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In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic had a devastating impact on global health care and the economy. The restaurant industry has been especially hit hard by the statewide “stay-at-home” orders. To get back on track, many of these businesses need capital. A new and effective form of fundraising for business startups is crowdfunding (CF). However, there has been little research on the pandemic impact on CF. This study aims to fill this gap by investigating the pandemic-related impact on restaurant CF.

This study extracted all 2,686 restaurant CF projects in the USA from the Kickstarter platform from April 2010 to January 2021. By conducting descriptive analyses and multiple logistic regression models, this study examined the pandemic impact on CF success.

This study finds that, while controlling the effects of other determinants, businesses in the midst of the pandemic are more likely to be successfully funded than businesses unaffected by the pandemic. Findings also reveal that restaurant startups lowered their funding goals and posted more updates/comments/pledge levels during the pandemic, which made projects more likely to be selected as a “Project We Love” and increased the odds of funding success. However, mentioning COVID-19-related information or locating projects in “red zones” are not found to have any significant direct or moderating impact on the funding success.

This study pioneers the research topic restaurant CF and attempts to raise the research attention of small- and medium-sized enterprises and entrepreneurial financing. Using quantitative methods, it provides a new perspective on pandemic-impact research. Social exchange theory is extended to the context of reward-based CF under crisis. Finally, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first investigation of the possible moderating effect of project location on the relationship between restaurant CF characteristics and success.

The findings of this study suggest restaurateurs to be confident about the fundraising of their startup business through reward-based CF, even when located within so-called pandemic red zones, and perform appropriate communication strategies while using the reward-based CF.

This study is one of the earliest to examine the main and moderating effects of the pandemic-related factors on business CF in the hospitality realm. The findings are reference for researchers and restaurateurs on fundraising in a crisis context.

Crowdfunding can be an effective fundraising vehicle to independent restaurants to overcome fundraising limitations due to its small-size and high risk. A few studies have identified contents of communication for successful crowdfunding, yet missing is on how to say. The purpose of this paper is to investigate linguistics styles that are effective in pitches in restaurant crowdfunding.

The study analyzed 500 restaurant crowdfunding projects listed on Kickstarter.com that is one of the most popular crowdfunding platforms with sizable restaurant projects. By text analysis, this study identifies four linguistic categories – concrete, precise, interactive and language with low psychological distancing – from the project descriptions. A binominal linear regression analysis identified effective language styles that increases success of restaurant crowdfunding.

Drawing on the language expectancy theory and uncertainty reduction theory, this study found that project descriptions that are concrete and delivering stories with fewer usage of first person pronouns are likely to succeed in restaurant fundraising. Interactive style was counter-effective while preciseness of language did not affect funding success significantly. Findings further reveal the roles of non-linguistic attributes shown in the project pitches.

Despite the increasing practice of restaurant crowdfunding and good matches with small- and medium-sized restaurants’ needs, scant research has been conducted. Notably absent from the research is work on linguistic styles that are effective in restaurant crowdfunding. This study extends the prior literature by investigating how restaurant entrepreneurs should communicate with potential crowdfunders to make crowdfunding successful in the restaurant context. Simply knowing what are important does not provide holistic help to restaurant entrepreneurs; they also should know how to communicate well.

The findings of this study are important for restaurant entrepreneurs who need to present their projects and communicate effectively with potential investors online. Based on the study’s findings, crowdfunding platforms could enhance their project posting systems by developing algorithm that automatically measures language cues embedded in a project description and providing suggestions to improve persuasiveness of languages to maximize funding success for restaurant projects.

Scant research has been conducted in the restaurant crowdfunding; prior crowdfunding literature has focused on the projects other than restaurants such as technology, design and film. This study is the first that uncovers the role of the linguistic styles for the specific context of restaurant crowdfunding. This study sheds the light on the critical communication strategies used by small-sized restaurant entrepreneurs on crowdfunding platform.

This study aims to move beyond the current understanding of corporate social responsibility (CSR) to propose the concept of just-in-time (JIT) CSR as a metaphor that reflects hospitality operators’ endeavors to expedite socially responsible measures to both internal and external organizational stakeholders during times when functional and emotional supports are urgently needed.

