Kirti Dutta, Kirti Sharma and Terjani Goyal
Marketers are focusing on the need for customer advocacy to influence other customers and drive consumption. The purpose of this paper is to explore whether online or digital…
Abstract
Purpose
Marketers are focusing on the need for customer advocacy to influence other customers and drive consumption. The purpose of this paper is to explore whether online or digital advocacy influences customer decision-making related to the purchase of travel and tourism services. This paper will also identify the categories of influencers that stimulate purchase for travel and tourism. Influencers do want to know the kind of information customers are looking for.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper is based on a primary survey of travelers to understand their degree of dependence on online reviews while making hospitality consumption-related decisions.
Findings
This paper looks at both influencer marketing and online reviews by consumers to understand consumption toward advocated brand. Influencers who are perceived as unbiased in their viewpoints are trending on social media. Consumers gain trust in reviews that disclose reviewer information, number of relevant reviews are present over a period and presence of both unbiased positive and negative recommendations related to the establishment and prices versus performance.
Practical implications
Marketers and influencers alike can gain from the factors influencing consumer trust toward online advocacy and reviewed information.
Originality/value
Research is relevant for all stakeholders as it highlights the fact that consumers are looking at online reviews and one does not have to be a famous personality to influence purchase. It is relevant for influencers, as it highlights reasons for trust and various information cues that consumers are looking for. Research also gives perspective to influencers to refine online strategy and gain trust of more followers.
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Kirti Dutta and Kamal Manaktola
With the growing use of the internet, online distribution is emerging a communication and distribution channel. This paper aims to explore the role of the internet as a tool for…
Abstract
Purpose
With the growing use of the internet, online distribution is emerging a communication and distribution channel. This paper aims to explore the role of the internet as a tool for sustainable tourism in India, especially as deployed by a large segment of three star and four star hotels in India. It discusses the practices currently employed by the mid‐segment hotels for the distribution of their services and seeks to delineate how they can use this as a tool for working towards sustainable growth.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper discusses how selected hotels in the National Capital Region (Delhi) are deploying online distribution. Their web sites have been assessed to evaluate how they fare in a generic search on the three major search agents currently being used in India: Yahoo, MSN and Google. The web sites are assessed as to whether they are likely to attract and provide enough information to potential tourists. Discussions with practitioners from the industry have also been incorporated to give more conclusive insights into how they practice the online distribution of their services.
Findings
The paper points at elements which should be incorporated while designing the web sites so as to effectively distribute their inventory and make it easily accessible to tourists looking for accommodation. This will reduce the intermediaries involved and, as this is paperless transaction, result in sustainable low‐cost economic growth.
Research limitations/implications
The paper provides an insight into what consumers have access to when they search for hotels via different search engines and whether or not this information is sufficient to precipitate a decision when choosing a particular hotel. If this can be managed effectively, customers can go online for all their bookings. This would yield cost savings for the organization and the customer, and in so doing, contribute to sustainable growth.
Practical implications
These findings are relevant to academics and practitioners as they offer an insight into online distribution channel management and communications with potential customers.
Originality/value
Relatively few studies have been conducted in the field of online distribution in the hospitality industry. This paper aims to assist hospitality operators in framing strategies to use the internet as a tool for sustainable tourism.
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Kirti Dutta, Umashankar Venkatesh and H.G. Parsa
The purpose of this research is to explore the reasons for service failure in restaurants. The paper aims to give insights into customers' perceptions and response regarding…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this research is to explore the reasons for service failure in restaurants. The paper aims to give insights into customers' perceptions and response regarding service failure and recovery and to try to draw a parallel between consumers in a developing economy like India and the same in a developed society, such as USA.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is empirical and involves data from 200 respondents from India and the USA. The sampling unit is individual restaurant customers and the data collection instrument is a structured, non‐disguised questionnaire. The questionnaires have been administered through personal interviews.
