Reviewer acknowledgements for International Journal of Marketing Studies, Vol. 13, No. 4

Reviewer acknowledgements for International Journal of Marketing Studies, Vol. 13, No. 4, 2021.

The Industry 4.0, the Corporate Social Responsibility and the Impacts of Brand in the Digital Transformation

The interest of my research is Digital Transformation and Corporate Social Responsibility as an involvement for the Brand. In this way the “product platform” contributes to the improvement of competitive position of the Business Unit and Branding”, between the marketing process: Customer Relationship Management—Product Development Management—Customer Satisfaction. Weberian vision of ideal type as a concept—ideal limit to illustrate the significant elements of its own empirical content, tends to identify an overcoming from the role of consumer as target to the analysis of the techniques of profiling the humanization of the customer with his needs, fears and aspirations. The research project consists of three parts. In the first a deepening on the wide literature of international scope, above all “made in USA” regarding the market orientation—Industry 4.0—platform: the origin, the internal organization, the management, the communication strategies. In the second part focuses instead on brand analysis, to reconstruct the main social and economic projects while assessing the internal analytical coherence, ideological value and deducing the most significant operational indications. The third, on the other hand, explores corporate social responsibility through small and medium-sized enterprises with market orientation, a socially responsible management-driven approach, strategic enterprise orientation and business management, resulting from different synergistic combinations.

The “Custrac Model”: Its Generic Practicality with a Twist in the Ghanaian Education

The purpose of the study is to promulgate the “custrac model” that proposes how the Ghanaian university management through its relationship officers can attract fully qualified and competent students globally. Following a survey technique, data were collected from 500 respondents from the top five Universities in Ghana. Analysis was done using SmartPLS 3 to perform partial least square regression analysis on the structural equation model. Findings revealed that customer attraction is constructed on loyalty and further enhanced by satisfaction. The study focused on few respondents from only five public universities in Ghana, thus, inhibiting the generalization of the findings. Practically, the “custrac model” suggests that the university management should align their strategic relationship marketing stratagems in developing competitive and market-driven programs having in place a strong quality assurance directorate to attain customer attraction. The proposed “Custrac model” in this study shoots up our intellectual understanding of strategic relationship marketing.

Pop-up Ads and Behaviour Patterns: A Quantitative Analysis Involving Perception of Saudi Users

The study aimed to investigate consumer behaviour towards pop-up ads. The study is quantitative in nature and carries out a survey questionnaire. The study sample consisted of 100 active users of social media (i.e., Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, Tik Tok and gaming application). The data collected were analysed using Statistical Package of Social Sciences (SPSS) version 23.0. Moreover, the study used descriptive statistical analyses, a t-test was used to check the different impact of independent variables and finally ANOVA test was used to find the impact of more than one independent variable on the dependent one. The results of the study showed that Snapchat (30.47%) was the widely used application among the participants and an average user consumes social media more than 4 hours a day which makes it 40% of the participants. The study also found that participants disagreed that they always look for pop-up ads (M = 1.71, Std = 0.92). Also, the study found no significant difference in perceptions of respondents towards pop-up ads with regard to gender. The ANOVA test revealed that educational level (0.627) didn’t show any significant difference towards the opinions of participants about pop-up ads whereas, age level (0.50) and monthly income (0.001) showed significant difference towards the opinions of participants about pop-up ads. The study concluded that pop-up ads do not actually impact consumer behaviour positively and are not the affective means of attracting consumers.

The Impact of Relationship Quality Between Social Media Influencers and Their Followers on Brand Purchase Intention

Social media influencers (SMI) have been shown to influence the purchase decision-making of their followers. In this respect, it is necessary to explore the interactive relationship between them, i.e., relationship quality. Researchers will not know the extent to which social media influencers affect their followers and their persistence of persuasion until they understand the SMI-follower relationship quality. This study focused on whether the SMI-follower relationship quality enables followers to transfer their trust in SMIs and affects their attitude toward the advertised or recommended product and brand. Furthermore, it explored whether followers’ skeptical attitude toward advertising moderates the relationship between the SMI-follower relationship quality and trust transference, and whether followers’ self-monitoring moderates the relationship between their advertising skepticism and trust transference. This study distributed survey questionnaires online, and obtained a total of 235 valid copies. The data were used to conduct path analysis through the software PROCESS. The empirical data showed that the higher the SMI-follower relationship quality, the more likely are the followers to transfer their trust in SMIs to the advertised or recommended product or brand. In addition, it was found that trust transference positively mediates the impact of relationship quality on brand attitude. Further, the results indicated that the followers’ high level of advertising skepticism negatively moderates the impact of SMI-follower relationship quality on trust transference, and that a high level of self-monitoring inhibits the negative moderating effect of advertising skepticism on the relationship between SMI-follower relationship quality and trust transference to a larger extent.

