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This paper aims to examine the open innovation engagement process in terms of how online community members create and share knowledge for open innovation and the consequences of engagement.

A mixed methods approach based on netnography (Study 1), qualitative interviews (Study 2) and surveys (Study 3) was adopted in three studies.

The results of Study 1 show that hotel brand community members actively create and share their knowledge by evaluating hotel policies, providing service suggestions and creating new service ideas. The results of Study 2 identified enjoyment and empowerment as major antecedents of the engagement and brand loyalty and a sense of brand community as major consequences. In Study 3, the relationships among them were quantitatively examined.

This research provides empirical knowledge on online engagement and identifies the innovation value of online platforms. The research also provides knowledge on the engagement process for open innovation by online community members in terms of its antecedents and consequences. As a main limitation of the study, this research only focuses on a single online brand community.

While most existing tourism research analyzes the role of user-generated content in customer decision-making, this research provides a fresh insight into the innovation value of customer knowledge.

This study aims to introduce and define the concept of phygital brand community (PBC). It discusses the potential conflicts that can arise from engaging in multiple PBCs and propose an enriched netnographic methodological approach to explore the role of PBC engagement overlap and its influence on the phygital experience.

Following a critical analysis of the inherent limitations of netnographic methodological approaches in the context of PBCs, this study develops an enriched netnographic research protocol that accounts for the challenges of engagement overlap among PBCs.

This study proposes two methods of analysis, namely, “participatory netnography” and “witness netnography,” which are derived from a mixed-methodology approach that integrates elements of netnography.

The findings of this study underscore the requisite methodological refinements imperative for enhancing netnographic analysis, particularly in its application for a better comprehension of individual behaviors within the realm of PBCs. In pursuit of this objective, the identified adjustments encompass ethical considerations, evaluation methods and their application in a digital milieu, where intricate mechanics and technologies frequently elude conventional methodologies.

In this study, the authors present a novel conceptualization of PBCs, highlighting their role and development, as well as the challenges they pose. To adequately capture the impact of PBC engagement overlap, the authors propose the need for an enriched mixed-methodological approach.

Social media has significantly impacted the value creation processes within the consumer–brand relationship. This study aims to examine value formation processes within a cosmetics social media brand community and to establish the types of value formation associated with different categories of interactions within a social media brand community.

The research adopted a netnographic approach and followed the operational protocols of netnography. Conversations in one large cosmetics social media brand community were observed and downloaded for analysis over a two-month period. Examples of value-creation and formation processes were identified using netnographic interpretative procedures to develop higher-order themes.

The findings supported the creation of a “Consumer and brand value creation and co-creation framework” highlighting disparate value types within the following interactions: consumer-to-consumer; brand-to-consumer; and consumer-to-brand. The identified value types were specific to the actors (i.e. consumers and brands) involved in value formation processes. The analysis also revealed consumers’ ability to independently generate value through direct interaction with a social media brand community and the brands’ role in supporting consumers in value formation through value facilitation.

The pivotal role of disparate actors’ interactions in value formation processes is highlighted, alongside the autonomous ability to form value with the aid of resources stored and shared within the social media brand community. The network of interactions and value-creation processes contribute to a holistic understanding of the interactions in a social media brand community. Furthermore, the research explores and highlights the emerging role of social media brand communities as “value vestiges”.

The COVID-19 lockdown severely impacted organizations in the cultural and tourist business as their products all of a sudden “disappeared”. This study aims to explore if and how the unexpected and disruptive nature of the pandemic accelerated the development of new communication strategies on their social media.

The study draws on data from 24 midsize cultural institutions and tourist attractions in Denmark over the first two months of the lockdown in 2020. Approximately 900 posts on Facebook were collected and analyzed through the netnographic method. The analysis followed a two-layered qualitative approach. First, open coding to identify typologies and enable a comparison with established strategies from the literature review. Then, an exploratory examination was conducted across the typologies.

