Drivers of eWOM engagement on social media for luxury consumers: Analysis,implications, and future research directions

The rapid industrialization and growth across the world have fostered the consumption of luxury fashion brands. Electronic word-of- mouth on social media (eWOM) is fast becoming an effective and germane strategy to engage luxury consumers through posting pictures, sharing reviews, and communicating information on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Extant research has not examined the antecedents and drivers that lead to eWOM behavior. We leverage self-congruity theory and through its focal lens, our study addresses this research gap through a survey conducted with 453 consumers in Mexico, Latin America's fastest growing market. Our results indicate that need for status, susceptibility to normative influence, and luxury brand involvement, moderated by authentic pride and social media influencers lead to eWOM behavior on social media. We also demonstrate that luxury brand involvement and susceptibility to normative influence mediate the relationship between need for status and eWOM behavior on social media. The study provides important implications to managers and researchers by suggesting long-term actionable strategies for growth that can help luxury firms develop a sustainable competitive advantage over rivals and competitors.     

Fashion and the metaverse: Clarifying the domain and establishing a research agenda

In recent years, the metaverse has garnered significant attention as a term referring to a network of 3D virtual worlds that integrate elements of both physical and digital worlds. Fashion brands have begun exploring the metaverse as a new marketing platform, which is expected to bring about substantial changes in the fashion and retail industry. However, a lack of consensus on the nature of the metaverse and its impact on the fashion industry currently exists, and limited academic research is available on the metaverse's influence on fashion brands' marketing strategies and brand experiences. To address this gap, this study employs a thematic analysis approach on trade journals and industry articles that cover fashion brands' metaverse strategies. Through this analysis, the study provides a typology of current marketing strategies of fashion brands in the metaverse. Based on these empirical findings, this research proposes a theoretical framework that explains how different metaverse strategies affect different dimensions of brand equity. Finally, this study offers research directions for fashion brands' metaverse strategies by presenting an integrated framework that synthesizes the key insights from our research findings.     

The role of public space in constructing experience capital: A longitudinal analysis in the hotel context

Public space plays a primary role in shaping customers' hospitality experiences. Yet how public space conditions customers' experiential outcomes in accumulating capital for hospitality organizations remains underexplored. Inspired by the theory of psychological ownership, this research presents an in-depth analysis of the impacts of customers' public space experiences on their experiential outcomes using a longitudinal hotel industry dataset merging information from customer surveys, property performance, and surrounding accessibility insights. Findings revealed the positive effects of customers’ public space experiences on their overall service experiences, the perceived value of the experience, revisit intentions, and recommendation intentions. Moreover, hotel class, other customers, and surrounding accessibility were empirically verified as moderators conditioning the positive impact of public space. These findings offer valuable implications for theory and practice that are worthy of further exploration.     

Foreign investment regulation and firm productivity: Granular evidence from Indonesia

When regulating foreign direct investment (FDI), countries often face a trade-off between pursuing national policy interests and suffering efficiency losses due to FDI restrictions. We demonstrate the presence of this trade-off in the case of a protectionist FDI policy in Indonesia. Using a yearly census of Indonesian manufacturing firms from 2000 to 2015, we link product-level changes in binding FDI regulation due to major regulatory tightening to changes in firm-level productivity. Controlling for an extensive set of fixed effects as well as potential political economy drivers of regulation, we show that a tightening of the regulatory environment was successful in reducing foreign capital reliance among regulated firms, and led to increases in FDI among non-regulated firms producing the same product. Despite compensating increases in domestic capital, regulated firms experienced relative productivity losses. This points towards either a less efficient allocation of domestic capital or a general inferiority of domestic capital as compared to foreign investments.     

The effect of control deprivation on consumers’ adoption of no-pain,no-gain principle

Consumers often base their judgments on a no-pain, no-gain principle—that is, one must pay a cost in order to achieve a beneficial outcome. For example, they infer the quality of a product from its price and judge a bad-tasting medicine to be more effective than a tasty one. Although the use of this principle to infer the value of a product or service has been observed in several domains, the processes that underlie its use have not been fully explored. We find that when people feel out of control, they tend to use the principle because it exemplifies a causal relationship between actions and outcomes and endorsing it reaffirms their belief that they have control over the outcomes of their behavior. Our findings have implications for how marketers might position products and services to attract consumers who perceive themselves as having different levels of control.     