This research used a qualitative approach in two studies. Study 1 engaged a media analysis to better grasp the knowledge of the research problem at hand. Study 2 involved interviews from stakeholders to assess their emotions and perceptions of meanings of major contents discerned from the first study.

This research highlights a process in which operators’ CSR practices (e.g. for business practices, for organizational strategy and for stakeholder well-being) during the COVID-19 crisis are imbued with connotative meanings (e.g. place-as-safety, place-as-partnership and place-as-warmth) that ultimately give shape to three core outcomes (e.g. individual rejoinder, brand resonance and societal resilience).

While JIT CSR is not an antidote for all devastations caused by COVID-19, it is posited as a needed mechanism that operators could use to ameliorate the situation and to go beyond their own stake to bring a broader array of societal benefits to humanity.

This research underscores how hospitality operators expedite crisis responses to the pandemic, and how their societal objectives transform the image of a place from a commercial venue into a place imbued with meaning associated with safety, partnership and warmth.

This study aims to investigate replies to the top 10 comments under Always “Like a Girl” YouTube femvertising video to gauge consumers’ responses regarding femvertising as well as relationships among commenters.

This study adopted a mixed research methods design. A user analysis and a qualitative content analysis were conducted to examine the replies of the top 10 comments with the most replies to reveal not only the topics but also relationships and patterns among those comments and commenters.

The user analysis found that across all the 10 comment-and-reply units, in 8 units, the user of the original primary comment, the conversation starter, was also the user who was targeted most often. The qualitative content analysis revealed four themes from the 10 comment-and-reply units: multilayered emotional responses, a gendered society, complex coexisting relationships and a melting pot.

The findings of this research offer significant extensions to the understanding of public sphere theory within the contemporary digital media landscape. By analyzing the nature of replies to digital advertisements, the study illuminates how various types of user engagement–whether it be inquiry, laudation, debate, or flame–play a critical role in shaping the digital public sphere.

The study underscores the importance for marketers to scrutinize both comments and replies to effectively utilize femvertising on social media, particularly YouTube. By understanding the emotional dynamics of user interactions, marketers can craft strategies that evoke positive responses and mitigate negative ones. Engaging with users who are open to changing their views or mediating discussions can also be beneficial, as can the use of AI tools to maintain focus on the content rather than on individual commenters. Such approaches can enhance the perception of femvertising campaigns and foster a more constructive dialogue within the social media space.

This study contributes to the literature by investigating the replies of comments, interactions, relationships and patterns among YouTube commenters that may generate valuable insights for advertisers and marketers to be aware of the possible issues and monitor the sentiment of commentaries, thus, developing effective strategies to better connect with consumers. This extends the understanding of public sphere theory in the contemporary digital media landscape.

This study aims to offer a bibliometric analysis of the already substantial and growing literature on global virtual teams (GVTs).

Using a systematic literature review approach, it identifies all articles in the Web of Science from 1999 to 2021 that include the term GVTs (in the title, the abstract or keywords) and finds 175 articles. The VOSviewer software was applied to analyze the bibliometric data.

The analysis revealed three dialogizing research clusters in the GVTs literature: a pioneering management information systems and organizational cluster, a general management cluster and a growing international management and behavioural studies cluster. Furthermore, it highlights the most cited articles, authors, journals and nations, and the network of strong and weak links regarding co-authorships and co-citations. Additionally, this study shows a change in research patterns regarding topics, journals and disciplinary approaches from 1999 to 2021. Finally, the analysis illustrates the position and centrality in the network of the most relevant actors.

The findings can guide management practitioners, educators and researchers to the most meaningful clusters of publications on GVTs, and help navigate and make sense of the vast body of the available literature. The importance of GVTs has been growing in the past two decades, and Covid-19 has accelerated the trend.

This study provides an updated and comprehensive systematic literature review on GVTs. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is also the first systematic literature review and bibliometry on GVTs. It concludes by suggesting future research paths.