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The purpose of this paper is to understand how firms may be segmented with respect to their attitudes towards the use of mobile instant messaging (MIM) apps (e.g. WhatsApp, Messenger, WeChat, etc). in their marketing practices to identify the main approaches to the use of MIM in business. Moreover, this paper identifies the key factors which can motivate or hinder the adoption of these digital platforms.

Firms are segmented on the basis of their attitudes (perceived usefulness and perceived effectiveness of performance) towards the use of MIM apps in the business. Categories for size, age of the firm and the organization’s predisposition towards MIMs are explored using data from 311 firms and latent class analysis. Threats, triggers and their real usage are also identified to describe the different approaches towards the application of MIM apps in marketing practices.

Four clusters are identified – lukewarm, cold, believer and unaffected – along with significant covariates such as the importance of conversation with the client, the use of MIMs in the business, the threats and triggers that can foresee adherence. The results help to understand how to approach the client using social messenger applications. MIM apps can be used for strategic marketing and not only for operative marketing.

This paper offers a more nuanced understanding of how firms engage through MIM apps by focusing on the firms’ attitudes towards MIM apps. It extends the knowledge on the firms’ reactions to these disruptive technologies and profiles the firms according to their social innovation attitudes, something that has not yet been investigated in the extant marketing literature.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on consumers’ reactions to cross-border acquisitions (CBA) by exploring the role of consumer perceptions of the psychic distance between the country of the acquirer and that of the target firm when the acquiring corporation has a good or poor reputation.

A 2×2 experimental design which manipulated psychic distance and acquirer’s corporate reputation was conducted in Italy. The study considers an Italian food target firm and compares four foreign acquiring firms with different combinations of corporate reputation (good/poor) and psychic distance to Italy (small/large).

The authors found that the degree of psychic distance between the countries of the acquiring and targeted firms was inversely related to Italian consumers’ intentions to repurchase the products of the post-acquisition target, and unrelated to the acquirer’s corporate reputation.

This is the first study focusing on psychic distance in the context of CBA, especially from the perspective of consumer behavior, which can help to better understand certain negative reactions toward the acquisition of a business.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether, in the context of a cross-border acquisition, the acquirer’s country image (CI) could moderate the relationship between the acquirer’s corporate reputation (CR) and consumers’ repurchase intentions towards the products of the post-acquisition target.

The authors examined the roles played by the acquirer’s CR and the acquirer’s CI on consumer behaviour by considering an Italian target firm with a high reputation and comparing four foreign acquiring firms with different combinations of CR (poor/good) and CI (high/low).

It was found that both CR and CI have a significant impact on Italian consumers’ intention to repurchase the products of the post-acquisition target. Furthermore, the results show a greater increase in consumers’ repurchase intentions when a good reputation of the acquirer is paired with a high CI for the acquirer, but a high CI cannot compensate for a poor CR.

The research investigates, in the context of cross-border acquisitions (CBAs), the impact of the acquirer’s CR and the acquirer’s CI on the host country consumers’ repurchase intentions after the CBA, which has not previously been thoroughly examined. It can help managers to understand the conditions under which CBAs will be favourably evaluated.

Building on the scant literature on cross-border acquisitions (CBAs) in the consumer perspective, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of the acquirer’s cause-related marketing (CRM) on consumers’ repurchase intentions of the products of the post-acquisition target. In addition, the study aims at analyzing the moderating role of acquirer’s CRM on the relationship between corporate ability (CA) and country image (CI) on consumers’ repurchase intentions of the products of the post-acquisition target.

Drawing on a sample of Italian consumers (n=351), the authors examined the roles played by the acquirer’s CRM on consumer behaviour by considering an Italian target firm with a high reputation and comparing eight foreign acquiring firms with different combinations of CRM (poor/good), CA (poor/good) and CI (high/low).

The authors found that CRM, CA as well as CI have a significant impact on Italian consumers’ intention to repurchase the products of the post-acquisition target. Furthermore, it is shown that good CRM reduces the negative influence of a poor CA and a low CI on post-acquisition repurchase intentions and strengthen the positive influence, thus confirming the moderating role of CRM.

The research investigates, in the context of CBAs, the impact of the acquirer’s CRM on the host country consumers’ repurchase intentions after the CBA, which has not previously been examined. It can help managers to understand the conditions under which CBAs will be favourably evaluated.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate user satisfaction with digital health solutions by identifying and prioritizing different service attributes on the basis of their impact on improving user satisfaction.

Through a literature review and interviews with health professionals and patients, 20 attributes of digital health services provided in Italy have been identified. User satisfaction with these attributes has been evaluated by adopting the Kano model’s continuous and discrete analyses.

The findings reveal the essential attributes of digital health services that meet users' expectations, identify the attributes that users appreciate or dislike having and highlight unexpected attributes that lead to a significant boost in satisfaction when provided.

This study demonstrates the efficacy of the Kano model in assessing the nonlinear correlation between user satisfaction and the quality of digital health services, thus contributing to fill a gap in the literature in this area. The main limitation of this work is the use of a non-probabilistic sampling method.

This research suggests healthcare institutions and organizations consider user preferences when designing digital health solutions to increase their satisfaction. The results indicate different effects on user satisfaction and dissatisfaction for different categories of attributes in the Italian context.