How power distance belief,self-construal,and relationship norms impact conspicuous consumption

Building on the idea that luxury products can signal the owner's status to others, this research elucidates how fundamental and pervasive social factors—power distance belief (PDB), self-construal, and relationship norms—dynamically impact consumers' preferences for conspicuous consumption. Through three experiments, we found that (1) high-PDB consumers are more likely to prefer conspicuous consumption compared to low-PDB consumers, and this effect is mediated by their need for status; (2) the relationship between PDB and conspicuous consumption is enhanced under interdependent self-construal, attenuated under independent self-construal, and mediated by consumers' need for status; (3) these effects are moderated by relationship norms, such that the positive effect of PDB on conspicuous consumption under interdependent self-construal is attenuated when communal relationships (vs. exchange relationships) are salient. Our conceptualization and findings contribute to the literature on the dynamics of individuals' status-related behavior in social psychology and related fields, and provide important practical applications for luxury businesses.     

Solesolevaki as social capital: a tale of a village,two tribes,and a resort in Fiji

This paper advances understanding of the complex and adaptive nature of indigenous Fijian communities involved in tourism. It examines how tourism-related development has set the people of one Fijian village along two separate development pathways, and explores how preferential access to tourism benefits has created disparities within the community. Complex Adaptive Systems theory and Social Capital theory are used to conceptualise how over 40 years of tourism involvement has influenced development within an indigenous Fijian community. The findings argue that indigenous Fijian communities are non-homogeneous entities, which are constantly in transition, responding and adapting integratively to both internal and external changes over time. The findings show that the emergence of new behaviours and ways of life has led to the collapse of the pre-existing systems of social capital. As a response, community members retreated and regrouped, strengthening internal bonds and social capital in their smaller social units, leading to both dependency and opportunity-seeking behaviours among participants. Ultimately, the paper asserts that money alone does not lead to development, but rather tourism and access to a variety of capital do.     

How Do Entry Motives and Institutions Influence the Acquisition Strategies of Multinationals in Foreign Markets? Lessons from Acquisitions of Finnish Multinationals in Global Markets

When acquiring foreign targets, multinationals have an option for partial acquisition, staged acquisition, and full acquisition. This study seeks to understand how the motives of market entry and institutions influence these acquisition strategies in foreign markets. By integrating OLI paradigm and institutional theory with an empirical case study of seven acquisitions of Finnish multinationals in global markets, the study finds that the motives of market entry (i.e., market-seeking, efficiency-seeking, strategic-asset-seeking motives) interact with host country institutions in influencing the choice of partial, staged, and full acquisitions. The study also develops six propositions and recommends areas for future research.     

Employee workplace spirituality and pro-environmental behavior in the hotel industry

Pro-environmental behaviors in the workplace are less investigated than those in the public and private spheres. With this in mind, and through the values framework of workplace spirituality (WPS), synthesizing the theories of connectedness and organizational citizenship, the current study proposed a theoretical model to gauge the influence of WPS, a relatively new area of inquiry in organizational research and a neglected field in tourism and hospitality, on hotel employees’ organizational citizenship behavior for the environment (OCBE). In this framework, the emerging concept of connectedness to nature (CNS) – a strong cognitive and affective predictor of pro-environmental behavior – was depicted as a mediator, and the construct of environmental awareness (EA) was deemed a moderator. The intended model received support through empirical testing, and results confirmed that WPS is significantly associated with employees’ OCBE, and CNS indirectly affects the relationship between WPS and OCBE, while EA functions as a booster. The theoretical and practical implications of the study were discussed, and a series of contributory managerial implications were described accordingly.     

Social Capital,Income Diversification and Climate Change Adaptation: Panel Data Evidence from Rural Ethiopia

The choice between specialisation and diversification of income is driven by multiple, interacting factors, such as economies of scale and scope, risk considerations, context, and household characteristics. Using panel data from Ethiopia, we investigate the role of social capital and the covariate risk of climate change and their interaction. We find that households with greater social capital tend to be more specialised, implying that diversification and informal insurance are substitutes in the mitigation of risk. We also find that this effect is significantly weaker in regions more prone to climate change, which is consistent with the average farmer being aware that informal insurance is not an effective protection against risks that affect the entire social network. We use instrumental variable random effects estimation to account for the plausible endogeneity of social capital and we also establish that our results do not depend on the poorest and most constrained individuals in our sample.