Does justice affect brand advocacy? Online brand advocacy behaviors as a response to hotel customers’ justice perceptions

This study focuses on customers' information-sharing behavior in the context of online brand advocacy behavior regarding hotel brands. We aim to explain hotel customers' online brand advocacy behavior through three-sided justice evaluations (i.e., justice for employees, justice for the self, and global belief in a just world), and their hotel satisfaction. Hypotheses are tested by using survey data acquired from 688 individuals on Amazon's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) through partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The findings show that customers' perceptions of justice for the self positively affect their hotel satisfaction, perceptions of justice for employees and the global belief in a just world positively affect online brand advocacy behavior, and hotel satisfaction also positively affects online brand advocacy behavior. We expand current research efforts on online brand advocacy research and provide theoretical and managerial implications for the development of marketing and management research and practice.     

浅谈客户关系管理和价值创新

现代企业客户关系管理是改善客户关系、降低交易成本、扩大市场份额、提高经济效益的一项非常重要的管理内容。它致力于最大化客户的价值和提高公司的利润。文章先对客户关系管理对企业的重要性进行了分析，指出其对企业的价值所在；接着以星巴克公司为例，分析说明了在企业客户关系管理过程中运用价值创新战略对企业价值创造的帮助。     

顾客满意策略与顾客满意营销

在情感消费时代，企业不再以质量达标、自己满意为经营理念，而是以顾客满意、赢得顾客高度忠诚为经营理念。企业营销策略不再以争取或保持市场占有率为主，而是以保持顾客份额和顾客忠诚为主。而顾客满意策略正是企业获取顾客“货币选票”的制胜法宝。以顾客至上为理念，让顾客参与产品设计、提供全程高附加值的服务、个性服务、培育顾客忠诚，是CS时代顾客满意营销的主要策略。     

The power of design: How does design affect consumers’ online hotel booking?

Emphasizing experiential appeals to consumers through design is most notable in the emerging lifestyle hotel segment of the lodging industry. This study identifies which lodging design mechanisms evoke consumer responses and provides a novel understanding of the relationships among consumer perception of hotel product/service design and booking intention by incorporating consumer emotional arousal and quality expectations in a theoretical model. The findings of this study suggest that aesthetics and symbolism in hotel design shape booking intention through emotional arousal and quality expectation. The functional dimension of design affects booking intention only through quality expectation. The findings will be particularly meaningful to the lodging industry because online booking requires both emotional and cognitive responses on the part of consumers.     

How locus of control shapes intention to reuse mobile apps for making hotel reservations: Evidence from chinese consumers

This study unveils the cognitive mechanism that locus of control (LOC) dimensions (internal control, chance control, and control by powerful others) predict intention to reuse mobile apps for making hotel reservations. The predictions are assumed through the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) anchors and perceived risk. Drawn from an online survey with 457 Chinese participants, results show direct positive predictions of intention to reuse from UTAUT anchors including performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, and facilitating conditions. Perceived risk also negatively predicts intention. Effort expectancy mediates the links between internal/chance control and intention, whereas perceived risk mediates only the latter link. Facilitating conditions mediate the relationship between control by powerful others and intention. This study contributes to existing research by distinguishing the mechanisms that underpin LOC dimensions and technology re-adoption. Practitioners are recommended to improve booking apps by addressing the concerns of users with different LOC.     

Use numbers not words! Communicating hotels’ cleaning programs for COVID-19 from the brand perspective

After hotels in many countries were forced to close in government-imposed lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, there is an inherent need to communicate how they deal with the coronavirus to motivate guests to visit. However, lack of knowledge about how to persuasively communicate about hotels’ cleaning programs for COVID-19 can challenge the industry’s survival. We investigated how hotels that position their brand as a particular personality (sincere vs. exciting) could benefit from different communication styles (inclusion of numerical vs. verbal quantifiers) when presenting their COVID-19 cleaning procedures. Study 1 explored tourists’ central attitudinal responses toward hotels’ cleaning programs. Study 2 demonstrated that sincere hotel brands would benefit from using numerical and verbal quantifiers to communicate their cleaning policies, whereas exciting hotel brands would benefit only from numerical quantifiers. Our results invite hotel managers to use their brand personality positioning to influence tourists’ attitudes and intentions in a pandemic context.     