Findings
The study found conclusive results on the reasons for service failure in the restaurant business in the context of developed and developing economies. It also sheds light on the behavioral aspects of customers' perception towards these failures and their responses to the same. The paper further looked into the recovery strategy employed by restaurants and the customers' perception towards the recovery strategies.
Practical implications
The study has important managerial implications as it facilitates the understanding of where and how the failure‐points occur and how customers perceive and react to them. The paper is also helpful in designing policies and procedures to proactively weed‐out such failure‐points and, in case of their occurrence, design responses to the same.
Originality/value
The paper is valuable as very little has been done in the Indian context. It also creates a comparative perspective as to service failure in the restaurant sector between a developed and a developing country.
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Venkatesh Umashankar and Kirti Dutta
The paper aims to look at the balanced scorecard (BSC) concept and discuss in what way it should be applied to higher education programs/institutions in the Indian context.
Abstract
Purpose
The paper aims to look at the balanced scorecard (BSC) concept and discuss in what way it should be applied to higher education programs/institutions in the Indian context.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is based on extant literature on the balanced scorecard concept per se, as well as applications of BSC in higher education as reported by other researchers.
Findings
The BSC approach offers an institution the opportunity to formulate a cascade of measures to translate the mission of knowledge creation, sharing and utilization into a comprehensive, coherent, communicable and mobilizing framework – for external stakeholders and for one another.
Research limitations/implications
In the absence of any specific Indian case study, the possible impact could only be conjectured or deduced.
Practical implications
A useful model is proposed that can be adapted with appropriate modifications to the management of tertiary institutions of education in India, whether it be a university, affiliate college, autonomous institution or private educational institution.
Originality/value
In the absence of evidence of the application of BSC to the educational institutional domain in India, the current paper may be a starting‐point for a debate and possible strategies to implement BSC methodology in this area.
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Syeda Ikrama and Syeda Maseeha Qumer
This case study is designed to enable students to understand the reasons behind the launch of a beauty brand grounded on traditions and culture, understand the strategies adopted…
Abstract
Learning outcomes
This case study is designed to enable students to understand the reasons behind the launch of a beauty brand grounded on traditions and culture, understand the strategies adopted by Florasis to establish its presence in the C-beauty space and emerge successful, analyze the positioning of a C-beauty brand in a highly competitive beauty market, identify the issues and challenges faced by a C-beauty brand in its efforts to disrupt the C-beauty space and suggest strategies that Florasis can adopt to emerge as a market leader in the global beauty industry.
Case overview/synopsis
Set in 2021, the case study discusses about the emerging C-beauty brand Florasis innovative strategies to promote the brand. Florasis was founded in 2017 with a vision to become a century old national makeup brand of China. Florasis was successful in getting on board a story-telling experience that featured traditional Chinese culture, aesthetics and heritage. It sold cosmetic products with retro packaging, concepts derived from traditional Chinese style, promoting a sense of national pride and nostalgia. The case study highlights the innovative strategies Florasis adopted like influencer marketing through key opinion leaders and key opinion customers, celebrity endorsements, user co-creation programs, social content and network marketing, brand crossovers and collaborations, etc. In April 2021, Florasis became the No. 1 cosmetic company in China with a gross merchandise value of 218m yuan and further the total sales for second quarter of 2021 reached 830m yuan, endorsing its supremacy over other global and local beauty brands in China. However, with success came along a set of challenges. Some analysts pointed that the brand was slow in innovating its product line-up, it focused more on promotions and advertisements and the brand positioning with a single sales channel, the cost performance and quality of the products and excessive marketing campaigns targeting a niche segment. Going forward, what should Florasis do to conquer the global beauty space? Can Florasis aspire to become a digitally empowered global beauty brand? Has it got the momentum? Will its direct-to-consumer model and unprecedented marketing and promotion gimmicks, help it achieve the lead in the global beauty space?
