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Drawing on the dual process theory and the cultural dimension of power distance, the current research investigates the impact of a specific service clue—the linguistic style of address forms (salutation) in hotel manager letters to guests—on customer satisfaction in a hotel context in Ecuador.

Following an experimental design research approach, this research conducted a series of two studies to examine how customers' cultural values (high vs low power distance), linguistic style of address forms (formal vs casual) and service valence (service success vs service failure) together influenced customer satisfaction. Specifically, Study 1 examined the service success condition, and Study 2 investigated the service failure condition.

The research results show that, in the service success condition, customers follow their distinct cultural orientations (high vs low power distance) when responding to the different linguistic styles (formal vs casual). On the other hand, in the service failure situation, as customers desire for expressions of respect that can be reflected in a formal address form, the level of satisfaction is lower when the casual address form is used in guest communications, regardless of customers' cultural orientations in power distance.

This research adds to existing cross-cultural service research, particularly in terms of service valence, and provides practical implications for enhancing service providers' cultural awareness and sociolinguistic competence to effectively communicate with customers from diverse cultural backgrounds.

This paper aims to investigate how the contextual marketing strategy facilitated by mobile technology enhances consumers’ purchase intention and experiential quality in a hedonic service setting – museum. Specifically, this study explores the impacts of a context-triggered push notification promoting context-related souvenirs embedded in the museum mobile app on visitors’ souvenir purchase intention and visit experience.

This study adopted a scenario-based experimental design with video stimuli and a follow-up survey questionnaire. A total of 151 participants were randomly assigned to one of the two art museum visiting scenarios (i.e. with vs without the in-app push notification). A series of one-way ANOVA comparisons and serial mediation tests were conducted for hypotheses testing.

The results show that the mobile app promoting context-related souvenirs positively affects museum visitors’ souvenir purchase intention without undermining their experiential quality. The serial mediation effects through contextual perceived value and impulse buying tendency further explain how the in-app push notification influences visitors’ souvenir purchase intention.

This study extends the contextual marketing research to a unique service domain (i.e. museum) and contributes to the service technology literature. The findings present empirical evidence for the effectiveness of mobile contextual marketing and its potential to enhance consumers’ experiential quality in a hedonic service setting. The current research provides practical guidelines to both the museum management and mobile app developers.

This paper aims to synthesize the key findings of prior research on the topic of human-wildlife interactions (HWI) in natural places for tourism.

The methodology of systematic review was used to search for, appraise and analyze the relevant research evidence. A total of 47 English-language academic journal articles, published between 2003 and 2018, with free online access to full texts in the database of Hospitality and Tourism Complete have been reviewed. Thematic analysis was adopted to synthesize the textual data.

The reviewed articles cover a wide geographical spread, diverse wildlife species and interaction types, and various research focuses including ecological impacts, human dimensions and management issues of wildlife tourism. The interactions between wildlife and human systems in the context of tourism constitute a complicated social-ecological system, in which both the humans and animals can be affected positively and negatively. Management and scientific research provide the nexus between the ecological and human dimensions of wildlife tourism. While opportunities for sustainable development abound, challenges are not to be neglected.

Due to the complexity of wildlife encounters for tourist purposes, the extant literature indicates a diverse and fragmented view from which integrated implications are difficult to obtain. This paper presents the first overarching review in English of the literature on human-wildlife interactions for tourism and provides a big picture understanding of what has been and what is needed to be done in terms of both wildlife tourism research and practices.