Prosper Bangwayo-Skeete and Ryan W. Skeete
Aficionados of wine festivals, a component of wine tourism experience, engage in vigorous online discussions that influence fellow travelers’ purchase behaviors. This study aims…
Abstract
Purpose
Aficionados of wine festivals, a component of wine tourism experience, engage in vigorous online discussions that influence fellow travelers’ purchase behaviors. This study aims to delve into these overlooked discussions, identifying emotions, topics and assessing their usefulness in TripAdvisor’s Travel Forums for two US wine festivals: Taste of Yountville and Epcot International Food and Wine Festival, located in traditional and nontraditional wine tourism destinations.
Design/methodology/approach
The study uses state-of-art sentiment analysis and topic modeling methods to extract emotions and underlying latent topics in travel forum discussions. Drawing from information theory, two regression analyses are performed on 10,677 forum posts to examine how the extracted Ekman’s emotions and key underlying topics influence the helpfulness of wine forum posts for each festival.
Findings
While three topics were identified in Epcot and four in Yountville, both festival platforms highlight travelers’ common preferences for “culinary experience” and “planning” attributes but reveal notable differences in their utility. Other shared novel findings include the importance of “anger” and “surprise” emotions on the helpfulness of forum posts.
Practical implications
These findings enhance wine festival managers’ and destination planners’ understanding of online travelers’ preferences and cognitive evaluation of user-generated contents’ usefulness. This marketing intelligence informs strategies for boosting the wine destination’s economic development.
Originality/value
This research offers a novel comparative analysis of social media on wine festival tourism experiences in diverse regions. Unlike hotel reviews, typically posted after consumption, forums offer unique and broader perspectives on discussions before, during, and after experiencing the wine festival.
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Puneett Bhatnagr, Anupama Rajesh and Richa Misra
This study aims to analyse and understand customer sentiments and perceptions from neobanking mobile applications by using advanced machine learning and text mining techniques.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to analyse and understand customer sentiments and perceptions from neobanking mobile applications by using advanced machine learning and text mining techniques.
Design/methodology/approach
This study explores a substantial large data set of 330,399 user reviews available in the form of unstructured textual data from neobanking mobile applications. This study is aimed to extract meaningful patterns, topics, sentiments and themes from the data.
Findings
The results show that the success of neobanking mobile applications depends on user experience, security features, personalised services and technological innovation.
Research limitations/implications
This study is limited to textual resources available in the public domain, and hence may not present the entire range of user experiences. Further studies should incorporate a wider range of data sources and investigate the impact of regional disparities on user preferences.
Practical implications
This study provides actionable ideas for neobanking service providers, enabling them to improve service quality and mobile application user experience by integrating customer input and the latest trends. These results can offer important inputs to the process of user interaction design, implementation of new features and customer support services.
Originality/value
This study uses text mining approaches to analyse neobanking mobile applications, which further contribute to the growing literature on digital banking and FinTech. This study offers a unique view of consumer behaviour and preferences in the realm of digital banking, which will add to the literature on the quality of service concerning mobile applications.
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Bülent Doğan, Yavuz Selim Balcioglu and Meral Elçi
This study aims to elucidate the dynamics of social media discourse during global health events, specifically investigating how users across different platforms perceive, react to…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to elucidate the dynamics of social media discourse during global health events, specifically investigating how users across different platforms perceive, react to and engage with information concerning such crises.
Design/methodology/approach
A mixed-method approach was employed, combining both quantitative and qualitative data collection. Initially, thematic analysis was applied to a data set of social media posts across four major platforms over a 12-month period. This was followed by sentiment analysis to discern the predominant emotions embedded within these communications. Statistical tools were used to validate findings, ensuring robustness in the results.
Findings
The results showcased discernible thematic and emotional disparities across platforms. While some platforms leaned toward factual information dissemination, others were rife with user sentiments, anecdotes and personal experiences. Overall, a global sense of concern was evident, but the ways in which this concern manifested varied significantly between platforms.
Research limitations/implications
The primary limitation is the potential non-representativeness of the sample, as only four major social media platforms were considered. Future studies might expand the scope to include emerging platforms or non-English language platforms. Additionally, the rapidly evolving nature of social media discourse implies that findings might be time-bound, necessitating periodic follow-up studies.