Rational and Emotional Advertising: A bibliometric Analysis (19902020)

This study analyzes trends in the scientific literature on the concepts of rational and emotional advertising. The article presents a bibliometric analysis of 96 studies on rational and emotional advertising, taken from the Web of Science database (WOS) for the period 1990-2020. The study categorizes these documents according to bibliographic indicators, i.e., most productive authors, year of publication, countries with the highest productivity rate, the journals and universities that published the most on this topic, language, type of research and field of research. This analysis provides an overview of the nature and trends of research on rational and emotional advertising. The results of the analysis reveal the research weakness for this concept, especially in terms of definitions and conceptualization. Also, the results highlight the fragmented nature of the themes addressed in the various research articles on rational and emotional advertising.

Reviewer acknowledgements for International Journal of Marketing Studies, Vol. 13, No. 3

Reviewer acknowledgements for International Journal of Marketing Studies, Vol. 13, No. 3, 2021.

Habits of Food Consumers in the Post COVID Era

Humankind has faced various pandemics in history. The food supply chain is one of the foremost vital sectors of the economy, and COVID-19 has had a clear bearing on it from the field to the consumer. In the light of recent challenges in the food supply chain, there is currently considerable concern regarding food production, processing, distribution, and demand. COVID-19 resulted in the movement restrictions of staff, changes in the demands of consumers, closure of food production facilities, restrictive food trade policies, and monetary pressures in the food supply chain.  This study describes the impact of the COVID-19 health crisis on people’s interests, opinions, and behaviour towards food. Additionally, an online questionnaire (Spanish population, n = 232) studied the changes in food shopping habits during the pandemic. To try to cover the whole Léon territory and reach the greatest number of persons through mobile phones, tablets, and computers, the questionnaire was created using the Google Forms tool and distributed using instant messaging apps such as WhatsApp, social media such as Facebook and Twitter, social networking sites such as LinkedIn and ResearchGate, and email through snowball sampling. The statistical analysis was carried out under the SPSS programme. The results are presented in the form of means and distributions. The differences between subgroups have been evaluated using student’s t-test. The level of statistical significance used in all cases was p < 0.05. This study is focused on evaluating changes in food consumption habits of the Spanish adult population throughout the COVID-19 lockdown. The study is supported by a web-based survey targeting the adult general population. From this study, we are able to conclude that the studied Spanish adult population is extremely close to from having good healthy dietary habits, considering the Mediterranean Diet as a reference of healthy uptake. An improvement of dietary behaviours throughout the COVID-19 confinement has been discovered. Health-related food selections involved increased intake of fruits, vegetables, and legumes and decreased intake of red meat, alcohol, fried foods, or pastries compared to their pre-pandemic habits.

Emotional Labor and Place Attachment in Rural Tourism: The Mediating Role of Perceived Authenticity

Place attachment can effectively increase the revisit rate of tourists, which is significant for the sustainability of rural tourism. However, previous studies have rarely explored what kind of host-guest emotional closeness can promote tourist place attachment. This study explores the relationship between local residents’ emotional labor strategy, perceived authenticity, and tourists’ place attachment based on the rural tourism context. A total of 266 valid questionnaires were collected from rural tourists in Yantai as the research subjects by random sampling method. Structural equation modeling was applied to test the hypotheses. The results showed that local residents’ deep acting positively influenced tourists’ place attachment, and perceived authenticity partially mediated the relationship between the two. The negative effect of surface acting on rural tourists’ place attachment was not significant.

Customer Experience Project: A Framework to Create and Deliver Value to Customers

This theoretical paper aims to approach the major customer value drivers and then, describe the main five stages required to support customer experience (CX) professionals in order to conceive, design and implement CX improvement projects. The CX focuses on customer’s perceptions and related feelings caused by the one-off and cumulative effect of interactions with a supplier’s employees, systems, channels, or products. The CX encompasses every interaction the customer has with an organisation throughout the customer lifecycle through multichannel. Generally speaking, providing a good experience can affect and impact customer satisfaction, loyalty, and engagement. Business companies recognised the competitive advantage of CX and the value creation reside not only in what a company delivers for its customers but in how it delivers products and services. Therefore, a positive CX requires coordination across different functions within an organisation, for instance, marketing, product or service development, customer care, operations, or retail branches.