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The purpose of this paper is to expand and test Backhaus and Tikoo’s (2004) employer branding (EB) conceptual framework from the perspective of internal EB in a sport event sponsorship context.

This study developed a set of hypotheses, which were tested in the context of a business-to-business multinational organization’s sport event sponsorship project. Empirical data were collected from 716 employees of the case company after the sponsorship project was complete.

The results support all the hypotheses and reveal that a sport event sponsorship project can act as a means to achieving EB goals in the investigated context.

The sample of the study was limited to the existing personnel of one case company. The study measures the effects at a single point in time, thus the findings should be validated with longitudinal research design.

The results propose that companies can benefit from integrating sport sponsorship with internal EB. Practitioners are advised to create sponsorship projects that involve current employees effectively.

The study adds to the literature by being among the first empirical studies to have tested the effects of EB among current employees via a sponsorship project.

This study aims to examine the effect of sensory brand experience and involvement on brand equity directly and indirectly through cognitive, emotional and behavioral consumer brand engagement (CBE).

A survey was administered to the customers of a Finnish tableware brand using relevant Facebook channels. A total of 1,390 responses were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The empirical findings suggest that both involvement and sensory brand experience are directly related to the three facets of CBE. Further, involvement, sensory brand experience and CBE jointly explain more than 50 per cent of the variance in brand equity. In addition, the results reveal that emotional engagement was the most influential factor in determining consumers’ overall engagement level.

The framework should be tested in other contexts, and the application of longitudinal research setting is encouraged.

The study highlights not only the importance of holistic CBE management but also the necessity to manage sensory aspects of consumer–brand interactions. In this way, managers can build sustainable consumer–brand relationships.

The nomological network of CBE is not well-known. This study integrates two central constructs (sensory brand experience and brand equity) with the concept of CBE and examines their effects on brand equity both directly and indirectly through cognitive, emotional and behavioral CBE.

The purpose of this paper seeks to develop a motivation-based complementary framework for temporally dynamic user preferences to facilitate optimal timing in web personalisation. It also aims to highlight the benefits of considering user motivation when addressing issues in temporal dynamics.

Through theory, a complementary framework and propositions for motivation-based temporal dynamics for further testing are created. The framework is validated by feeding back findings, whereas some of the propositions are validated through an experiment.

The suggested framework distinguishes two ways (identifying/learning and shifting) of using a motive-based approach to temporal dynamics in web personalisation. The suggested outcomes include enhanced timing in matching current preferences and improved conversion. Validation measures predominantly support both the framework and the tested propositions. The theoretical basis for the approach paves a path towards refined psychological user models; however, currently on a complementary level.

While the framework is validated through feeding back findings, and some of the propositions are validated through basic experimentation, further empirical testing is required.

A generalised approach for complementing personalisation procedures with motivation-based temporal dynamics is offered, with implications for both user modelling and preference matching.

This paper offers novel insights to web personalisation by considering the in-depth effects of user motivation.

The purpose of this paper is to examine salespersons’ adoption and usage of mobile sales configuration tools (MSCT) and to identify areas for further development in this realm. Another objective is to offer a conceptualization of MSCT adoption.

For this purpose, a qualitative case study approach was selected as the research method to better understand acceptance of a mobile configuration tool used by business-to-business (B2B) salespersons. Primary data were collected through semi-structured interviews, which included a series of open-ended questions to gain more detailed and contextual data.

The results obtained from the interviews indicated several important determinants of adoption of sales configuration tools, and three different personal innovativeness types were identified.

The current study has certain limitations that should be considered in future studies. First, the results of this study cannot be generalized in other contexts because of small number of participants (nine salespersons) included. Second, social desirability might have affected the results in a way that caused the salespersons to have been tempted to talk positively about MSCT.

Based on the findings several suggestions for managers and software developers are made such as further technical development of MSCT, development of common sales routine for all salespersons, mentoring new salespersons and establishing social media channels for salesperson to interact with each, share experience/knowledge.