Practical implications
Understanding the nature of discourse on various platforms can guide health organizations, policymakers and communicators in tailoring their messages. Recognizing where factual information is required, versus where sentiment and personal stories resonate, can enhance the efficacy of public health communication strategies.
Social implications
The study underscores the societal reliance on social media for information during crises. Recognizing the different ways in which communities engage with, and are influenced by, platform-specific discourse can help in fostering a more informed and empathetic society, better equipped to handle global challenges.
Originality/value
This research is among the first to offer a comprehensive, cross-platform analysis of social media discourse during a global health event. By comparing user engagement across platforms, it provides unique insights into the multifaceted nature of public sentiment and information dissemination during crises.
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Amirreza Ghadiridehkordi, Jia Shao, Roshan Boojihawon, Qianxi Wang and Hui Li
This study examines the role of online customer reviews through text mining and sentiment analysis to improve customer satisfaction across various services within the UK banking…
Abstract
Purpose
This study examines the role of online customer reviews through text mining and sentiment analysis to improve customer satisfaction across various services within the UK banking sector. Additionally, the study analyses sentiment trends over a five-year period.
Design/methodology/approach
Using DistilBERT and Support Vector Machine algorithms, customer sentiments were assessed through an analysis of 20,137 Trustpilot reviews of HSBC, Santander, and Tesco Bank from 2018 to 2023. Data pre-processing steps were implemented to ensure data integrity and minimize noise.
Findings
Both positive and negative sentiments provide valuable insights. The results indicate a high prevalence of negative sentiments related to customer service and communication, with HSBC and Santander receiving 90.8% and 89.7% negative feedback, respectively, compared to Tesco Bank’s 66.8%. Key areas for improvement include HSBC’s credit card services and call center efficiency, which experienced increased negative feedback during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings also demonstrate that DistilBERT excelled in categorizing reviews, while the SVM model, when combined with customer ratings, achieved 96% accuracy in sentiment analysis.
Research limitations/implications
This study focuses on UK bank consumers of HSBC, Santander, and Tesco Bank. A multi-country or cross-cultural study may further enhance our understanding of the approaches and findings.
Practical implications
Online customer reviews become more informative when categorised by service sector. To enhance customer satisfaction, bank managers should pay attention to both positive and negative reviews, and track trends over time.
Originality/value
The uniqueness of this study lies in its exploration of the importance of categorisation in text-mining-based sentiment analysis, its focus on the influence of both positive and negative sentiments, and its emphasis on tracking sentiment trends over time.
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Vikki McCall, Kenneth Gibb and Yang Wang
The ageing and disabled population is fast growing, which emphasises the need to effectively modify current homes and environments to support healthy ageing and increasingly…
Abstract
Purpose
The ageing and disabled population is fast growing, which emphasises the need to effectively modify current homes and environments to support healthy ageing and increasingly diverse health needs. This paper aims to bring together findings and analyses from three adaptations-focussed projects, drawing on perspectives from key stakeholders alongside the lived experiences of service users acquiring adaptations.
Design/methodology/approach
Following an Adaptations Framework developed from interviews and focus groups with older people and key stakeholders, the paper discusses barriers experienced by older people and front-line workers in receiving and delivering adaptations through all stages of the process.
Findings
This paper reveals how experiences around adaptations might diverge with unseen, hidden investment and need amongst individuals, and how conceptual and cost-focussed evidence gaps impact wider understandings of adaptations delivery. In so doing, this paper highlights how the adaptations process is perceived as a “fight” that does not work smoothly for either those delivering or receiving adaptations services.
Research limitations/implications
The paper suggests a systematic failure such that the adaptations process needs to be rehauled, reset and prioritised within social and public policy if the housing, health and social care sectors are to support healthy ageing and prepare for the future ageing population.
Originality/value
The paper brings together insights from key stakeholders alongside service users' experiences of adaptations to highlight key policy drivers and barriers to accessing and delivering adaptations.