Nine different content categories were identified in the data and subsequently assessed and discussed in relation to the literature on strategies and dialogic intentions. This resulted in the emergence of two new overarching strategies: hope and host.

While hope is particularly relevant in crisis situations, the utilization of employees in the host role presents an opportunity for further development and engagement. Further, the results call for future research that breaks with the traditional quest for ideal strategies for the benefit of exploring the notion of “strategic doers”.

The identification of the hope and host strategies, along with the analysis of content categories and their alignment with various strategic intentions, contributes to the existing knowledge in this field. Further, the classic perception of engagement as driven by explicit interaction and dialogue is also challenged.

The purpose of this study is to understand how and why consumers engage in market-shaping activities on behalf of firms.

This study uses a combination of archival, netnographic and interview methods to examine how consumers responded to the entry of Tesla into the U.S. automotive market.

Consumers are driven to engage in supportive institutional work by the culturally resonant ideologies embodied in Tesla’s strategic orientation. This work takes both discursive and practical forms and sees consumers adopting responsibilities typically associated with other actors, including activists and sales professionals.

In developing an account of an understudied phenomenon – consumers’ firm-supportive market shaping – this research extends theorization around institutional work and cultural branding.

This study aims to explore how a postmodern tribe enacts and re-interprets ideologies as a part of consumers’ collective experience, to enhance our understanding of consumer communities in conjunction with ideological capacities.

The community of “presenteers” is conceptualized as a self-organized tribe with heterogeneous components that generate capacities to act. Netnographic observation was conducted on 18 presenteer accounts and lasted around six months. Real-time data were collected by taking screenshots of the posts and stories that these users created and publicly shared. Data were analysed by adopting assemblage theory, combining inductive and deductive approaches. Firstly, a qualitative visual-textual content analysis of the tribe’s defining components was conducted. Then, the process continued with the thematic analysis of the ideological underpinnings of the tribe’s enactments.

Findings shed light on the ways in which consumer communities interpret the entanglement of religious, political, and cultural ideologies in shaping their experiences. In the case of the presenteers tribe, findings reflect a novel ideological interplay between neo-Ottomanism, post-feminism and consumerism.

The study offers a deep dive into a unique tribe that is being organized around the consumer-created practice of “presenteering” and investigates consumer communalization in alignment with the ideological turn in culture-oriented interpretative research on consumers, consumption, and markets. This exploration helps to bridge the research on the communalization of consumers with the recent discussions of ideology in the postmodern market.

The study offers a deep dive into a unique tribe that is being organized around the consumer-created practice of “presenteering” and investigates consumer communalization in alignment with the ideological turn in culture-oriented interpretative research on consumers, consumption, and markets. This exploration helps to bridge the research on the communalization of consumers with the recent discussions of ideology in the postmodern market.

The main research questions critically examine online videos that draw attention to a local community of musical practice, noticing how these can potentially be included within the tourism promotion strategies. This paper develops a case study of four videos realised by the Louth County Board of the organisation Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann (CCÉ) in Co. Louth, Ireland, as a part of the FleadhFest 2021 initiative. It highlights the role that virtual spaces have in enhancing a sense of belonging to a music/festival community as well as the possibility that visual and audio supports have in promoting and celebrating a destination and its cultural features.

The analysis involves a netnographic examination of these videos (Janta, 2017), informed by the concept of “tourist gaze” (Urry, 1990; 2002) and influenced by film-induced tourism studies (Beeton, 2005).

Results show how festival and event organisers responded to COVID-19 social restrictions by creating a virtual space for celebrating music heritage and local musicscape, placing an emphasis on local musical scene.

The research aims to inform future developments in how the organisation operates within and engages with virtual space, its members and a wider audience.

This is the first study to consider the virtual activities of CCÉ from an ethnomusicological as well as tourism, perspective.

This study aims to examine small-firm shifts in behavior during major supply chain disruptions that change supply chains permanently. The study focuses on small to mid-sized enterprise (SME) responses to suppliers’ opportunistic behaviors within a larger disruptive environment. The study addresses two broad research questions: how do small businesses adapt to supply chain disruptions, and under what conditions are such adoptions warranted?

