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This study aims to explore consumers’ motivations in the adoption of either print or digital forms of media, given the fluctuation of trends and attitudes in magazine consumption in the USA. This paper utilizes cognitive lock-in and the power law of practice to further the understanding of digital adoption through an interdisciplinary lens.

In this study, initially, five focus group sessions, including 53 qualifying non-student participants randomly placed into groups of 10 or 11, were held. Next, a 2 × 2 between-subjects quasi-experiment, using 163 undergraduate students at a large public university, was conducted.

The findings show that although the digital medium is considered less expensive, more convenient and more environmentally friendly, the print medium is regarded as more familiar, personal and visual. Further, whether the media type is a book or a magazine, consumers report higher perceived value, hedonic value and attitude toward print versus digital media.

The potential to digitally attract and lock-in consumers in the media industry has immense implications. Individuals consume media because of fashion marketing, personal space and advertisements, among other reasons.

This paper contributes to existing research by uncovering qualitative and quantitative insights into media consumption through a multilayered analysis of focus group participants and a quantitative experiment. The findings indicate that both the power law of practice theory and cognitive lock-in are plausible explanations for the choice of print over digital media format.

This study aims to explore the anticipated emotions of consumers and their anticipated perceived quality (PQ) of an exhibit, event or service that they are waiting to attend.

The study consists of a quantitative survey-based descriptive study of n = 470 real-world consumers from a waiting line at the Shark Reef exhibit in Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, Las Vegas. Data is analyzed with fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to extrapolate causal conditions or recipes, for word of mouth (WOM) generation regarding the exhibit.

Recipes that influence positive WOM for an upcoming exhibit include: affect evaluation and affect expectations (AEXs) and affect evaluation, affect expectation, event entertainment and PQ.

By recognizing the need to optimize the customer waiting experience, services marketing managers can more successfully engage customers and influence their subsequent intentions.

Emotions regarding the anticipation of an upcoming event are critical to cultivating the intent to spread positive WOM.

Using social capital theory (SCT), the purpose of this research is to determine the success of social networking in societies that may be lower in social capital, for example in Poland, versus those which are higher in social capital, such as the USA.

This paper uses a partial least squares approach with a cross-cultural sample. The complete sample consists of 556 participants for this study across the USA (n = 258) and Poland (n = 298).

Results indicate that social media success is lower in Poland and that this result is related to lower social networking capital in Polish society. However, the proposed model shows that social media functionality can overcome some of the barriers.

Limitations include a very specific set of countries rather than a larger set of countries and sample, survey methodology which could be augmented with a mixed methods approach and convenience sampling which ensured homogeneity and matching.

Based on this research, media designers should attempt to keep information quality high but even more importantly, they should increase interactivity. For Poland in particular, well-designed interactivity can mitigate societal barriers to success of social media, as it can enhance trust in such platforms.

Because of Poland’s history of more than 40 years of communism, the newer generations may eventually become more adaptive to social networking tools and such acceptance could lead to greater social capital, which is important for Polish society from a business perspective as well.

The most important contribution of this research is that it theoretically and empirically establishes the importance of SCT in relation to social networking across two different countries.

This interdisciplinary study aims to analyze how service organizations communicate sustainable beliefs in their social media narratives and use them to generate brand awareness, customer recognition and ongoing demand for sustainable service.

A two-phase exploratory analysis of 10,342 tweets from 2019–2020 was conducted by sustainable global corporations to identify best practices for their social media teams operating within a service-based business model. First, the significant themes were identified using an unguided machine learning approach of three types of firms: services, goods and mixed. Next, the full set of tweets with linguistic sentiment analysis was analyzed followed by a deeper view of the services-based organizations based on their strategic focus (business-to-business [B2B] versus mixed).

The findings indicate that tweets that appear to create the highest customer engagement are characterized as having high levels of analytical language, high clout (i.e. are socially relevant), a positive tone, a high number of words and a high number of words per sentence. On the other hand, having complex language in terms of six-letter words does not seem to associate with customer engagement. The last level of analysis shows that B2B services-based corporations with positive tone and higher word count exhibit higher levels of retweets. Implications include providing rational and informational tweets to increase engagement and highlight societal relevance.

Climate change has negative consequences on human and physical capital, and ecosystems across the globe. This study provides specific recommendations for how services corporations can increase their sustainable communications and actions.

The key implication of our research is that corporations must strategically design social media narratives about climate change as part of their online branding and communications process.

The purpose of this research is to increase consumer safety by providing insights about the linkage between consumer knowledge, price perception and safety intentions. Drawing from the expanded societal view of marketing, this model aims to further understanding of the connection between consumer education and safety from a folk theories-of-mind perspective.

This paper utilizes a phased, mixed-methods and interdisciplinary approach which blends transportation research and marketing. First, a qualitative inquiry of 151 comments regarding child safety seats was conducted. Next, using the key themes and concepts, a quantitative model was derived and a proposed structural equation model on a sample of 217 respondents was tested.

Although consumers understand the importance of child safety seats and the ample potential harms associated with their misuse, this paper contributes to existing literature by showing that a high perceived price can offset potential experience with them, attitude toward them and future use of them.