Previous works studied customer satisfaction with digital health, assuming a linear relationship with service quality, or investigated consumer adoption intentions focusing on the technological factors. This work advances available knowledge by analyzing the nonlinear relationship between digital health attributes and users’ satisfaction and dissatisfaction.

This paper aims to review the existing literature about consumers’ evaluation of products in virtual reality (VR), provide an accurate overview of this field, systematise the knowledge developed so far, identify the research gaps and propose a future research agenda.

A systematic literature review was performed on Scopus and Web of Science, resulting in a final pool of 31 articles.

Four main themes were identified, and a detailed research agenda is proposed based on the findings and following the theory, context, characteristics, methodology framework.

The provision of formal inclusion and exclusion criteria may have resulted in additional potentially relevant articles not indexed in the data set under consideration.

The paper highlights how products are perceived in VR, the consumers’ responses, the peculiarities of VR compared to other conditions and VR as a product test environment. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper seems to represent the first systemic review that focusses solely on how consumers assess products in VR. The results lead to a broad proposal of directions for future research that can expand knowledge on VR in marketing. Practical implications concern the use of VR to design product strategies and as a testing and prototyping environment.

Este artículo revisa la literatura existente sobre la evaluación de los consumidores de productos en Realidad Virtual, proporciona una visión precisa de este campo, sistematiza el conocimiento desarrollado hasta el momento, identifica las lagunas en la investigación y propone una agenda de investigación futura.

Se realizó una revisión sistemática de la literatura en Scopus y Web of Science, que dio como resultado un conjunto final de 31 artículos.

Se identificaron cuatro temas principales y se propone una agenda de investigación detallada basada en las conclusiones y siguiendo el marco Teoría, Contexto, Características, Metodología.

La provisión de criterios formales de inclusión y exclusión puede haber dado lugar a artículos adicionales potencialmente relevantes no indexados en el conjunto de datos considerado.

El artículo destaca cómo se perciben los productos en la Realidad Virtual, las respuestas de los consumidores, las peculiaridades de la Realidad Virtual en comparación con otras condiciones y la Realidad Virtual como entorno de prueba de productos. Esta parece representar la primera revisión sistémica que se centra exclusivamente en cómo los consumidores evalúan los productos en la Realidad Virtual. Los resultados conducen a una amplia propuesta de direcciones para futuras investigaciones que puedan ampliar los conocimientos sobre la Realidad Virtual en el marketing. Las implicaciones prácticas se refieren al uso de la Realidad Virtual para diseñar estrategias de producto y como entorno de prueba y creación de prototipos.

本文回顾了现有的关于消费者对虚拟现实产品评价的文献, 提供了这个领域的准确概述, 系统化了迄今为止的知识, 确定了研究差距, 并提出了一个未来的研究议程。

在Scopus和Web of Science上进行了系统的文献综述, 最终形成了31篇文章的资料库。

确定了四个主要的主题, 并根据研究结果, 按照理论、背景、特征、方法框架提出了详细的研究议程。

提供正式的纳入和排除标准可能会导致更多潜在的相关文章没有被收录到所考虑的数据集中。

文章强调了产品在虚拟现实中是如何被感知的, 消费者的反应, 与其他条件相比虚拟现实的特殊性, 以及虚拟现实作为产品测试环境。这似乎代表了第一个只关注消费者如何在虚拟现实中评估产品的系统性评论。研究结果为未来的研究方向提出了一个广泛的建议, 可以扩展营销中的虚拟现实知识。实际意义在于使用虚拟现实技术来设计产品策略, 并作为测试和原型设计环境。

The present study investigates the impact of perceived enjoyment, blogger credibility and homophily on readers' engagement. Moreover, the study investigates the role exerted by blog engagement on intentions to follow blogger's recommendations. Despite the growing relevance of these issues, past studies have neglected the relevance of a joint analysis of such dimensions within the context of food blogs.

The empirical research builds on an online survey with a sample of 821 blog readers (353 Italian and 468 American). The proposed model was tested through structural equation modelling.

Results from a survey on Italian and American consumers show that perceived enjoyment and homophily have a significant effect on blog engagement, which, in turn, positively influences both intention to taste and visit. Moreover, blogger credibility does not show a significant influence on blog engagement for Italian and American followers.

The study contributes to a better understanding of the influence exerted by blog engagement on intention to follow blogger's recommendations. The study also examines perceived enjoyment, credibility and homophily as antecedents of engagement, which have not been extensively researched in the past with respect to food blogs.

The aim of the study is to investigate the effect of cultural distance on the reputation transferability from a made in Italy target firm to a foreign acquirer by analyzing local country consumers. The work compares two foreign acquiring firms a Chinese firm (large cultural distance to Italy) and a Spanish firm (small cultural distance to Italy). The findings show that Italian consumers have more negative attitudes toward the acquired firm and lower intentions to repurchase its products if the acquirer has large cultural distance rather than it has small cultural distance. Furthermore, the study aims at verifying that the case of small cultural distance fosters the reputation transferability more than the opposite case of large cultural distance. The work may be of value and interest because little has been studied dealing with the acquisition process in relation to market-based performance, particularly analyzing the consumer behavior toward a post-acquisition target.