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Thang Xuan Le, Thanh Tien Bui and Hoa Ngoc Tran
In recent years, the development of metaheuristic algorithms for solving optimization problems within a reasonable timeframe has garnered significant attention from the global…
Abstract
Purpose
In recent years, the development of metaheuristic algorithms for solving optimization problems within a reasonable timeframe has garnered significant attention from the global scientific community. In this work, a new metaheuristic algorithm inspired by the inflection mechanism of the avian influenza virus H5N1 in poultry and humans, taking into account its mutation mechanism, called H5N1.
Design/methodology/approach
This algorithm aims to explore optimal solutions for optimization problems by simulating the adaptive behavior and evolutionary process of the H5N1 virus, thereby enhancing the algorithm’s performance for all types of optimization problems. Additionally, a balanced stochastic probability mechanism derived from the infection probability is presented. Using this mechanism, the H5N1 algorithm can change its phrase, including exploitation and exploration phases. Two versions of H5N1, SH5N1 and MH5N1, are presented to solve single-objective optimization problems (SOPs) and multi-objective optimization problems (MOPs).
Findings
The performance of the algorithm is evaluated using a set of benchmark functions, including seven unimodal, six multimodal, ten fixed-dimension multimodal to solve SOPs, ZDT functions and CEC2009 has been used to demonstrate its superiority over other recent algorithms. Finally, six optimization engineering problems have been tested. The results obtained indicate that the proposed algorithm outperformed ten algorithms in SOPs and seven algorithms in MOPs.
Originality/value
The experimental findings demonstrate the outstanding convergence of the H5N1 algorithm and its ability to generate solutions of superior quality.
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V. U. Vinitha, Deepak S. Kumar and Hemamala Krishnan
Increased urbanization has resulted in physical environments, including servicescapes, dominated by functional designs, with nature’s presence becoming scarcer. While “biophilia”…
Abstract
Purpose
Increased urbanization has resulted in physical environments, including servicescapes, dominated by functional designs, with nature’s presence becoming scarcer. While “biophilia” designs have received attention in fields like environmental psychology and architecture, studies on biophilia in servicescapes remain scant, fragmented and often contextual. The purpose of this study is to do a semi-systematic review of studies on biophilia in physical servicescape designs (interior and exterior), identify prevailing critical gaps and develop a comprehensive framework for theory advancements in biophilic servicescapes.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing from a critical review of 56 servicescape studies over 33 years and incorporating theoretical frameworks from environmental psychology, this paper introduces a typology of biophilia in physical servicescapes that includes direct, indirect and human–nature relationships. Furthermore, this study develops a conceptual framework using the Stimulus-Organism-Response model to systematically synthesize biophilia’s overall applicability in servicescapes for consumers and service employees, incorporating moderating factors related to service, servicescape and user types.
Findings
This review investigates the emergence and definition of biophilia in servicescapes, examines the benefits of biophilic design for consumers and service employees and highlights key design strategies. In the absence of robust frameworks to assess biophilia’s impact on consumer and employee responses, this paper presents a comprehensive framework and offers guidelines for future research in retail environments and servicescapes.
Originality/value
Drawing from the synthesis of research on biophilia in servicescapes, this study introduces a framework that demonstrates how antecedent variables, including both direct and indirect biophilic elements, foster human–nature relationships that lead to affective, cognitive and behavioral responses. These effects are moderated by situational factors (e.g. service and servicescape types) and individual differences (e.g. personality, values and nature-relatedness). Ultimately, these responses influence approach or avoidance behaviors in consumers and employees, with a taxonomy detailing responses aligned with biophilia.
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The fishing cat's unique hunting strategies, including ambush, detection, diving and trapping, inspired the development of a novel metaheuristic optimization algorithm named the…
Abstract
Purpose
The fishing cat's unique hunting strategies, including ambush, detection, diving and trapping, inspired the development of a novel metaheuristic optimization algorithm named the Fishing Cat Optimizer (FCO). The purpose of this paper is to introduce FCO, offering a fresh perspective on metaheuristic optimization and demonstrating its potential for solving complex problems.
Design/methodology/approach
The FCO algorithm structures the optimization process into four distinct phases. Each phase incorporates a tailored search strategy to enrich the diversity of the search population and attain an optimal balance between extensive global exploration and focused local exploitation.
