Social media in higher education is becoming increasingly important both in courses' delivery and assessment. This research explores the adoption of social media as a supporting tool in undergraduate ...(UG) education using both educators' and students' perspectives. The first study involves a survey of 205 educators who reported their views on the importance and use of social media within their management courses. The second study consists of four focus groups, which provides insights into students' perspectives and attitudes toward the use of social media by their educators in higher education. Results show that both educators and students acknowledge the importance of incorporating social media in delivery and assessment of courses and highlight its positive impact on students' deep learning experience and engagement, as well as their enhancement of collaborative and organizational skills. However, faculty is advised to keep a balance in terms of relevance of social media use, control, and usage level of social media platforms.
Purpose
Despite the well-established impact of consumer ethnocentrism (CET) on purchase intentions, extant literature offers limited evidence on actual purchase behaviour. The purpose of this paper ...is to address the gap by investigating the factors underlying variations in CET behaviour using reported brand purchases. Product category, product cost and visibility, brand and country of origin (COO) of purchased products are investigated for their impact on the differences in the behavioural effects of CET.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses survey data collected in the USA from a sample of 468 consumers. Self-reported brand purchases are used and involve ten product categories, 432 brands, and 22 countries of origin. Logistic regressions for repeated measures are used to test the hypotheses formulated.
Findings
The results confirm that product category is an important determinant of the behavioural effects of CET. CET also has a significant impact on purchases of the most expensive product categories rather than frequently purchased convenient items. Contrary to existing empirical evidence, cultural similarity does not mitigate the negative effects of CET and product visibility does not strengthen the behavioural effect of CET.
Practical implications
The study results should enhance managers’ understanding of the determinants of ethnocentric behaviour. The results caution managers about the value of self-reported measures and indicate that product features other than COO may be more effective in mitigating the negative effects of CET.
Originality/value
This study contributes to extant literature on CET and COO by investigating, for the first time, the problem of inconsistent predictions of purchase behaviour in the context of foreign vs domestic brands. For this purpose, the study adopted a novel methodological approach to investigate actual brand purchases.
This study contributes to the current dearth of knowledge on the potential of social media as a marketing tool in industrial settings, by focusing on factors that determine social media adoption by ...B2B organizations. A conceptual model, which draws on the technology acceptance model and resource-based theory, is developed and tested using quantitative data from B2B organizations in the UK. Findings suggest that perceived usefulness of social media within B2B organizational contexts is determined by image, perceived ease of use and perceived barriers. Additionally, the results show that adoption of social media is significantly affected by organizational innovativeness and perceived usefulness. The moderating role of organizational innovativeness is also tested but no support is found. The findings of the study are further validated via nine qualitative interviews with B2B senior managers, yielding additional interesting and in-depth insights into the drivers of social media adoption by B2B organizations.
•A model depicting determinants of social media adoption by B2B organizations is developed and tested.•Perceived usefulness and organizational innovativeness are key drivers of social media adoption.•Image positively affects perceived usefulness.•Post hoc qualitative interviews highlight the important role of stakeholder pressure in social media adoption.
With an ever‐increasing hunger for consumer data by firms, and despite many organizational efforts to reduce consumer privacy concerns, consumer subversion behavior towards information provision ...persists. Organizational privacy ethical care, an organizational behavior that goes beyond legislative action and moral codes, provides a new theory of how to overcome this issue. Across three studies, we develop and test theory which suggests an organizational ethic of care approach to privacy will have a positive impact on reducing consumer subversion behavior (i.e. increase consumers' willingness to share information and the accuracy of information they share). The correlational and causal results indicate that perceived organizational privacy ethical care is a positive driver of the amount and the accuracy of information consumers are willing to share with firms. The results also suggest partial support that this relationship is mediated through perceived information control and trust towards the organization. Thus, we provide some support for a better corporate approach to privacy, beyond previously suggested legislative and social responsibility standards, which allows for the reduction of consumer privacy concerns and subsequent subversion behaviors.
