| 1. |
- Kordestani, Arash, et al.
(författare)
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Emerging trends in sustainability research: a look back as we begin to look forward
- 2015
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Ingår i: International Journal of Environment and Sustainable Development (IJESD). - : InderScience Publishers. - 1474-6778 .- 1478-7466. ; 14:2, s. 154-169
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This research is a content analysis of 1502 peer-reviewed articles on sustainability. The aim is to investigate emerging themes and trends in this area of research and move towards recommendations for researchers to consider when developing their work in sustainability research. By exploring and tracking sustainability literature in the business and management disciplines over a 20-years period, patterns emerge that could provide a better understanding of the trends within authorship, research topic, and the themes and concepts being studied. One interesting contribution of this study is introducing the concept of the “4Ps of sustainability research,” which emerges by reviewing this area over time. The results suggest that the evolution of sustainability research can be summarized in organizations and firms moving from Principles and Policy towards Practice and Performance during over 20 years of sustainability efforts. This paper also discusses the creation of sustainability value and evolution of businesses to sustainability knowledge centers. It adds to the related literature, by proposing a new way of categorizing sustainability research over time, and introducing a framework for theory building in this area of research.
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| 2. |
- Styvén, Maria, 1969-, et al.
(författare)
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Who am I if you can’t see me? : The “self” of young travellers as driver of eWOM in social media
- 2018
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Ingår i: Journal of Tourism Futures. - : Emerald Group Publishing Limited. - 2055-5911 .- 2055-592X. ; 4:1, s. 80-92
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to analyse factors influencing the propensity to share travel experiences in social media during a trip, across a sample of Millennial and Generation Z consumers in three different countries.Design/methodology/approachAn online survey was sent to consumers between 16 and 30 years in Sweden, UK and India. Structural equation modelling and multigroup analysis was conducted to compare results between countries and generations.FindingsYoung travellers’ need for uniqueness (NFU) and opinion leadership (OL) with regard to travel tends to increase their propensity to share travel experiences in social media during a trip. Reflected appraisal of self is strongly related to NFU and OL and may therefore indirectly influence the propensity to share. Some differences were found between generations and countries.Research limitations/implicationsFuture research could consider comparisons between travellers from younger and older generations. The hypotheses formulated in this study could be tested in other countries. Further adaptions or extensions of existing NFU scales to fit in the travel and tourism context are suggested.Practical implicationsMillennial and Gen Z consumers will constitute an increasing part of travellers and visitors in the future. Through a better understanding of their behaviour, tourism managers can design strategies to engage them and increase electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM).Originality/valueThis study contributes by addressing the lack of research on “self”-related drivers of eWOM in general social media during the trip, and by providing an international perspective through cross-cultural comparisons.
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| 3. |
- Sattari, Setayesh, et al.
(författare)
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Preferences of young news consumers : a conjoint analysis
- 2015
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Ingår i: Ideas in Marketing. - Cham : Springer. - 9783319109503 - 9783319109510 ; , s. 595-598
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- As more people choose to obtain their news online, most notably young people, it became of interest to look at the changing habits of online news consumers. Using conjoint analysis of Swedish college students, this paper aims to answer the question, which news attributes within various news categories are most preferred by today’s online news consumers? Results indicate that accuracy and source credibility are the most important attributes across many news categories, followed by immediacy. Interestingly, interactivity was, overall, the least preferred attribute for young, online news consumers in one of the most Internet-connected countries in the world.
