the customers have now started to evaluate their experience of preceding phases. A major contribution of this study is that it provides a summary of factors and strategies with respect to SRPs.

The managers of service-providing organization can use this synthesis to evaluate the response of their organization to different instances of service failures along SRPs. They can then modify their responses. Managers can also use this synthesis as part of an employee training programme to ensure wide coverage of potential responses of the organization following a failure of service.

This research then highlights different questions that can be explored in future studies regarding the various phases involved in SRPs. Finally, this research outlines the recommendations for businesses looking to benefit from adopting SRPs by also considering the related managerial implications. This study will provide a conceptual framework as to the future direction of the overall study through highlighting gaps of understanding related to SRPs.

A phenomenon that has revolutionized society is the technological millennial approach to communication. Social media has matured into a prime channel for regular interactions and development of brand–customer relationships that enrich a social identity. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how this affects business communications.

The study utilized a social constructivist perspective, adopting an inductive and embedded case study strategy.

Drawing on the social identity theory, this paper examines how evolving social media platforms have impacted on brand perceptions in the fashion apparel and accessories industries. Fashion brands’ online presence provide a platform for customers to supplement social identity based on associations with brands, and ultimately this can shape brand perceptions among customers through promised functional and symbolic benefits.

The paper investigates a specialized marketing activity in the UK. A broader internationally based study would add strength to these findings.

The paper focuses on theoretical and managerial implications and proffers significant roles that social media and identity may play in keeping up with the design and development of marketing communications programs.

Multinational corporations have embraced internet technologies and social media in adopting platforms that their brands can use to contribute content to followers.

In total, 30 potential participants, drawn from diverse backgrounds, were contacted via social networking sites, e-mails and telephone. In total, 22 agreed to participate and their mean age was 26. An open-ended questionnaire allowed for elaboration, providing appropriate responses for a second interviewing phase. Four industry professionals were recruited through the researchers’ personal networks to participate in in-depth interviews that sought to investigate the significance of social media as a marketing tool from an industry perspective.

The purpose of the study is to understand how socially shared misinformation and rumors can enhance the motivation to protect personal interests and enhance social practices of panic buying.

The study employed a number of qualitative data collection methods for the purpose of triangulation, as it can offer thick interpretation and can help to develop a context specific research framework.

The shared misinformation and rumors on social media developed into psychological, physical and social threats; therefore, people started panic buying to avoid these negative consequences. People believed that there were differences between the information shared by politicians and government officials and reality, such as “everything is under control,” whereas social media showed people standing in long queues and struggling to buy the necessities of life. The shared misinformation and rumors on social media became viral and received social validation, which created panic buying in many countries.

It is the responsibility of government, politicians, leaders, media and the public to control misinformation and rumors, as many people were unable to buy groceries due either to socio-economic status or their decisions of late buying, which increased depression among people.

The study merged the theory of rumor (TORT) transmission and protection motivation theory (PMT) to understand how misinformation and rumors shared through social media increased global uncertainty and the desire to panic buy across the world.

Despite scholarly effort to understand customers’ recovery evaluation, little progress is evident in deciphering how customers develop online failure/recovery perception. This paper aims to address this issue.

Social constructivism was the epistemic choice for this study. This approach is holistic and offers a comprehensive understanding of each side of the phenomena. This provided social scientific descriptions of people and their cultural bases and built on, and articulated what was implicit in interpretations of their views.

Online banking customer groups were identified as: exigent customers, solutionist customers and impulsive customers. Customers’ position in each group determined failure perception, recovery expectation and evaluation, and post-recovery behaviour. Comparisons were observed and discussed in relation to Albania and Kosovo. It was suggested that banks should expand their presence in social media platforms and offer a means to manage online customer communication and spread of online WOM.

For exigent customers, the failure/recovery responsibility is embedded within the provider. This explains their high sensitivity and criteria to define a failure.

Online banking customers’ request of a satisfactory recovery experience included: customer notifications, customer behaviour, customer determination, and the mediator of request. 10;Providers should examine customer failure/recovery experiences in cooperation with other banks which should lead to a higher order understanding of customer withdrawal and disengagement activities.

Post-recovery behaviour is linked to the decline of online banking usage, switching to new providers, and the spread of negative online and off-line word-of-mouth.

This is the first empirical study on online service failure and recovery strategy to provide information on customers’ unique preferences and expectations in the recovery process. Online customers are organised into a threefold customer typology, and explanation for the providers’ role in the online customer failure-recovery perception construct is presented.

There is considerable interest in the value of user-generated content (UGC) and its antecedents. Despite its growing importance, existing studies have largely ignored the effects of UGC on customers’ responses to recovery efforts in the fashion industry. The aim of this paper is to examine the extent to which UGC influences customers’ responses to providers’ service failure and recovery efforts, particularly how millennials’ interactions impact recovery efforts.