Complexity academic level
This case study is suitable for students of the graduate and undergraduate programs in management.
Supplementary materials
Teaching notes are available for educators only.
Subject code
CSS 8: Marketing.
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Pachayappan Murugaiyan and Venkatesakumar Ramakrishnan
Little attention has been paid to restructuring existing massive amounts of literature data such that evidence-based meaningful inferences and networks be drawn therefrom. This…
Abstract
Purpose
Little attention has been paid to restructuring existing massive amounts of literature data such that evidence-based meaningful inferences and networks be drawn therefrom. This paper aims to structure extant literature data into a network and demonstrate by graph visualization and manipulation tool “Gephi” how to obtain an evidence-based literature review.
Design/methodology/approach
The main objective of this paper is to propose a methodology to structure existing literature data into a network. This network is examined through certain graph theory metrics to uncover evidence-based research insights arising from existing huge amounts of literature data. From the list metrics, this study considers degree centrality, closeness centrality and betweenness centrality to comprehend the information available in the literature pool.
Findings
There is a significant amount of literature on any given research problem. Approaching this massive volume of literature data to find an appropriate research problem is a complicated process. The proposed methodology and metrics enable the extraction of appropriate and relevant information from huge quantities of literature data. The methodology is validated by three different scenarios of review questions, and results are reported.
Research limitations/implications
The proposed methodology comprises of more manual hours to structure literature data.
Practical implications
This paper enables researchers in any domain to systematically extract and visualize meaningful and evidence-based insights from existing literature.
Originality/value
The procedure for converting literature data into a network representation is not documented in the existing literature. The paper lays down the procedure to structure literature data into a network.
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Kirti Goyal, Satish Kumar, Jing Jian Xiao and Sisira Colombage
The intent of this study is to aggregate, in a measurable form, the results of previous studies on the association between personal financial management behavior (PFMB) and six…
Abstract
Purpose
The intent of this study is to aggregate, in a measurable form, the results of previous studies on the association between personal financial management behavior (PFMB) and six psychological factors, which are financial attitude, financial self-efficacy, self-control, materialism, internal locus of control (LOC), and external LOC.
Design/methodology/approach
A stack of 32 research documents that investigated 52 relationships between various psychological variables and PFMB was analyzed using the meta-analysis technique. Along with the overall meta-analysis, a comprehensive subgroup analysis was also undertaken counseled to determine whether the results contrast on account of the age group of the sample and the economy of the country to which the sample belongs.
Findings
The overall meta-analysis findings do not support the association between PFMB and the various explanatory variables except for the significant positive association with self-control. In contrast, a subgroup study revealed that self-control (positively) and materialism (negatively) were found to be significantly associated with PFMB among adults. The association between internal LOC and PFMB is significant and positive among the young. Interestingly, self-control appeared to be significantly and positively associated with PFMB in developed countries. In developing countries, financial attitude, financial self-efficacy and internal LOC are significantly and positively associated with PFMB.
Originality/value
Distinct from other review papers, this meta-analysis quantitatively cumulates and reconciles the conflicting findings on the linkage between psychological predictors and PFMB. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first meta-analysis on the topic.
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The interest for collaboration among small and mediumsized enterprises and innovation has been highlighted, in recent times, due to the acceleration of technological changes and…
Abstract
The interest for collaboration among small and mediumsized enterprises and innovation has been highlighted, in recent times, due to the acceleration of technological changes and to increasing international competitiveness. Many small firms, with rigid structures and weak entrepreneurial dynamics, experienced difficulties in becoming innovators. Some of these firms can adopt collaborative agreements because these relationships enable them to get the necessary innovative activities, know-how, and exploit opportunities, which they cannot achieve alone. This study examines the motives for the formation of collaborative agreements in industrial Portuguese SMEs and presents some empirical evidence concerning collaboration as an important vehicle for the innovativeness of these small firms. The findings were based on a sample of 92 firms/collaborative agreements.