Current paper can serve as pathway toward understanding of MSCT adoption and usage as it opens new avenues as a source of hypotheses for a quantitative analysis of certain phenomena such as the correlation between MSCT usage and sales performance.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive insight into the deciding factors affecting an individual’s intention to adopt mobile banking (m-banking) services in Pakistan.

A survey approach was used with a sample of 189 responses from across Pakistan. Multi-group analysis was performed in order to detect gender differences among men and women in the process of adopting m-banking.

The paper found support for the positive effect of perceived behavioral control (PBC) and attitudes (ATT) toward m-banking adoption intentions. Significant differences between men and women were found to affect subjective norms (SN) on adoption intention, even though the combined sample of men and women was insignificant. The effect of SN on m-banking adoption is stronger for women than for men. Interestingly, the paper provides contradictory findings on the role of PBC on adoption intention. The effect of PBC on m-banking adoption intention was found to be significantly stronger for men than for women.

The results present implications of consumer behavior and marketing communication for bank marketing. Although men and women do not differ in their ATT toward m-banking service adoption in general, the succinct nuance between men and women in terms of the influence of SN and PBC with adoption intention calls for a strategic reorientation of how men and women as consumers of m-banking services should be appropriately segmented, targeted and communicated. The formulation of marketing strategies to target potential consumers and to reinforce the usefulness of m-banking to existing consumers should not be “one size fits all.” The marketing of m-banking services to segments of men and women should be approached strategically in order to increase adoption rates in developing/emerging economies.

This is the first study on m-banking services adoption in Pakistan to examine the role of gender in the innovation adoption process. The differences between the two genders and the insightful results that we found in our study help shed light on the uniqueness of the context. This study is also one of the first to test a combined technology acceptance model and theory of planned behavior model in the context of m-banking adoption in a developing country using a variance-based modeling technique.

The purpose of this paper is to create a new understanding of industrial business-to-business (B2B) relationships by connecting the theoretical streams of marketing communications and relationship marketing. This study tests how various marketing communication channels and communication quality increase the transformation of customer-perceived value into customer loyalty.

The theoretical framework consists of links between customer-perceived value, marketing communication quality, channel effectiveness, and customer loyalty. The age of the business relationship is also taken into consideration. Empirical testing is based on global survey data (n=121) collected from customers of Finnish manufacturing companies operating in the paper, mineral, and metal-processing industries.

The effects of customer-perceived value on customer loyalty are both direct and indirect, as marketing communications partially mediate this relationship. The customer-perceived effectiveness of various marketing communication channels adds more to loyalty formation than the perceived quality of marketing communications.

Of special interest for marketing practitioners is the channel-specific approach to the effectiveness of marketing communications. Results suggest that personalized channels would be the most important mediators of the effects of perceived value on loyalty and also bring up the possibility of combining personalized direct communication with new cost-effective digital channels.

Relatively little research has examined the mediating role of marketing communications in the relationship between perceived value and loyalty in the B2B context.

Based on the foundations of the schema theory, the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) and customer experience literature, this research examines how the interplay between a consumer's previous shopping experience(s) and perceived credibility of negative online word-of-mouth (PCNWOM) leads to improved consumer–firm relationship quality (RQ).

The authors utilised series of scenario-based experiments (N = 918) to test the research hypotheses.

The authors show that a focal customer's previous shopping experiences attenuate the perceived credibility of negative word-of-mouth on social media by other customers, which in turn weakens consumer–firm RQ. The authors also show that positive and negative perceptual experiences are asymmetric.

First, the online shopping experiences described in the experimental scenarios were generic and did not refer to any particular product/service. Thus, calibrating products and services into categories, and studying how product type differences impact online shopping experiences warrant further research.

From a practical perspective, the authors demonstrate that not only does enhancing consumer–firm relationship quality demand meticulous integration of consumers' website and social media experiences but also in positive vs negative perception scenarios, RQ wane as review frequency increases.

The authors contribute significant insight into the existing literature by specifically adopting the premise that consumers' previous online shopping experience(s) will influence how credibly they will perceive negative online WOM posted on social media.