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| 4. |
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| 5. |
- Deraz, Hossam, 1971-
(författare)
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Assessments of Advertisements on Social Networking Sites
- 2016
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Licentiatavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Advertisements (ads) in social networking sites (SNSAs) have been considered by many researchers as a crucial area of research. However, the scope of the existing studies on consumers’ assessments of SNSAs has been very limited. Most of the existing studies on assessing SNSAs have focused on Ducoffe’s (1996) model with its three variables, and they have ignored other related variables like the credibility value and interactivity value of the advertisement, which are more logically related to SNSAs than the traditional ads. Moreover, most of these studies have been skewed towards younger users and have ignored the social networking site (SNS) users from other age categories. Finally, previous studies about the assessment of SNSAs have depended on data collected from users of popular SNSs and ignored active users from the brand communities (fans of brands on SNSs). In this thesis, the present author has emphasized these three points as the major gaps in the literature about assessing SNSAs. Moreover, to deepen our understanding of how SNS users assess SNSAs this study presents the research findings of three published papers with three different purposes and with different levels of analysis.The first article aimed to extend Ducoffe’s (1996) model – which was used in the previous literature in assessing SNSAs – by considering the ads’ credibility and interactivity values in addition to Ducoffe’s (1996) three variables of information value, entertainment value, and irritation value. A multiple regression analysis was used to test the modified model, and based on the regression analysis of testing the five predictors, the model without the irritation value had the best coefficient of determination (R2). Moreover, coefficient analysis to test the given hypothesis and to determine the coefficients of the predictors was used. According to this survey study, the four primary variables that predicted the consumers’ assessment of the SNSAs were the information value, entertainment value, credibility value, and interactivity value. As perceived by the SNS users, the interactivity value was the strongest among the four predictors.Based on the unexpected result ofthe irritation value of the first paper, the second paper focused on testing the extended model of the assessments of SNSAs as perceived by a different research population, in this case, brand communities’ consumers (BCCs). Based on the regression analysis of testing the five predictors, the model with the five predictors had the best coefficient of determination (R2). The coefficient analysis was used to test the given hypothesis, to determine the coefficients of the five predictors, and to form a construct equation for assessing the SNSAs. Based on this survey study, the four variables with significant positive effects on the consumers’ assessment of SNSAs were informativeness, entertainment value, credibility value, and interactivity value, while the fifth dimension (irritation value) had a significant negative coefficient on the consumers’ assessment of SNSAs. Moreover, that study provided a deeper understanding of how the BCCs assess SNSAs, and it contributed to identifying the main characteristics ofthe BCCs on an SNS.The third paper focused on exploring the effect of national culture on the consumers’ assessment of SNSAs. The cultural features of the respondents in that study gave additional evidence about how a nation’s cultural characteristics can influence the consumers’ assessment of SNSAs. This study helped to identify how SNS users from Egypt, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom assess SNSAs. In this study, one-way analysis of variance with post hoc tests was used to compare the assessments of the three nations. Based on the empirical findings of this survey study, the three groups had significant difference F-ratios for their perception of four of the five variables for assessing SNSAs. Their perceptions of the entertainment value did not significantly differ between the three groups while the interactivity value had the strongest F-ratio.The overall purpose of this study was to deepen our understanding of how SNS users are assessing SNSAs in different settings by considering SNS users, BCCs, and others from various nations. All of the studies presented here have focused on variables for assessing the ads that have been used by other researchers in different research contexts.
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| 6. |
- Deraz, Hossam, 1971-
(författare)
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Social Networking Sites – Consumers’ assessment of the value of advertisements (Extended Model)
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In light of the identified shortcomings in the earlier studies of consumers’ assessment of advertisement value on social networking sites, and the relative importance of explaining advertisement value, the overall purpose of this dissertation is to develop and empirically test a conceptual framework that can advance knowledge and increase our understanding of how online consumers assess the value of advertisements on social networking sites. In reference to this purpose, this doctoral dissertation has sought to answer the following overarching research question: What are the relevant variables that predict online consumers’ assessment of advertisement value on social networking sites, and how do these variables affect their assessment?To achieve the purpose of this study and to answer its overarching research question, a mixed method approach was used, adapting both quantitative and qualitative methods. A sequential explanatory strategy using mixed methods was the primary approach used to explain and interpret the quantitative results, by collecting and analyzing follow-up qualitative data. Consequently, this study started by doing a systematic literature review to identify the related factors, followed by a conceptual study to provide an extended conceptual framework that connected consumer beliefs to their sources of gratifications from using SNSs. That conceptual framework was partially examined in three survey papers to test the effects of its five belief factors (information value, entertainment value, irritation value, interactivity value, and credibility value) on assesments of advertisement value on SNSs. The three survey papers found that these five belief factors have significant effects on assessments of advertisement value on social networking sites. However, those effects varied according to consumers’ cultural backgrounds. The three survey papers were then followed by a qualitative focus group study to give a deeper explanation, and to discover the underlying reasons behind consumers’ assessment of advertisement value. That focus group study confirmed the role of culture in assessing the value of advertisements, and it gave deeper explanations behind the reasons for that variance in assessments of advertisement value within the context of social networking sites from one research population to another. In general, this study contributes to the understanding of consumers’ assessments of advertisements on social networking sites. It offers a new approach by connecting consumers’ gratifications from using social networking sites to their assessment of advertisement value. In turn, it helps to reflect a number of valuable insights that can be utilized by both researchers and marketers in order to understand how the addressed factors enhance consumers’ assessments by testing the contribution of credibility, interactivity value, social influence, pre-purchase search motivation, and cultural backgrounds, in addition to previously tested variables: information value, entertainment value, and irritation value.