This study used mixed methods, a qualitative netnography and a quantitative analysis of survey data. It tested a model based on responses from members of an online business-to-business community. The model development was driven by the findings from netnography and two theoretical lenses.

The responses suggested a strong relationship between the two theoretical approaches. The conditions described by the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm led to many real options. Supply chain disruptions and deceptive suppliers triggered rapid adaptation through traditional marketing tactics and strategies. Changes in the supply chain, and place, led to responses in price, promotion and product. Respondents hoarded, developed relationships with new, nonopportunistic suppliers and changed prices, products and product mixes. They developed cooperative relationships – coopetition – to deal with shared problems.

This study interprets supply chain disruptions through the lens of marketing in SMEs; it combines qualitative and quantitative methods to better understand supply chain disruptions in a marketing context; it applies the real options theory and the RBV of the firm to marketing in the context of supply chain disruptions, and it reflects real-time small-firm behavior in a crisis.

This study aims to investigate replies to the top 10 comments under Always “Like a Girl” YouTube femvertising video to gauge consumers’ responses regarding femvertising as well as relationships among commenters.

This study adopted a mixed research methods design. A user analysis and a qualitative content analysis were conducted to examine the replies of the top 10 comments with the most replies to reveal not only the topics but also relationships and patterns among those comments and commenters.

The user analysis found that across all the 10 comment-and-reply units, in 8 units, the user of the original primary comment, the conversation starter, was also the user who was targeted most often. The qualitative content analysis revealed four themes from the 10 comment-and-reply units: multilayered emotional responses, a gendered society, complex coexisting relationships and a melting pot.

The findings of this research offer significant extensions to the understanding of public sphere theory within the contemporary digital media landscape. By analyzing the nature of replies to digital advertisements, the study illuminates how various types of user engagement–whether it be inquiry, laudation, debate, or flame–play a critical role in shaping the digital public sphere.

The study underscores the importance for marketers to scrutinize both comments and replies to effectively utilize femvertising on social media, particularly YouTube. By understanding the emotional dynamics of user interactions, marketers can craft strategies that evoke positive responses and mitigate negative ones. Engaging with users who are open to changing their views or mediating discussions can also be beneficial, as can the use of AI tools to maintain focus on the content rather than on individual commenters. Such approaches can enhance the perception of femvertising campaigns and foster a more constructive dialogue within the social media space.

This study contributes to the literature by investigating the replies of comments, interactions, relationships and patterns among YouTube commenters that may generate valuable insights for advertisers and marketers to be aware of the possible issues and monitor the sentiment of commentaries, thus, developing effective strategies to better connect with consumers. This extends the understanding of public sphere theory in the contemporary digital media landscape.

Luxury as a construct warrants an assessment of entities promoting themselves as luxurious offerings. Therefore, this study attempts to evaluate the experiencescapes of luxury trains operating in developed and developing countries to assess the presence of luxury values in the elements affecting tourists' experiences and immersion.

Two different types of luxury trains were selected from across developed and developing countries for a holistic assessment of the experiencescapes. Through netnography and hermeneutic interpretation, this study analyzes 218 experiential descriptions on Tripadvisor from luxury trains of Australia, UK, Peru and India.

Although luxury trains in both the regions entailed financial, functional, social and individual value, they struggled to offer these values in conjunction. While the positioning of luxury trains in developing countries under the “inaccessible luxury” segment is exaggerated, developed countries were also found to struggle with customer service and management.

By emphasizing on areas within the control of the service providers, short-haul luxury trains can be a better fit in developing countries. Better usability testing and employee training should be undertaken to improve the functional values of luxury in long-haul luxury trains of developed countries.

This article not only assesses the validity of luxury trains' positioning but also provides new insights into the nature of the tourist immersion process. Having extensively discussed experiences in the backdrop of luxury, it contributes to the progression of literature on luxury trains, experiencescapes and immersion.