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The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a model examining the key factors that emerge from the social customer relationship management (CRM) process. Specifically, this study aims to address the chain-of-effects that occurs as a result of the social CRM process, leading to superior levels of hotel performance.

Data were collected using a quantitative approach. Using a mail and online questionnaire, data were gathered from 120 key informants in hotels in Ireland. The proposed model was tested using partial least squares structural equation modelling.

Results demonstrate that the social CRM activities of hotels enhance hotel service innovation activities. This positively impacts the ability to develop a customer-linking capability, resulting in higher levels of customer performance. In turn, higher levels of customer performance leads to higher levels of financial performance.

Service innovation and customer-linking capability are identified as critical outcomes of the social CRM process that lead to enhanced hotel performance.

This study explains the chain-of-effects through which the social CRM process results in higher levels of performance.

Despite the rapid growth of social networking sites (SNSs), research demonstrating the marketing application of these technologies is lacking. Consequently, this paper aims to explore the impact of SNSs on hotel marketing activities.

An exploratory study was used. Adopting a key informant approach, in-depth interviews were conducted with 14 respondents in the hotel industry, who use SNSs as part of their hotel marketing efforts.

Networked interactions facilitated by SNSs can influence the marketing activities of hotels in many ways. This extends to deeper connections and co-creating value with customers to enhance the market offerings and promotional activities of the firm. Not all interviewees capitalised upon the capabilities offered by SNSs.

SNSs act as a key knowledge resource that can be used by practitioners to create and deliver superior customer value. However, the extent to which this is achieved depends on who is responsible for implementing it. Specifically, those with a more proactive attitude and approach towards marketing on SNSs tend to reap greater benefits.

Using the service-dominant logic as a guide, this paper offers greater insight into the theory and practice of social media marketing in the hotel industry, an under-studied and fragmented research area.

A significant management issue for nonprofit organisations (NPOs) is the disconnect between services beneficiaries and the funders of those services. Individual donors and fundraisers provide the resources to enable other people (or animals) to be supported. The purpose of this paper is to address this service management challenge through new types of customer service interactions that bring together service donors and service recipients through innovative digital communication.

Based on a review, and illustrated by recent examples of innovative best practice, the authors develop a new conceptual framework for understanding the relationship between customer participation and service brand communication.

The paper starts by identifying the problem of “nonprofit service disintermediation”. The paper also outlines the inadequacies of popular frameworks of communication, widely taught in business schools, to understand the new reality of customer-service organisation engagement in the digital age. Through adopting a customer engagement lens, the paper develops a new conceptual framework for understanding the relationship between customer participation and service brand communication.

Given the authors’ focus on the intersection between new communication opportunities and customer service interactions, this paper adds novel insight to theory and raises important implications for management.

The paper explores how, through these new communication interactions, engagement with, and loyalty to, the brand is built over time in a fluid and dynamic way. It identifies a disintermediated relationship, distinct to other service contexts, but significant in terms of value and social impact.