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| 7. |
- Eriksson, Maria Theresa
(författare)
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Going Above and Beyond : An Assessment of Paying it Forward Behaviour in the B2B Marketing Context
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Helping behavior and other acts of kindness are important in the business context as they lead to numerous positive outcomes for organizations and individuals and they can help form the foundation needed for meeting organizational goals. Acts of kindness can have a multiplying effect which can be achieved by kindness being paid back to the individual who conducted the act of kindness or paid forward to others. Paying it Forward (PIF) is a type of generalized social exchange behaviour that occurs when a person gives something of value to another person because they have in the past received something of value from someone else. PIF is forming a growing area of interest in business, yet to date PIF has received less attention in a Business-to-Business (B2B) context than in Business-to-Consumer (B2C) and Consumer-to-Consumer (C2C). There are two key considerations that makes PIF important in the B2B marketing context, namely that marketing itself constitutes exchange and that the multiple responsibilities that the marketing manager often hold makes them actors in social exchange, both as participants of exchange relationships between firms and as facilitators of exchange through the responsibilities they hold within their firm. With this in mind, this dissertation identifies research gaps as it relates to PIF in the context of B2B marketing, and these gaps can be summarized by the research problem statement: How can marketing managers participate in and facilitate/encourage Paying it Forward in the B2B marketing context? This research problem statement was examined by four research questions, each addressed by a study producing an individual research article. The purpose of the first study was to address the research question: What is the role of the Generalized Social Exchange behaviour Paying it Forward in the Business-to-Business marketing context? The findings of this work serve to further situate PIF in the B2B marketing context, and contribute a conceptual framework and several researchable propositions for PIF in the B2B marketing context. Next, the purpose of the second study was to address the research question: How does Generalized Social Exchange such as Paying it Forward occur and drive value co-creation results for employer branding in a business ecosystem? This study extended knowledge of B2B marketing from an employer branding perspective by proposing the existance of an ecosystem-centric perspective and Ecosystem Citizenship Behaviour (ECB) as it relates to employer branding. Meaning that employer branding can be perceived and acted upon from the perspective of the ecosystem as a whole. Following this, the purpose of the third study was to address the research question: Does organizational commitment predict Paying it Forward behaviour in the workplace? This study conceptually confirmed that PIF is an organizational citizenship behavior distinct from other conceptualizations. It also further added to the literature by confirming that there exists a positive relationship between organizational commitment and PIF, and that age and gender are confirmed moderators of this relationship. Finally, the purpose of the fourth study was to address the research question: How can managers encourage Paying it Forward behaviour that contributes to strengthening the firm’s employer brand? Study 4 introduced a conceptual definition for a PIF mindset and described what it entails and the value it may bring. It also provided a summary of different examples, benefits and risks of how PIF occurs on a micro-, meso- and macro-level. Finally, it provided practical guidelines summarized as principles for managers regarding how to foster a PIF mindset among employees and the broader organization. Through these studies taken together, this dissertation is contributing to furthering B2B marketing literature by providing insights into how marketing managers can participate in, facilitate and encourage PIF in the B2B marketing context, by first providing a general assessment of PIF in this context, and then addressing specific areas to further our understanding of how actors engage in this context. This dissertation is organized as follows: First, Chapter 1 provides an introduction and overview of the research area. Next, Chapter 2 provides a review of the literature relating to the key concepts and develops the research questions under examination in this dissertation. In Chapter 3, the methodology undertaken to study the research area is discussed. Chapter 4, in turn, presents a summary of the findings of each research article. Finally, Chapter 5 presents the theoretical contributions and practical implications of each of the four studies, it also discusses limitations and proposes recommendations for future research. The four contributing research articles can be found in full length as appendices to this dissertation.
