Search results

The author addresses the world of Instagram influencers but offers a very different perspective by focusing on the gendering of claims to authenticity on social media. The author observes how high-profile male and female Czech influencers are required to navigate an authenticity bind (Duffy & Hund, 2019) through two key strategies: the opinion-leader strategy and the community-building strategy. Men rely predominantly on the opinion-leader strategy while women position themselves as community builders. By focusing on the communicative strategies of the influencers, the author offers an analysis of authenticity as performative process, rather than a static concept, that gets negotiated in everyday interactions between influencers and their followers.

The purpose of this study is to examine, through the lens of the buying center concept, a theorized link between organizational buying behavior (OBB) and a national culture of collectivism, large power distance, particularism and a wasta practice.

A qualitative methodology was used to gain better understanding of OBB in an under-researched business environment of the Arabian Gulf. The data come from 41 organizational practitioners who reported on the industrial buying processes in their organizations with reference to the buying center framework.

The study developed a model of the buying center for the emerging markets governed by socio-political institutions.

The data were obtained only from one culturally specific world region.

To attain efficacious results in culturally distant business environments, industrial marketers should complement home country experience with a thorough understanding of how national cultures affect the dynamics of OBB.

The study updates the conceptualization of the buying center’s organizational actors (OAs) for business contexts beyond traditional, mature markets. It reveals the typology of decisional influencers, introduces and defines the role of advisers and clarifies the role of the gatekeeping bureaucracy and differing perceptions thereof by OAs.

The importance and criticality of sustainable development goals is witnessed by 195 member countries. For its full-fledged adoption and implementation, it needs to be understood by masses and political leaders are critical agents those engage diverse communities through social media such as twitter. Therefore, in this study focuses on how political leaders can influence the sustainable development goals through Twitter.

This study examines the social media conversations of political leaders on Twitter. Social media analytics methods such as sentiment mining, topic modelling and content analysis-based methods have been used.

The findings indicate that most political leaders are primarily discussing the sustainable development goals (SDGs) “partnership for goals” and “peace, justice and strong institutions”. Many other goals such as “clean water and sanitation”, “life below water”, “zero hunger”, “no poverty” and “educational quality” are not being focused on.

This study offers implications in terms of collective decision making and the role of policy makers towards the goals of promoting SDGs. The authors highlight how political leaders need to involve key stakeholders in this journey.

This study scores and provides a cohort-specific prioritization of the leadership within these countries with regard to SDGs, which could be beneficial to the society.

This study aims to identify the dimensions used by young consumers to evaluate effective online influencers; determine the impact of demographic segmentation – that is, gender, behavioral segmentation and whether young consumers often follow the advice of online influencers to make a purchase – on the evaluative dimensions. The results will inform advertisers regarding the types of online influencers that they should feature to endorse their products to create desirable promotion effects.

This study adopted a multistage method. This study first conducted eight focus groups with 48 participants between 18 and 24 years of age to explore their evaluation of online influencers. This study then conducted a survey with a questionnaire developed from the focus group results. This study used convenience sampling and administered the questionnaire to 475 participants (mean age, 19.5 years).

The results of factor analysis revealed seven dimensions used by young consumers to evaluate online influencers. The most salient dimensions were credibility, appearance and content production techniques. The results of t-testing also show that gender and behavioral segmentation variables had an impact on these evaluative dimensions in the four tested product categories.

This study provides advertisers with a set of criteria to select appropriate online influencers in various advertising settings, such as the promotion of gender-specific products, and in various product categories that target young consumer markets.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to examine the dimensions used by young consumers to evaluative online influencers in relation to product endorsement.

The authors examine authenticity in relation to Alternative Political Commentators (APCs) on YouTube and Twitch. Drawing on Owens (2019) provocative claim that contemporary (online) culture may be ‘post-authentic’, the authors use the term post-authentic engagement to explore in/out-group dynamics between influencers and their audiences. This view is evidenced through an examination of the usage of emojis and emotes by audiences to engage in the fast-paced chats that accompanied the livestream coverage of two APCs, HasanAbi and The Young Turks, during the 2020 US Presidential Election.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how cross-functional integration supports the execution of the demand-side processes and its effects on both the demand and supply-side processes.

A case study was conducted including a Brazilian multinational manufacturer in the automobile industry and some of its suppliers and dealers. 17 interviews were conducted. A theoretical framework is proposed containing five basic elements, they are: characteristics of the demand/supply processes; involved functions; integration factors; context influencers and impacts of integration on demand and supply processes.

The findings present three demand-side processes (Product Launch, Marketing and Sales and Demand Planning) that demonstrated a greater need for cross-functional integration in the studied case, mainly through informal integration factors.

The empirical results of this study have methodological limitations due to the use of the case study method. Future research should analyze the effects of other context influencers (e.g. natural catastrophes, civil wars and low level of unemployment) on cross-functional integration.

The results highlight that joint planning, willingness to work together, team spirit, adequate communication and cross-functional meetings helped the studied organizations to achieve competitive advantages and improve their performance.

This study provides a theoretical framework that helped to improve the understanding of the interrelationships between demand management constructs and cross-functional integration factors. There are indications that a political–economic crisis has stimulated the existence of a willingness to work together and group spirit among employees who remain in the organization after mass dismissals. This climate of cooperation helped to increase the agility and resilience of the studied supply chain, which is currently affected by a changing market.

This paper examines how different configurations of societal impact are pursued by purpose-driven organizations (PDOs) and how these configurations align with the application of varying supply chain design (SCD) practices.

This multi-method study uses quantitative data from 1588 B Corps and qualitative data from 316 B Corps to examine how PDOs align SCD with the pursuit of diverse types of societal impact. The authors first conduct a cluster analysis to group organizations based on the impact they create. Second, qualitative content analysis connects impact with enabling SCD elements.

The analysis of the five identified clusters provides detailed empirical insights on influencers, design decisions and building blocks adopted by PDOs to drive a range of societal impacts. Specifically, the nature of the impact pursued affects (1) whether a PDO will be more influenced by a need in the political environment or an opportunity in the industry environment, (2) the relative importance of the design of social flows versus material flows and (3) the need to develop new relational resources with beneficiaries versus leveraging existing capabilities to manage inter-firm processes.

This study responds to calls to disaggregate different dimensions of societal impact and examines the relationship between SCD and a breadth of sustainability impacts for different stakeholders. In doing so, the authors identify four SCD pathways organizations can follow to achieve specific societal impacts. This study is also the first to employ a supply chain perspective in the study of certified B Corps.