Service innovativeness and the structuring of organizations: The moderating roles of learning orientation and inter-functional coordination

This paper aims to investigate the influence of organizational structure on service innovativeness by testing the moderating roles of learning orientation and inter-functional coordination. This helps to understand how organic structure influences service innovativeness when it is effectively leveraged with favorable organizational factors. Data were collected from 178 hotel managers and executives in Japan and moderated regression analysis was performed to analyze the data. Findings of the study suggest that higher levels of service innovativeness are positively related to higher levels of hotel business performance. In addition, organic structure makes a positive influence on service innovativeness and an increase in the levels of learning orientation boost the effectiveness of organic structure on service innovativeness. Moreover, the positive association between organic structure and service innovativeness become stronger when all firm’s functions make an attempt to cooperate and contribute to disseminating customers and competitors’ information in the hotels. These findings contribute to understanding how hotel service innovation is affected by service innovativeness, organizational structure, learning orientation and inter-functional coordination.     

Listen to their heart: Why does active listening enhance customer satisfaction after a service failure?

A service employee’s active listening plays a crucial role in restoring a damaged customer relationship. However, previous studies reveal little about how listening to customer complaints operates in recovering a service failure. The purpose of this research is to explore when and why the employee’s active listening has a positive influence on customer response. We define active listening as (1) listening to customers’ concerns before apologizing and (2) verbally acknowledging them. Using scenario-based experiments, we demonstrate that active listening improves customer satisfaction, which in turn increases tip size (Study 1). Moreover, we find that active listening fosters customers’ perceptions of preferential treatment, which lead to greater customer satisfaction (Study 2). Yet, such positive effects of active listening diminish when customers are unexpectedly offered a complimentary service such as a room upgrade. The implications for academic researchers and marketing managers are discussed.     

Carbon dioxide emissions generated by energy consumption of hotels and homestay facilities in Taiwan

In the field of the tourism, hotels and homestay facilities account for considerable amounts of energy consumption and CO₂ emissions. This study presents an investigation conducted on the CO₂ emissions from four types of hotel in Taiwan. According to the results, the average CO₂ emissions of international tourist hotels, standard tourist hotels, general hotels, and homestay facilities are 28.9, 19.2, 12.5, and 6.3 kg-CO₂/person-night, respectively. Hotels with higher service levels produce higher average CO₂ emissions per person-night. Analytical results indicate that increasing stays at hotels with low CO₂ emissions (such as homestay facilities and general hotels), accommodating more guests together per room, and enhancing energy usage efficiency, can effectively reduce hotel CO₂ emissions without reducing the total number of guests. The results of this study may be applied to CO₂ reduction programmes for tourists, hotel enterprises, and contribute toward the formulation of government policy in Taiwan.     

A two-generation new product model by considering forward-looking customers: Dynamic pricing and advertising optimization

Nowadays, one of the challenges of the firm managing multi-generation products is the forward-looking behavior of customers. Anticipating the introduction of a newer generation affects the demand and sales volume of the current generation and next generation. In this research, we investigated how to efficiently structure the pricing and advertising strategies of a firm that launches a two-generation new product to a market populated by forward-looking customers. Two thresholds were determined on the advertising expenditure of Generations 1 and 2. Our analysis proposed that the optimal pricing path of Generation 1 was monotonically decreasing or increasing and, then, decreasing. The optimal pricing of Generation 2 followed a concave curve. A heuristic solution method was proposed to solve the numerical examples. Findings revealed that, with increasing the customers' forward-looking behavior, the firm's profit would decrease. In the presence of forward-looking customers, it is beneficial for the firm to reduce the price of Generation 1 and allocate more budget to advertise Generation 2. Among other results, the advertising expenditure was shown to be positively affected by the number of potential customers and advertising effectiveness. Also, the length of the planning horizon had a negative effect on the advertising expenditure. A higher discount rate could lead to lower price, while higher advertising effectiveness and length of the planning horizon would result in higher price. Further, the results showed that, with increasing the word-of-mouth advertising effectiveness, the firm should increase the advertising expenditure and decrease the price firstly and, afterwards, decrease the advertising effort and increase the price.