Search results

The present chapter aims to assess how digital transformation impacts current trends in city branding, to analyze the role of digital communication in the branding of selected cities, and to compare the level of exploitation of digital communication for city branding between European and Slovak cities. We conducted empirical research in several phases, and the overall sample consists of 155 cities in Europe and Slovakia. The results of our research showed that European and Slovak cities use to some extent all the investigated tools of digital marketing communication in city branding with a dominant position of social media, both in terms of exploitation and importance for city branding in European and Slovak cities. European cities score significantly better than Slovak cities in all elements of the City Brand Hexagon, as well as in the overall city brand index. Therefore, city branding strategies in the best European cities can serve as a good practice example or inspiration for Slovak cities. Cities with lower rankings and scores on city branding should focus on strengthening their city branding or strengthening their digital communication. The possible trajectory is also the concerted strategy for the branding of the city and its digital communication.

This study aims to uncover the constraints of automation and the affordances of augmentation related to implementing artificial intelligence (AI)-powered systems across different task types: mechanical, thinking and feeling.

Qualitative study involving 45 interviews with various stakeholders in artistic gymnastics, for which AI-powered systems for the judging process are currently developed and tested. Stakeholders include judges, gymnasts, coaches and a technology vendor.

We identify perceived constraints of automation, such as too much mechanization, preciseness and inability of the system to evaluate artistry or to provide human interaction. Moreover, we find that the complexity and impreciseness of the rules prevent automation. In addition, we identify affordances of augmentation such as speedier, fault-less, more accurate and objective evaluation. Moreover, augmentation affords to provide an explanation, which in turn may decrease the number of decision disputes.

While the unique context of our study is revealing, the generalizability of our specific findings still needs to be established. However, the approach of considering task types is readily applicable in other contexts.

Our research provides useful insights for organizations that consider implementing AI for evaluation in terms of possible constraints, risks and implications of automation for the organizational practices and human agents while suggesting augmented AI-human work as a more beneficial approach in the long term.

Our granular approach provides a novel point of view on AI implementation, as our findings challenge the notion of full automation of mechanical and partial automation of thinking tasks. Therefore, we put forward augmentation as the most viable AI implementation approach. In addition, we developed a rich understanding of the perception of various stakeholders with a similar institutional background, which responds to recent calls in socio-technical research.

Cross-cultural studies on differences in eating and consumer behavior have several limitations due to differences between countries, for example, in national health policies. Switzerland combines cultural diversity between the language regions, but with a common national health policy. Therefore, Switzerland provides an ideal framework to investigate cross-cultural eating and consumer behavior. The aim of this study was to combine food consumption, purchase data and sales data to obtain a more comprehensive understanding of cultural dietary differences.

Six national Swiss studies on food consumption, one study of food sales from the largest supermarket chain in Switzerland and one national study of food purchasing were included. The estimated marginal mean of each food category in each language region was calculated using linear regression and respective linear random effect models.

In the French- and Italian-speaking regions more fish was sold, bought and consumed than in the German-speaking region of Switzerland. In contrast, in the German-speaking region, more milk and dairy products were sold, bought and consumed. Language regions explained sales, purchase and consumption of foods, but the findings were only consistent for fish and milk and dairy products.

If possible limitations of cross-culture studies between countries are eliminated, cultural eating and consumer differences are still visible, even in a small country like Switzerland. For the first time, the complexity of studying food consumption, purchasing and sales is shown in one study. This indicates the importance of further studies which consider these three perspectives to better understand cultural differences in eating and consumption behavior.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between brand strength and tourism intensity indices and to determine to what extent the implementation of the branding process can have an impact on building a destination’s brand strength and tourism economic performance in the European Union capital cities.

For the purpose of this study, secondary data on brand strength and tourism intensity for a sample of 20 European capital cities were used. Correlation analysis between brand strength and tourism intensity was then performed by using a cross-section analysis design.

The findings of this research show that destination brand strength is indeed significantly and positively related to tourism intensity.

This paper concludes that destination branding process is an important factor for creating and maintaining competitive advantages among capital cities on the mature and saturated European tourism market.

Building on the work–home resources model, the purpose of this paper is to test the mediating role of employee self-efficacy in the relationship between job crafting and work–self facilitation. The paper further explores the moderating role of the quality of leader–member exchange (LMX).

A sample of 204 employees from a European country was used to test the proposed moderated mediation model. The analysis was performed using Hayes’ Process Macro.

The findings indicate that job crafting is positively associated with self-efficacy which, in turn, is positively associated with work–self facilitation. In other words, self-efficacy mediates the relationship between job crafting and work–self facilitation. Furthermore, LMX moderates the relationship between job crafting and self-efficacy.

The results of this study offer guidelines for human resource (HR) professionals interested in grasping how organisations can assist employees in experiencing work–self facilitation.

This study advances the existing literature by investigating the antecedents of work–self facilitation, which is an understudied variable in the work–family and HR literature, thereby responding to calls to include aspects of self in the discussion on different life domains in order to obtain an all-inclusive view of how employees function. Furthermore, it demonstrates how LMX and job crafting promote the fulfilment of an employee’s own personal interests and hobbies. Such information is relevant to HR practitioners as it might help them boost employees’ work performance.

The purpose of this study is to examine the antecedents of consumer engagement with supermarkets' social media accounts. Drawing on regulatory fit theory and social sharing of emotions theory, the authors test if the content posted on the social media brand pages of supermarkets dealing with a topic of high social relevance, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, stimulates social media consumer engagement and if and how the engagement is mediated by the arousal of positive and negative emotions.

The authors retrieved data from the Facebook accounts of the top 20 European supermarkets identified in the Deloitte 2020 Global Powers of Retailing report during the first wave of the pandemic from 1 March to 30 June 2020, collecting a sample of 2,524 posts from 8 different countries. After a content analysis to classify COVID-19 content, the authors applied the Baron and Kenny (1986) methodology to verify the hypothesised relationships.

The findings highlight a positive direct relationship between the social relevance of a topic (COVID-19) and social media consumer engagement mediated by the arousal of positive and negative emotions.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the earliest empirical research using Facebook data to investigate the role of the social relevance of content as an antecedent of social media consumer engagement with a specific focus on supermarkets. The paper contributes to the stream of social media literature investigating the antecedents of social media engagement behaviour, exploring the role of topics' choice and aroused emotions, which to date are both under-investigated.

On October 21, 1989, the Berlin wall fell, announcing the collapse of the Soviet empire and the demise of 20th century socialism. In a much celebrated article published the same year, a senior official of the U.S. Department of State, Francis Fukuyama, announced the “end of history,” celebrating “the unabashed victory of economic and political liberalism and the universalisation of Western democracy as the final form of human government.”¹ Indeed, the Cold War is over and we can all rest in peace. Capitalism has prevailed and we can now use interchangeably such words as market economy, freedom and democracy.