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| 8. |
- Näppä, Anna
(författare)
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Building Employer Brands: The Employee Perspective
- 2023
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Employer branding, or the creation and communication of an identifiable identity as an employer, has become a buzzword that interests both practitioners and researchers. Employer branding is considered a key tool for attracting, developing, and retaining the best employees and is believed to be the answer to the so-called “war for talent”. The question of human capital is of the essence for all companies but is particularly prevalent for service organizations. For example, organizations in tourism and hospitality rely on their employees to deliver complex experiences, while balancing high customer expectations and resources available. Attracting and retaining the right frontline employees is crucial due to their unique role as brand ambassadors who deliver the brand promise in each customer encounter. At the same time, employers in tourism and hospitality have been struggling with a negative industry image and high employee turnover, which has intensified even more in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic.While employer branding has received a great deal of attention it still offers much research potential. Employer branding includes both current and potential employees, but most studies have focused on talent attraction rather than capturing perceptions of current employees. The majority of research has studied large companies with access to both expert knowledge and financial resources, and thus little is known about employer branding in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). In addition, it is only recently the concept of co-creation entered the employer branding vocabulary, referring to the role of employees as active agents or partners to the brand rather than a mere target market. Co-creation has been thoroughly researched in the tourism and hospitality sphere, lending itself as a suitable context for addressing the gap relating to employee co-creation of the employer brand. Thus, the overall research purpose is to investigate how employer brands are perceived and built by employees. This is done with a focus on the tourism and hospitality context.Based on the current gaps in the literature, the following research aims were developed: 1. To explore employer brand management in SMEs2. To explore the role of employees as both target group and co-creators of employer brand equity in the context of tourism and hospitality.3. To investigate employees’ perceptions of their employer’s attractiveness, together with intentions to stay and recommend in tourism and hospitality. Special attention is paid to the role of creativity and innovation. 4. To investigate which employer attributes are related to perceptions about the tourism and hospitality industry and the likelihood to stay. These aims were researched in four individual papers. To reach the overall purpose, a mixed methods approach was applied. The first two papers took a qualitative approach: the first paper used observational data, while the second used in-depth interviews. The two latter papers were quantitative in nature. This research contributes to two areas: the employer branding literature, as well as research on tourism and hospitality. In particular, it highlights employer branding as a co-creational practice and performance, where employees build the brand by participating in internal processes, representing the brand towards outsiders, and simply being part of the collective brand identity. The possibility to do innovative and creative work seems to be an important driver for staying with and recommending one’s current employer. In terms of perceptions of work in tourism and hospitality, there are two levels to consider: the individual employer as well as the industry itself. The results emphasize the role of industry reputation and general industry attractiveness in retaining employees. This research also focuses on the roles and perspectives of current employees which has been lacking in the employer branding literature. The dissertation begins with defining the context of tourism and hospitality and current state of employer branding as an area, moving then to describing the identified gaps and landing in an overall research problem. The most relevant theories are discussed in the second chapter to lay the theoretical foundation together with a review on employer branding and employer brand equity. The second chapter also explains the concept of co-creation and the effects of the industry on the employer brand(ing) and concludes with a justification for the research aims. Chapter three explains the methodological choices for the dissertation and the individual papers and findings from the papers are described in chapter four. Finally, the fifth chapter presents the overall conclusions and implications for theory and practice.
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| 9. |
- Robertson, Jeandri
(författare)
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Competitive Advantage Strategies in Industrial Marketing : Using an Ecosystem Approach
- 2021
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Intensified competitive pressures related to a dynamic and hypercompetitive global economy, technological advances, unpredictable customers and competitors, and blurring industry boundaries, have compelled industrial marketers to reconsider the strategic imperatives of the organization, in relation to the competitive context in which it operates. As it becomes increasingly difficult for individual firms to identify and respond to external competitive challenges and changes independently, new organizational perspectives have been proposed to thrive in the presence of these forces. The metaphor of the ‘ecosystem’ has increasingly been used in research and practice to highlight the interdependencies between organizations and their environment, providing a renewed way of thinking about the co-evolution, collaboration and creation of value between actors. Although industrial marketers’ knowledge of ecosystems is rapidly developing, the field is still unfolding and relatively little is known about the differences between these ecosystems, especially from a competitive advantage perspective.To deepen our understanding of its value from an industrial marketing point of view, the current research sought to create conceptual and terminological clarity regarding the ecosystem concept and examine the competitive dynamics