This study aims to test and extend Carroll and Ahuvia’s (2006) model on the antecedents and outcomes of brand love by examining the moderating effects of experience and price on the relationship between brand love and offline word of mouth (WOM) and between brand love and electronic WOM (eWOM).

An online survey was conducted on Facebook, which generated 342 valid responses. The data were analyzed using partial least squares-structural equation modeling.

The results mainly support the model by confirming that the self-expressiveness of the brand and trust are positively associated with brand love. No association between hedonic product type and brand love was found. The study’s findings also suggest positive associations between brand love and both types of WOM. Experience and price were found to strengthen the relationship between brand love and offline WOM but not the relationship between brand love and eWOM.

This study contributes to the literature by introducing and testing an extended model of brand love. It tests two moderating effects on the relationship between brand love and WOM.

The purpose of this paper is to contribute toward the current limited understanding of service bundles by investigating how purchasers of combined product-service bundles (bundle customers) differ from those purchasing a product and associated service separately (non-bundle customers).

The hypothesized effects were tested on a representative sample of mobile phone subscribers in Finland, through a multi-group moderated analysis using variance-based structural equation modeling.

While functional value had a stronger effect on attitude for bundle customers, price value is a stronger determinant of attitude for non-bundle customers. There was no difference between the groups in terms of how attitude determines the word-of-mouth (WOM) intent. The total influence of functional value on positive WOM intent was stronger for bundle customers vs non-bundle customers; in contrast, the total influence of price value on positive WOM was weaker for the bundle customers.

Two interrelated frameworks, prospect theory and mental accounting theory, are used to analyze customer response to service bundles. The results demonstrate that bundles play a powerful role in determining engagement behaviors critical to firms. Purchasing a service bundle vs a non-bundle influences how price value and functional value determine attitude and WOM intent in fundamentally different ways.

In devising communication strategies to maximize positive WOM, managers need to emphasize functional benefits for bundle purchasers and price benefits for non-bundle customers. The results also demonstrate that it is more important for firms to track perceived value, as value and not attitude differentiates WOM generation in the two groups.

This is the first study to demonstrate how bundle and non-bundle customers determine value, and how functional value and price value determine WOM generation and attitude toward service provider in fundamentally different ways. The comparison of the bundle group where the firm acts as the main resource integrator to a non-bundle group where the customer is the main resource integrator in creating value helps demonstrate the need for firms to treat the two groups in distinct ways.

The purpose of this paper is to use the consumer-based discrepancy theory to examine consumers’ behavioral motivations for using mobile devices and the factors that influence the rapid diffusion of Chinese mobile devices in Nigeria.

Data were collected using focus group interviews with samples cutting across users, technicians and experts from Port Harcourt, Nigeria’s industrial capital. This study conducted a thematic analysis of the data with NVivo Pro 11 for deductive coding.

The authors found that weak regulatory environment opened the Nigerian mobile market to the influx of mobile devices from Chinese local manufacturers. Though largely absent in developed markets, Chinese mobile devices are household names in Africa, particularly Nigeria. Having studied the Nigerian market, Chinese mobile device manufacturers have incorporated features and specifications in their mobile devices that are adapted specifically to this market. Our findings also show that these “China phones and tablets” are significantly inferior to those manufactured by global brands. However, consumer complaints have led to significant improvements in their quality. Consequently, due to their successful diffusion, Nigeria is being used as a launching pad to other African countries.

While the study could not look at the economic, environmental and health implications of the high death rate of the mobile devices, it however provides useful insights on the application of the consumer-based discrepancy theory: expectation vs performance, in the Nigerian mobile market context.

The study is the first to empirically examine the diffusion of Chinese mobile devices in one of the key emerging markets in Africa. The study provides blueprint for the local regulatory authorities on how to strengthen their regulatory oversight and also advances critical understanding on how Chinese mobile device manufacturers can improve their technologies and optimize market opportunity in Africa.