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As immersive technologies gain wider adoption, contemporary service researchers are tasked with studying their service experiences in ways that preserve and attend to their holistic and human characteristics. The purpose of this paper is to provide service researchers with a new qualitative approach to studying immersive technologies.

Using logic and following established methodological rules, this article develops the scope, definition and set of procedures for a novel form of netnography specifically adapted for the study of immersive technologies: immersive netnography. The research question is “How might netnography be adapted to research service experiences in virtual and augmented environments, which include and overlap with the notion of a Metaverse?”

Immersive netnography should be at the vanguard of phenomenological service experience studies of augmented reality, virtual reality and the Metaverse. A set of data collection, analysis, ethical and representational research practices, immersive netnography is adapted to digital media phenomena (customer and employee) that include immersive technology experiences. Developed through logical argumentation after analyzing key differences between social media and immersive technology, immersive netnography is procedurally customized for experience research in immersive technology environments.

Three of the most significant practical limitations to producing high-quality netnography are rapidly changing contexts, scarce time resources and narrow researcher skillsets.

Industries and organizations may benefit from a new, holistically focused, ethically robust and culturally attuned market research method for understanding service experience in immersive technology contexts.

There have been no prior studies that develop netnography for the service research opportunities presented by immersive technologies. By applying the rigorous methodological guidance provided in this paper, future service researchers may find value in using specifically adapted qualitative research methods to study immersive technology experiences.

Uncertain times [e.g. coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)] require service businesses to respond in creative, flexible and resilient ways. This paper aims to develop and test the theoretical relationship between digital transformation and organizational resilience (OR), and the consequences of OR on organizations and employees during turbulent times.

A scale development was first conducted with an expert panel. Later, 474 participants who work as employees in small and medium-sized service enterprises were recruited for structural equation modeling (SEM). Exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and path analysis were conducted to test the relationship between dimensions of digital maturity, dimensions of OR and two consequential variables: organizational performance and employees’ state optimism.

Strategic technology investment helps organizations to develop systematic control sustain operations in crises but may not directly contribute to employees’ capabilities of accurately understanding external turmoil, actively seeking available resources and rapidly developing adaptive solutions. Transformation management intensity equips an organization with transformative vision, governance and culture, and such transformative built-in leadership enables the organization to embrace employees with talents and innovativeness and help employees grow their capabilities when facing crises. The dimensions of OR have different influences on the organization and employees.

This research develops and tests the dimensions and measurement items of OR for the services domain and empirically tested how the dimensions of digital maturity influence the dimensions of OR, and how OR influences the organization’s performance and employees’ state optimism.

The aim of this paper is to uncover the main capabilities that a luxury hotel needs to develop when functioning as the orchestrator of a local gastronomic business ecosystem.

Given the limited attention previous literature has placed on the role of luxury hotels as orchestrators in luxury gastronomic business ecosystems, this paper adopts a qualitative approach, i.e. the exploratory analysis of a single case study: the Italian high-end hotel Borgo Egnazia.

The paper highlights the main capabilities developed by the orchestrator: relational, combinative and promotional capabilities.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is among the first studies to explore what capabilities are needed by a company to orchestrate a destination that builds its product and service offerings upon the local food culture.

Large-scale text-based data increasingly poses methodological challenges due to its size, scope and nature, requiring sophisticated methods for managing, visualizing, analyzing and interpreting such data. This paper aims to propose semantic network analysis (SemNA) as one possible solution to these challenges, showcasing its potential for consumer and marketing researchers through three application areas in phygital contexts.

This paper outlines three general application areas for SemNA in phygital contexts and presents specific use cases, data collection methodologies, analyses, findings and discussions for each application area.

The paper uncovers three application areas and use cases where SemNA holds promise for providing valuable insights and driving further adoption of the method: (1) Investigating phygital experiences and consumption phenomena; (2) Exploring phygital consumer and market discourse, trends and practices; and (3) Capturing phygital social constructs.

The limitations section highlights the specific challenges of the qualitative, interpretivist approach to SemNA, along with general methodological constraints.

Practical implications highlight SemNA as a pragmatic tool for managers to analyze and visualize company-/brand-related data, supporting strategic decision-making in physical, digital and phygital spaces.

This paper contributes to the expanding body of computational, tool-based methods by providing an overview of application areas for the qualitative, interpretivist approach to SemNA in consumer and marketing research. It emphasizes the diversity of research contexts and data, where the boundaries between physical and digital spaces have become increasingly intertwined with physical and digital elements closely integrated – a phenomenon known as phygital.

The aim of the study is threefold: understanding the interconnections amongst visual and verbal multimodal communication strategies used in food discourse; identifying the themes of celebrity chef's food discourse with respect to pro-environmental behaviour; and providing a methodological framework to visually analyse food-themed videos.

This study uses mise-en-scène and critical discourse and multimodal analyses to gain insights on food discourse from 20 videos shared by a Michelin starred chef on social media platforms.

Results show that a pro-environmental cooking philosophy challenges the normative discourse on food and educates general audiences and foodies alike. Mise-en-scène and discourse analyses of Instagram visual content reveal that leftovers are central to the ethical message and are intertwined – through the aesthetic of the videos-with concepts of inclusivity, diversity and nourishment.

Chefs, and restaurants, are encouraged to recognise their responsibility as role models, thus able to influence the societal production of food discourse.

The findings provide new insights into the role of a celebrity chef in promoting sustainable food preparation and consumption.