present within and between these ecosystems. The central research problem guiding this research is: How is competitive advantage achieved through an ecosystem approach in industrial marketing? Contemporary strategy literature converging at the crossroads between organizational evolution and a fast-changing competitive landscape, proposes that relationships and the resources and capabilities embedded within these relationships are key to the attainment of competitive advantage. As such, theoretical streams that incorporate this line of thought are used as lenses through which to assess competitive advantage. The following research questions emerged:RQ1: What are the drivers of competitive advantage through a network analysis approach to ecosystems?RQ2: How does social capital impact the competitive advantage of ecosystems?RQ3: How do dynamic capabilities impact the competitive advantage of ecosystems?RQ4: How do resource- and capability-based theories explain competition in ecosystems?Four papers were constructed as part of the empirical part of this research. Two papers assessed competition and competitiveness within ecosystems, with the other two examining competitive advantage between ecosystems. Two of the papers followed a quantitative descriptive approach, one paper followed a quantitative exploratory approach, while a qualitative exploratory approach was utilized in the fourth paper. The respective approaches were deemed best suited to address the respective research questions. The research contributes to the body of knowledge in that it highlights the centrality of knowledge exploration in leveraging, maintaining and attaining advantage. It also points to a cyclical knowledge-generating process within the ecosystem context, which centers on exploring, then exploiting and finally, transforming of knowledge for sustainable competitive advantage. The dissertation follows a narrative of first sketching the relevance of the ecosystem metaphor within the industrial marketing context, leading to the identification of gaps in the research and an introduction to the research problem. The evolution of the ecosystem concept is then reviewed, laying bare its characteristics, extant definitions and different types of ecosystems. Theoretical perspectives of strategy, inherently embedded in theoretical assumptions of how competition works, are then discussed. The research questions are then introduced, including the respective papers addressing each research question, together with the research methodology followed. The dissertation concludes with a summary of the findings, which also provides a discussion on the research contributions, managerial implications, noted limitations and suggested areas for future research. The four papers are presented as Appendices, of which three have been published and the fourth is in its second round of review.
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| 10. |
- Brown, Terrence, 1962-
(författare)
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An Evaluation of Crowdsourcing as a Tool for Marketing Activities
- 2019
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Advances in technology and social media have facilitated the rapid development of crowdsourcing as an innovative tool within the field of marketing. This has driven researchers to investigate more deeply the phenomenon of crowdsourcing as a marketing innovation. The overall purpose of this thesis is expressed as: To explore and describe the use of crowdsourcing within the field of marketing. More specifically, the primary purpose of the thesis is to understand better - How crowdsourcing can be used as a marketing tool. This thesis aims to illuminate the gap in the extant marketing literature by reviewing current academic knowledge surrounding crowdsourcing and marketing. The use of the crowd as a marketing tool is growing primarily because of the advent of the Internet; however, as technology continues to advance the possibilities, challenges and side effects of crowdsourcing also change. These also need to be investigated continually. More specifically as digital marketing moves from a Web 2.0 environment to a Web 3.0 environment there will be new opportunities as well as pitfalls. As a result, new and relevant marketing problems exist at the nexus of crowdsourcing and marketing.The research problem is sub-divided into the following four research questions:RQ1: To what extent are crowdfunding platforms accessible to organizations as a marketing channel and, if so, what role can these platforms play?RQ2: How will the shift from Web 2.0 (and active-user input) to Web 3.0(and passive-data/sensor–based input) impact the new opportunities/product development process?RQ3: How can user-generated content help firms make strategic decisions about new business opportunities? RQ4: How is the evolution of crowdsourcing impacting information externalities and consumer privacy and how is this impacting marketing? This research is further divided into two sections. The first part investigates marketing activities specifically new opportunities/product development, advertising and promotion, and marketing research. The second section focuses on one of the possible repercussions of crowdsourcing in the marketing process. Most research on crowdsourcing focuses on the first section (i.e., the marketing activities) and how crowdsourcing is a positive marketing tool. Much less research aims its attention on the consequences and/or potential negative aspects of crowdsourcing.This thesis consists of two published papers and two studies. Each project handles one of research questions. The first two papers and the first study focus on three marketing activities (i.e., advertising, promotion and sales, new product and service development, and market research). The second study focuses on one of the possible consequences of the growth of crowdsourcing as a tool in the marketing process.While each paper and study has its own individual contributions, the overall contribution of this study is multi-fold. First, it develops a definition of crowdsourcing as: a tool or process by which the firm can increase or expand the resources to which it has access to by using the collective effort of a group of individuals or organizations. Second, as a result of these four research projects, crowdsourcing can further be seen as a situational, contextual and flexible tool that can be used in many different organizational contexts. The specific context for this thesis is marketing and as a result, crowdsourcing can play a wide variety of marketing roles.
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