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The purpose of this exploratory, data-driven study is to identify the optimal banner advertising strategies for achieving different business metric goals, such as effective cost per activity, via unique predictive modelling methods.

The k-fold cross-validation method is used to build predictive models to analyze 18,956 online banner advertising records.

Banner ads with high visual complexity and attractive offers tend to draw users to participate in online activities, whereas voluntary banner ads with low visual complexity tend to draw user clicks. Further, banner ads with lower visual complexity tend to have lower costs. Finally, the third quarter of a year is the most important period for online advertising campaigns in terms of achieving the optimal effectiveness and cost for running internet banner ads.

As only visual and temporal characteristics of internet banner ads are covered in this study, future research should concentrate on the specific language within each banner ad message. Further, this study does not specifically tie internet-specific metrics, such as activities, costs and clicks to business metrics, such as revenue and profit.

Advertisers can use the findings from this study to create an effective and cost-efficient banner advertising strategy. Specifically, firms should use larger banner ads with features and offers, advertise at the end of the year and use caution with rich media expandable banners and banner ad videos as they can significantly increase costs.

This is one of the first exploratory studies to use the k-fold cross-validation method to build predictive models to identify visual and temporal factors that significantly impact the effectiveness and cost of internet banner ads.

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented small-to-medium size enterprises (SMEs) with a massive and unexpected challenge that has caused many to adjust their operational standards. Perhaps the biggest change has been the shift to remote work and away from traditional office spaces. Thus, this study aims to explore the implications of this shift within the context of customer participation in the new product development (NPD) process.

Our study surveys 218 small-to-medium size business-to-business firms in the USA on a variety of questions revolving around their NPD processes, customer collaboration and the shift to remote work. The authors use structural equation modeling in the AMOS program to analyze the data.

The findings indicate that both customer participation breadth and customer participation depth positively impact new product performance. Furthermore, these relationships are found to be contingent upon whether firms rely on remote work during the collaboration process. The results show that accessing a broader variety of explicit customer insights (i.e., breadth) has become easier in the increasingly remote collaboration environment. However, as face-to-face customer participation in NPD has decreased, the prospect of gaining deep, tacit customer knowledge relevant to product development (i.e., depth) has become more challenging.

This study contributes to the knowledge-based view of the firm and the customer participation literature, and it also has implications for managers adjusting to the shift to remote work following the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings provide additional evidence that customer participation is an effective strategy for SMEs (Morgan et al., 2018), but remote work has both positive and negative implications regarding the type of external knowledge that is acquired during customer participation in NPD.

Building trust is crucial for e‐service providers looking to develop long‐term customer relationships. But consumers from dissimilar demographic groups behave differently. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate the question, how do consumers from different generational cohorts develop trust in a website?

An experimental study focuses on the navigation, vendor advice, privacy, and feedback mechanisms of an e‐tailer website. The between‐subjects design tests the effects of these four drivers on the online trust of 197 Millennials and 201 Baby Boomers.

The presence of feedback mechanisms, navigation, and vendor advice are stronger determinants of online trust for Millennials than for Baby Boomers; privacy is a stronger determinant for Baby Boomers.

This study focuses on four crucial variables of the website interface; further research should include other variables. Extensions to other e‐service settings, beyond online retailers, would be interesting. Finally, this study includes only Millennials and Baby Boomers rather than members of other generations.

The results provide insights into how different generational cohorts dissimilarly develop online trust and highlight the need for managers to consider the online behaviors of cohorts when developing websites. Managers should emphasize the privacy elements for Baby Boomers but highlight navigation, vendor advice, and feedback mechanisms for Millennials.

This study is the first to research generational differences in the development of trust online.

This paper examines the moderating role of firm size (FS) and industry type in the relationship between high-performance work practices (HPWPs) and entrepreneurial firm performance.

A descriptive research design involving a five-year dataset from firms in the retail and services industries of Nigeria was used in the analyses.

The use of HPWPs is widespread among entrepreneurial firms, with ability- and motivation-enhancing practices being dominant. Country context influences the types of HPWPs implemented by entrepreneurial firms. FS and industry type do not have significant moderating effects on the relationship between HPWPs and the performance of entrepreneurial firms. The positive effect of HPWPs on performance is consistent with findings made in prior studies.

FS plays a neutral role in the relationship between HPWPs and entrepreneurial firm performance. Within the broader retail and services industries, this relationship is weaker in capital-intensive firms compared to less capital-intensive ones. The restricted focus on only retail and service industries may limit the universal applicability of the findings.

Findings indicate that the efficacy of HPWPs is neither influenced by FS nor industry type. Entrepreneurial firms with higher capital intensity benefit relatively more from the use of HPWPs.

Unlike other research efforts focusing on a single moderating influence, this study combines two important contextual factors, FS and industry type, to provide a better understanding of HPWPs. The study spotlights the effects of country context in the implementation of HPWPs in a way that prior studies have not done.

Drawing on the social presence theory, this study aims to explore how supplier–customer social media interactions influence supplier observers’ trust in the customers and what mechanisms contribute to variation in trust experience.

A total of 36 semi-structured interviews were conducted with Chinese suppliers using WeChat for business-to-business interactions. Data were analyzed in three steps: open coding, axial coding and selective coding.

Findings reveal that varied trust is based not only on the categories of social presence of interaction – whether social presence is embedded in informative interactions – but also on the perceived selectivity in social presence. Observer suppliers who experience selectivity during social and affective interactions create a perception of hidden information and an unhealthy relationship atmosphere, and report a sense of emotional vulnerability, thus eroding cognitive and affective trust.

The findings contribute new understandings to social presence theory by exploring the social presence of interactions in a supplier–supplier–customer triad and offer valuable insights into business-to-business social media literature by adopting a suppliers’ viewpoint to unpack the mechanisms of how social presence of interaction positively and negatively influences suppliers’ trust and behavioral responses.

Using the National Football League (NFL) concussion crisis context, the purpose of this paper is to provide sports marketers with a strategic approach to sports crisis management through consideration of crisis media coverage and organizational reputation.

An online experiment assessed the impact of two crisis response strategies, fan involvement and exposure to crisis media coverage on emotional response, corporate message credibility, crisis perception and perceived corporate reputation.

The accident response strategy was associated with more favorable perceptions of the NFL and corporate message credibility. Sports fan involvement facilitated more favorable perceptions of the NFL’s reputation, while exposure to media coverage of the NFL’s crisis created negative perceptions of the NFL’s reputation. Exposure to media coverage of the NFL concussion crisis increased feelings of anger, which in turn decreased perceptions of corporate message credibility.

A limitation for this study is the specific crisis scenario that was used. The NFL concussion crisis is different from other crisis types in that it does not directly impact the audience’s well-being, but instead affects their perceptions of an iconic institution.

In light of study findings, it is suggested that sports marketers consider the following when dealing with crises: carefully determine proper framing methods when crafting a crisis response as different response types affect consumers in different ways; leverage public relations (PR) practices by engaging in media monitoring to inform an appropriate crisis response to control the narrative; and examine forces exernal of the organization that influence consumer emotions, paying special attention to feelings of anger as anger negatively impacts consumer perceptions of corporate credibility.

This paper addresses sports crisis strategy from both marketing and public relations perspectives. It describes how strategic efforts protect a sports organization’s reputation, thus increasing marketing effectiveness.