The study uses a phenomenological hermeneutics and adopts theoretical sampling to collect empirical data from three European countries (France, Italy and the UK). The authors interviewed 60 millennials who had online service failure experiences in online fashion. This methodological framework was designed to illustrate the close relationships between subject and object as well as identify that data analysis and collection are undertaken in relation to consistent iterative interpretations in an evolving process of study. Drawing on multi-theoretical lenses, using actor–network and social influence theories, this study advances understanding through the development of a new conceptual model relating to individual characteristics.

Using actor–network theory and social influence theory, this study developed a conceptual model of four customer groups’ responses to service failure based on the severity of service failure and the level of customers’ online response following service failure.

The authors suggest some pragmatic implications of their conceptual model and explain how awareness of different customer groups can lead to effective decision-making for marketers. This study provides a set of practical insights that brand managers can use to recover service failures.

The purpose of this study is by drawing on signaling theory to address the need for more investigation into the conceptual underpinnings of sponsorships by investigating and seeking to understand sponsorship objectives, opinions and practices, with a focus on smaller organisations.

This empirical study contributes to the literature through researched findings from German respondents and a critical evaluation of literature relating to the impact of sports sponsorship on SMEs within local German communities.

Drawing on signalling theory and extant studies, the following four categories of SME sport sponsorship activities are proposed: value-based connections, social engagement, recognition and bonding.

Sponsor, sponsee and dyadic antecedents have increased in both sophistication and complexity, resulting in expected positive consumer outcomes as the justification for marketing communication investments.

Sponsorship has evolved from short-term philanthropic activities to long-term strategic alliances involving billions of dollars of annual spending globally.

SME companies have certain local opportunities that larger multinational corporations cannot replicate.

No study to date has provided researchers with a framework to understand sports sponsorship from an SME perspective. This paper contributes to the theories and practice of sport sponsorship, drawing on signalling theory and extant studies.

The study aims to look at the types of social media participants through user-generated content (UGC) and how this leads to brand engagement in a fashion retail context. In doing so, it explores the effects of social context of brand-related content on other social media users, which promotes socially influenced consumer brand engagement (SICBE) in social media settings.

The study postulates the existence of social realities as consistent with social constructivism, with multiple realities of social influence outlined on the basis of ontological relativism. To fulfil the proposed research objectives, research data were gathered from professional and social participants based on specific inclusion criteria, purposive sampling technique and a semi-structured interview method.

Findings highlighted various types of UGC participants with differing objectives in their use of UGC; these participant types are passive, creators, critics and collectors/consumers. The study uncovered many social context that can increase the effectiveness of UGC. The social context is explored through social trust, Fashion UGC expertise and relevance. These UGC participants and social context can foster SICBE in a fashion retail context.

This study proposes a holistic framework which highlighted the role of UGC participants and social context can foster SICBE in a fashion retail context.

Prior research has advanced several explanations for social media influencers' (SMIs’) success in the burgeoning computer-mediated marketing environments but leaves one key topic unexplored: the moderating role of SMIs in service failure and recovery strategies.

Drawing on a social constructivist perspective and an inductive approach, 59 in-depth interviews were conducted with millennials from three European countries (Italy, France and the United Kingdom). Building on social influence theory and commitment-trust theory, this study conceptualises four distinct pathways unifying SMIs' efforts in the service failure recovery process.

The emergent model illustrates how source credibility and message content moderate service failure severity and speed of recovery. The insights gained from this study model contribute to research on the pivotal uniqueness of SMIs in service failure recovery processes and offer practical explanations of variations in the implementation of influencer marketing. This study examines a perspective of SMIs that considers the cycle of their influence on customers through service failure and recovery.

The study suggests that negative reactions towards service failure and recovery are reduced if customers have a relationship with influencers prior to the service failure and recovery compared with the reactions of customers who do not have a relationship with the influencer.

User-generated content (UGC) and service failure have attracted considerable marketing inquiry over the last two decades. Previous studies primarily focused on the outcome of service failure and the impact of UGC on perceived failure severity. This article departs from previous studies as it examines the moderating role of UGC on the relationship between service failure recovery (SFR) and customer–brand relationship.

Building on commitment-trust theory and from a phenomenological hermeneutical perspective, this article explores this phenomenon through the interpretation of 60 in-depth interviews with millennials from three European countries: Italy, France and the UK. An analysis of the data was conducted using a qualitative approach to understand the main constructs and relationships derived from the data.

This study conceptualises four distinct moderating characteristics of UGC in the SFR process: satisfaction with experience and brand, dissatisfaction with experience and brand, satisfaction with brand and dissatisfaction with brand. The insights from the responsiveness, empathetic response, counterfactual thinking and brand salience (RECB) framework contribute to research on UGC and shed light on the relationship between SFR and consumer–brand relationships in the fashion industry.

Overall, this study demonstrates that customer interactions with UGC significantly affect their responses to, and relationships with, a brand. The proposed framework opens up interesting avenues for future research on the moderating role of UGC on the relationship between SFR and customer–brand relationships.