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COVID-19 is expected to enhance hospitality robotization because frontline robots facilitate social distancing, lowering contagion risk. Investing in frontline robots emerges as a solution to recover customer trust and encourage demand. However, we ignore how customers perceive these initiatives and, therefore, their efficacy. Focusing on robot employment at hotels and on Generation Z customers, this study aims to analyze guests’ perceptions about robots’ COVID-19 prevention efficacy and their impact on booking intentions.

This study tests its hypotheses combining an experimental design methodology with partial least squares. Survey data from 711 Generation Z individuals in Spain were collected in 2 periods of time.

Generation Z customers consider that robots reduce contagion risk at hotels. Robot anthropomorphism increases perceived COVID-19 prevention efficacy, regardless of the context where the robots are used. Robots’ COVID-19 prevention efficacy provokes better attitudes and higher booking intentions.

The sampling method used in this research impedes this study’s results generalization. Further research could replicate this study using random sampling methods to ensure representativeness, even for other generational cohorts.

Employing robots as a COVID-19 prevention measure can enhance demand, especially if robots are human-like. Hoteliers need to communicate that robots can reduce contagion risk, particularly in markets more affected by COVID-19. Robots must be employed in low social presence contexts. Governments could encourage robotization by financially supporting hotels and publicly acknowledging its benefits regarding COVID-19 prevention.

This study combines preventive health, robotics and hospitality literature to study robot implementation during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on Generation Z guests – potential facilitators of robot diffusion.

The purpose of this study is to examine consumer attitude toward a new type of co-branded products, which encompass attributes of high-technology and luxury. The authors named these kinds of co-branded products as “high-tech luxury co-branded products” (HLCPs). Current theoretical approaches used to study co-branding strategies cannot completely explain consumer attitude toward HLCPs. In this study, the authors apply the ABC (affect-behavior-cognition) model of attitudes (as opposed to attitude as a whole) to explore how affect and cognition drive consumer behavior toward HLCPs.

Questionnaires were used and the respondents totaled 483 in period 1 and 331 in period 2. Respondents were collected using convenience sampling technique in one university in Spain and analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The authors finding revealed that consumers use both affect and cognition simultaneously when forming an attitude toward HLCPs. Also, consumers’ perception of product fit represents a more relevant driver of consumer behavior with respect to brand fit. Appropriate theoretical and managerial implications are derived from these results.

This study contributes to the understanding of consumers’ preferences toward high-tech luxury co-branded products.

Despite the increasing research importance of market orientation in the marketing literature, few comparative studies between the European Union and the USA have been conducted. This limits the understanding of marketing orientation strategy in global markets. Investigates the influence of competitive environments on the uses of market orientation in insurance firms in the EU and the USA and the effects of market orientation on innovations. Using Lambin’s conceptualization of market orientation, our results indicate that, although EU and US insurance firms analyze and react to their environment differently, which in turn is reflected in a differential impact on their degree of innovation, this, however, does not translate into overall market orientation differences across markets, differential relations across markets between overall market orientation and innovation degree and innovation performance. Furthermore, there is a positive impact of overall market orientation on insurance firms’ innovation degree and innovation performance in both the US and EU markets. The managerial implications of these findings seem clear: the magnitude and the effectiveness of the innovation activities of a firm can be enhanced through the adoption of market orientation principles.

Previous studies have found that market orientation significantly predicts economic performance. The present study attempts to provide a necessarily partial model for how this impact takes place using innovation degree, innovation performance and customer loyalty as intermediate variables. The study targets the insurance industry in the European Union. The sample accounted for 22 percent of the companies and 17 percent of the insurance premiums in this market. The results suggest that the addition of these variables improves predictions of objective economic performance 52 percent over what is explained by market orientation alone. Furthermore, the study found that the effects of market orientation on economic performance are completely channeled (mediated) through these variables, particularly through innovation degree and innovation performance. Based on the results the paper provide guidelines for improving the market share, premium growth and profitability of European Union insurance firms.

Emerging markets in newly industrialised countries have caught the attention of managers of manufacturing companies facing heavy domestic and global pressure. Key barriers to the effective management of international manufacturing operations need to be identified. The same applies to the management of international service operations. The share of services in international trade, the amount of foreign direct investments made and the number of multinational service‐sector enterprises has been increasing rapidly in the last two decades. Existing studies on service internationalisation apply a fairly broad theoretical base. This paper contributes by examining the internationalisation behaviour of Spanish financial service‐sector companies in Latin America to find out if general internationalisation patterns are applicable or if the manufacturing sector influences their internationalisation behaviour.

This study develops a model that explains export sales volume by destination based on a company's export marketing strategy. A seemingly unrelated regression model (SURE) simultaneously estimates the explanatory value of the different elements of the marketing strategy, as well as company characteristics, such as experience, size and motivation to export, on entry decisions to six different regional markets made by exporting companies in a southern European country. The data were collected from a sample size of 2,264 exporting companies. Findings confirm the importance of exporting experience and proactiveness in determining high export sales volumes in every regional market except for those psychologically close. Nevertheless, different marketing strategies depending on the region lead to high export sales volumes. For example, low price strategies in the case of Latin America or differentiation strategies based on the augmented product in the case of the USA generate high export sales. Promotional expenditures are of higher importance for distant markets, but for closer markets channel development is the key.

Most researchers have studied economic performance linked to market orientation, while a lesser interest has been shown in validating this construct’s measure. We present a study of market orientation designed to obtain a valid measure of the market orientation construct. After presenting a theoretical model of market orientation, it is applied to investigate the usefulness of this construct in insurance companies of two European countries. Key features of the research methodology include several rounds of pretesting, multiple informant assessment, and a covariance structure procedure to show the structural validity of a measure of market orientation. The results show that the measure proposed is represented by a factorial structure that can be interpreted as an overall market orientation factor in both populations and a country‐specific additional factor.

This paper seeks to propose Albert Hirschman's theory of “exit, voice and loyalty” as a complementary conceptual framework to Hofstede's cultural dimensions and use them in conjunction to compare consumer satisfaction with services across cultures.

A model of satisfaction with complex services (higher education) is developed and then tested in two different cultures, Colombia and Spain, with a sample of 879 students. Structural equation modeling based on the partial least squares algorithm is used to test the proposed model.

Colombian students are more satisfied with the educational system than Spanish ones. This is explained by cultural and contextual differences that pose greater restrictions on accessibility to higher education, provide fewer choice alternatives and present more switching costs for the Colombian student.

This study applies the conditions of Hirschman's theory in an international setting, offering a rich basis for understanding differences in consumer satisfaction that accounts for intra‐national diversity.

Turbulence and complexity in the business environment is growing along with the need for external information in creating innovation, as innovation is seen as the primary source of sustainable competitive advantages in the knowledge economy. Consequently, the underlying information processes were external information are gathered and put into use, are crucial for companies in their development of innovation, and ultimately their capacity to limit imitation and create sustainable competitive advantages.

The research question in this paper is, how can systemic knowledge processes create innovation and promote competitive advantages? Through a conceptual model it is argued that a prerequisite for the acquisition, development, integration and application of knowledge, is the existence of systemic knowledge processes, percolation processes and networking.

It is through these processes that organizations can develop innovations, which ultimately will lead to sustainable competitive advantages.

Provides an insight into, and an understanding of knowledge processes, innovation and sustainable competitive advantages in the business environment.