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of two types of narcissism (rivalry and admiration) on consumer–brand forgiveness (CBF) following a brand transgression. This research ...also examines how narcissism interacts with transgression type to shape forgiveness intentions.Design/methodology/approachData were collected through an online survey of 634 UK consumers, focussing on two different types of transgressions (public vs private). The formulated hypotheses were tested through moderated mediation analysis.FindingsThe results highlight that only narcissistic rivalry (and not admiration) moderates the relationship between transgression type and blame attributions. Although the type of transgression seems to affect CBF, forgiveness levels do not vary across the two transgression types. Finally, as expected, blame attributions shape forgiveness intentions.Practical implicationsThe results of this research highlight that blame attributions are affected by the type of narcissism. Thus, identifying the type of narcissism will allow brands to allocate their resources more effectively in order to design recovery strategies that would promote CBF and restore brand trust.Originality/valueThe paper responds to calls for a better understanding of forgiveness through the use of personality traits and focusses on two dimensions of narcissism. This paper also uses a novel transgression typology, which is objective in nature. The results illustrate that narcissism has a differential role in shaping blame attributions and CBF.
The study explores visitors’ image of a destination using online visitor-generated photography and compares the findings with images of the same destination that marketers create and control on the ...Internet. The two studies are conducted with Taiwan as the context-destination. Online visitor-generated photography yielded more than 100 photographs from visitors to Taiwan, and indicates that visitors’ holistic image encompasses notions of Taiwanese uniqueness, ancientness, and authenticity through their perceptions of the natural landscapes, traditional local cuisine, and culture. The second study yielded 1,526 visual image representations of Taiwan collected from a variety of website sources, and findings highlight the disparities between the holistic image construed by visitors to Taiwan and the image created by marketers on the Internet. The findings yield important implications for the effective positioning and promotion of tourism destinations as managers should consider visitors’ holistic images in their attempt to create destination images through online visual representations.
Purpose
– The extant literature highlights the significant role of brand perceptions in buying behavior and brand equity. Despite the importance of brand perceptions and the proliferation of online ...brands, research in an online context is still scarce. The purpose of this paper is to address this gap by investigating the effect of positive and negative comparative affective states (online vs offline) on online brand perceptions. Consistent with existing evidence, highlighting the role of culture on brand perceptions and affective states, this research is conducted in a cross-national setting to identify the stability of the hypothesized relationships among countries.
Design/methodology/approach
– The study uses consumer survey data from five countries (UK, USA, Australia, Canada and China). After imposing metric and factor variance invariance, we used multi-group CFA to test the hypotheses regarding the impact of positive and negative comparative affective states on online brand perceptions across the five countries in the sample.
Findings
– The results show that positive comparative affective states have a significant and positive impact on online brand perceptions across the countries studied, although the impact size varies by country. The findings also show that negative comparative affective states, which are context-specific and not induced by any particular brand, have no effect on online brand perceptions across the country samples.
Practical implications
– Managers can use the findings reported in this research to inform their branding strategies. For instance, managers may focus on triggering feelings of comfort online as these lead to more favorable online brand perceptions rather than on supressing feelings of caution, as the latter do not directly impact online brand perceptions.
Originality/value
– The study builds on and extends the recent work of Christodoulides et al. (2013) by focussing on online brand perceptions and looking into the role of affective states in a cross-national setting.
Purpose
– This paper aims to examine consumers’ non-profit brand image, brand typicality and past behaviour as determinants of intention to donate to two children charity brands.
...Design/methodology/approach
– Data for this study were obtained from two separate studies via a questionnaire, both in the context of two children charities, one for Barnardo’s and the other for BBC Children in Need charity. A theoretical model is developed, tested and compared across the two charity brands.
Findings
– Findings highlight that different factors influence intentions to donate time and money according to the charity brand. Brand typicality is a key determinant of time donations, while the impact of non-profit brand image dimensions on time and money donations differs across the two charities. Past behaviour affects intentions to donate money in both charities but impacts time donations in only one of the two charities investigated.
Research limitations/implications
– The study examines specific dimensions of non-profit brand image across two different charity brands and offers theoretical insights about the value of brand image in a non-for profit context in shaping consumer outcomes (i.e. consumer intentions to donate).
Originality/value
– The study sheds further light into the notion of typicality put forward by Michel and Rieunier (2012) for two children’s charity brands that differ in terms of their strength and income levels and examined past behaviour as a determinant to donate to charity brands.
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