Integrated marketing campaigns to increase safety practices regarding child safety can be framed from a “cost of a life” rather than a “cost of a seat” perspective.

This research contributes by highlighting the importance of perceived price as it weighs against safety in a quantitative model, showing that consumer education can increase usage intentions for critical products and offering a mixed-methods, interdisciplinary approach to reduce framing biases and address a topic of significant societal concern.

The purpose of this paper is to gain insight regarding the impact of consumer regret on shopping in mall kiosks and its relationship with consumer variety‐seeking tendencies.

Two experimental studies are carried out with students and consumers.

Findings of the two studies show that variety and regret play an important role in mall kiosk shopping. Both studies show that individual variety‐seeking tendencies naturally stimulate consumers' search for retailers that allow them additional options (i.e. kiosk retailers that provide higher perceived variety) in comparison with those who only offer minimal assortment sizes.

Mall kiosks are becoming an increasingly common avenue for the release of innovative products and quick entry into the retail market. These outlets have not been studied through academic research and experimentation, and this paper introduces the importance of consumer decision making in such environments.

Considering the findings of this research, it is in the best interest of retailers to minimize the perception of risk involved in purchases at mall kiosk retailers. For example, kiosk retailers should work toward creating service environments where consumers feel a sense of control, as this should help mitigate some of the perceived risks in those retailers.

This paper relates two constructs (regret and variety), which have proven to be very important in e‐tail and retail shopping, to show how they can minimize consumer's perceived risk during a shopping experience.

The purpose of this paper is to assess how regret affects consumer satisfaction levels, extent of rumination, and brand‐switching intention. The paper also seeks to examine any mediating effects between regret and rumination that can be found due to consumers' negative emotions.

A purchase‐decision scenario was presented to 125 undergraduate students. A between‐subjects experimental design was conducted and structural equation modelling was utilized to evaluate the model fit.

The results indicate that regret decreases consumer satisfaction level and increases brand‐switching intention. Negative emotion was found to demonstrate an indirect effect between regret and extent of rumination. The findings also suggest that negative emotion acts as a partially mediating variable between the effect of satisfaction levels on extent of rumination and the effect of regret on satisfaction levels.

This study emphasizes the importance of post‐purchase consumer satisfaction. Marketers must pay particular attention to both regret and negative emotion toward purchase decisions. By understanding how specific recourse can be taken to mitigate regret, negative emotions, and ruminative thinking, firms can potentially enhance a brand's image and instil brand loyalty.

This research further validates existing research regarding regret and consumption, while introducing the concept of rumination into the marketing literature. Marketers will have a better understanding of how regret, negative emotions, and rumination can play a role in post‐purchase consumption behaviours.

The objective of this paper is to investigate IMC metrics in the lens of an institution-wide change management process, and to do so, the authors develop and test an organizational data quality enhancement model.

Qualitative research was conducted, with a follow-on quantitative pre-test. A subsequent, larger-scale quantitative survey resulted in a total of 128 responses, 124 useable. A regression analysis was conducted using the factor scores of the six organizational dimensions as independent variables and overall data quality as the dependent variable.

The findings show that overcoming poor IMC data quality requires a corporate culture that reduces cross-functional and departmental divides. The authors also support the idea that horizontally organized learning organizations not only have superior IMC data, but they also achieve higher rates of return on their cross-platform IMC efforts.

The research has limitations in terms of substantive generalizability, since it focuses on one industry within the USA. Future research can expand to other industries and expand to a global setting in order to replicate these findings.

Most improvement seems to be needed in the area of sharing customer data. The findings provide a signal to marketing organizations that want to connect with their customers that data quality must be a strategic priority, with appropriate processes in place to manage data at every touch point.

Research is needed that establishes effective methods for measuring the success of data-driven communication efforts to support management.

This study aims to examine whether indirect customer-to-customer interactions (CCI) affect consumers’ behavioral intentions and how that effect is generated. It also explores the effect of dining experience on customer behavioral intentions and how that effect varies by party type.

The research consists of an experimental survey-based study of n = 491 real-world consumers from a marketing research panel. Structural equation models are analyzed to examine hypothesized relationships.

Indirect CCIs significantly affect all five dimensions of experiential value. Food and beverage (F&B) excellence, aesthetics and service excellence positively affect customer revisit intentions and word-of-mouth intentions via restaurant image. Furthermore, party type moderates the effect of aesthetics on behavioral intentions so that the effect is significant for the social diner group only. Customer return on investment and playfulness show non-significant impacts on behavioral intentions.

Managers should be aware that indirect CCIs influence all aspects of the restaurant experience. Since F&B excellence, aesthetics and service excellence affect restaurant image and behavioral intentions, management can operationalize these elements of service. The impact of aesthetics differs by consumers’ party type, enabling management to create unique servicescapes based on their target customer segment.

The study pioneers an investigation of how indirect CCI is associated with behavioral intentions through the mediating effects of experiential value and restaurant image. It contributes to the literature by examining how the impact of diners’ experiences differs by party type.