Findings
To assess the efficacy of the FCO algorithm, we conducted a comparative analysis with state-of-the-art algorithms, including COA, WOA, HHO, SMA, DO and ARO, using a test suite comprising 75 benchmark functions. The findings indicate that the FCO algorithm achieved optimal results on 88% of the test functions, whereas the SMA algorithm, which ranked second, excelled on only 21% of the functions. Furthermore, FCO secured an average ranking of 1.2 across the four benchmark sets of CEC2005, CEC2017, CEC2019 and CEC2022, demonstrating its superior convergence capability and robustness compared to other comparable algorithms.
Research limitations/implications
Although the FCO algorithm performs excellently in solving single-objective optimization problems and constrained optimization problems, it also has some shortcomings and defects. First, the structure of the FCO algorithm is relatively complex and there are many parameters. The value of parameters has a certain impact on solving optimization problems. Second, the computational complexity of the FCO algorithm is relatively high. When solving high-dimensional optimization problems, it takes more time than algorithms such as GWO and WOA. Third, although the FCO algorithm performs excellently in solving multimodal functions, it rarely obtains the theoretical optimal solution when solving combinatorial optimization problems.
Practical implications
The FCO algorithm is applied to the solution process of five common engineering design optimization problems.
Originality/value
This paper innovatively proposes the FCO algorithm, which mimics the unique hunting mechanisms of fishing cats, including strategies such as lurking, perceiving, rapid diving and precise trapping. These mechanisms are abstracted into four closely connected iterative stages, corresponding to extensive and in-depth exploration, multi-dimensional fine detection, rapid and precise developmental search and localized refinement and contraction search. This enables efficient global optimization and local fine-tuning in complex environments, significantly enhancing the algorithm's adaptability and search efficiency.
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Kishore Kumar, Rubee Singh, Mrinalini Choudhary and Ankita Sharma
The impact of climate change (CC) has become the most defining issue of the present times. From an increase in temperature to food and water scarcity, the adverse effect of CC is…
Abstract
Purpose
The impact of climate change (CC) has become the most defining issue of the present times. From an increase in temperature to food and water scarcity, the adverse effect of CC is faced globally by all countries on an unprecedented level. Environmentally polluting industries are considered one of the primary contributors to the problem of CC. This chapter aims to provide an understanding of the emerging global threat of CC and various strategies that environmentally polluting firms could undertake to tackle the climate change crisis.
Methodology
Based on the review of the literature, this chapter presents deliberation on the climate change crisis and various strategies for environmentally polluting industries to tackle CC issues.
Findings
This chapter presents a bird's eye view of the CC issue and various strategies that could be undertaken by environmentally polluting industries to address the CC crisis.
Implications
This chapter should be very useful for policymakers, practitioners and corporations to understand the issue of climate change and global warming and its implications. Further, it will also help polluting companies to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and address the adverse impact of their business activities.
Originality
Considering the dearth of sector-specific studies based on climate change, this chapter is one of the few studies that explore CC strategies in the context of polluting industries.
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Huda Khan and S. Tamer Cavusgil
The phenomenon for born global firms (BGFs) has become mainstream, which is observed across many industries and countries. This study aims to distill extant literature regarding…
Abstract
Purpose
The phenomenon for born global firms (BGFs) has become mainstream, which is observed across many industries and countries. This study aims to distill extant literature regarding BGFs to uncover critical attributes shared by BGFs. It applies a frame-based approach, a relatively under-applied methodology in the international business (IB) literature, to develop a multi-dimensional typology of BGFs’ attributes.
Design/methodology/approach
A frame-based methodology was used to uncover and classify the dimensions of BGFs’ attributes that emanate from the literature.
Findings
With BGFs as the superordinate phenomenon or concept, a typology of five subordinate dimensions emerged, namely, defining characteristics, orientations, capabilities, resources; strategies/actions.
Originality/value
This paper offers three important contributions. First, it provides a clear delineation of attributes associated with BGFs to provide a holistic perspective of the born global phenomenon. Second, it demonstrates a relatively under-applied frame-based methodology to analyze the BGFs’ attributes and presents conceptual clarity based on the literature review. Third, this paper identifies critical areas and recommends important guidelines for future scholarly developments in the born global literature.