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Purpose With the increasing importance of technology in hospitality and tourism, technology-driven service innovation has been a salient topic discussed from both customers’ and suppliers’ perspectives. However, there has been a lack of research that provides an overview of research on technology-driven service innovation. The purpose of this study is to review current discussions on technology-driven service innovation and provide directions for future studies in the hospitality and tourism literature. Design/methodology/approach A total of 82 articles on technology-driven service innovation were collected from top-tier hospitality and tourism journals. The papers were analyzed using content analysis to derive key topics discussed in the literature. Such discussions were made by different service innovation categories, antecedents, outcomes and theories. Future research agendas were suggested based on the research gap found in the literature. Findings The results indicate that prior discussions on technology-driven service innovation viewed technology as a service or service delivery method, with limited focus on management, marketing and institutional service innovation. In addition, the study reveals five key topics that need further discussion, such as cocreative technology, human resources management, strategy management, emerging technology and digital transformation. Research limitations/implications While there have been increasing studies that reveal determining roles of technology in service innovation, scarce research introduced the new concept of technology-driven service innovation, suggesting a comprehensive approach. By adopting the unique approach of technology-driven service innovation, the research reveals the multifaceted roles of technology in service innovation and areas that need further discussion to implement highly sustainable strategies. Originality/value The research adds to the knowledge of technology-driven service innovation by providing a holistic view of current discussions, finding research gaps and proposing future research agendas for extended discussion.

Purpose This study aims to integrate reviewers’ and readers’ discrepant perspectives on extremely negative reviews. Specifically, this study examines the relationship between negative emotion intensity levels and reviews helpfulness on two platforms: integrated websites and social networking sites (SNS) to emphasize the role of platform types on customers’ purchase decisions. Design/methodology/approach This research adopts a mixed-method approach of business intelligence approach and quasi-experimental design. Study 1 performed text mining and Welch’s t-test to compare reviewers’ negative emotion intensity levels on two platforms. Study 2 adopted a 2*2 factorial quasi-experimental design to examine how intense negative emotions impact the perceived reviews helpfulness on two platforms. A 3*2 factorial design in Study 3 also tested social tie strength’s moderating effect between the intensity of negative emotions and review helpfulness. Findings The current study reveals that integrated website reviewers tend to express more extreme negative emotions than SNS reviewers. SNS and integrated website readers deem reviews that embed severe negative emotions as less helpful. The moderating role of social tie strength between extremely negative emotions on review helpfulness was insignificant in the study. Research limitations/implications This study enriches the online review literature by comparing writers’ and readers’ perspectives on online reviews with extremely negative emotions across two online platform types: integrated websites and SNS. From the writers’ perspective, this study highlights anonymity and the presence of an audience as essential factors that reviewers consider in selecting an online review platform to express themselves. This research also sheds light on how readers’ perspectives on extremely negative reviews conflict with the presumptions of writers of extremely negative reviews on integrated websites by demonstrating that content embedding extremely negative emotions is less helpful regardless of platform type. Practical implications This research provides online negative review management strategies to platform and hotel managers. The findings suggest hotel and review platform managers should consider adopting review alignment or monitoring systems based on negative emotions intensity levels since readers on both platforms perceive reviews embedding extremely negative emotions as less helpful. Additionally, hotel managers can progress promotions to guests who share online reviews on SNS since SNS reviewers are more likely to attenuate their extremely negative emotions when writing reviews. Originality/value This research innovatively provides a comprehensive overview of negative reviews’ production and consumption process from reviewers’ and readers’ perspectives. This research also provides practitioners insight into the nature of two different platform types and the management of negative reviews on these platforms.

Purpose Big data analytics allows researchers and industry practitioners to extract hidden patterns or discover new information and knowledge from big data. Although artificial intelligence (AI) is one of the emerging big data analytics techniques, hospitality and tourism literature has shown minimal efforts to process and analyze big hospitality data through AI. Thus, this study aims to develop and compare prediction models for review helpfulness using machine learning (ML) algorithms to analyze big restaurant data. Design/methodology/approach The study analyzed 1,483,858 restaurant reviews collected from Yelp.com. After a thorough literature review, the study identified and added to the prediction model 4 attributes containing 11 key determinants of review helpfulness. Four ML algorithms, namely, multivariate linear regression, random forest, support vector machine regression and extreme gradient boosting (XGBoost), were used to find a better prediction model for customer decision-making. Findings By comparing the performance metrics, the current study found that XGBoost was the best model to predict review helpfulness among selected popular ML algorithms. Results revealed that attributes regarding a reviewer’s credibility were fundamental factors determining a review’s helpfulness. Review helpfulness even valued credibility over ratings or linguistic contents such as sentiment and subjectivity. Practical implications The current study helps restaurant operators to attract customers by predicting review helpfulness through ML-based predictive modeling and presenting potential helpful reviews based on critical attributes including review, reviewer, restaurant and linguistic content. Using AI, online review platforms and restaurant websites can enhance customers’ attitude and purchase decision-making by reducing information overload and search cost and highlighting the most crucial review helpfulness features and user-friendly automated search results. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the current study is the first to develop a prediction model of review helpfulness and reveal essential factors for helpful reviews. Furthermore, the study presents a state-of-the-art ML model that surpasses the conventional models’ prediction accuracy. The findings will improve practitioners’ marketing strategies by focusing on factors that influence customers’ decision-making.

This research explores the social mechanism of luxury hotel membership programs and extends current loyalty program literature that has mainly examined membership programs from a mental-accounting perspective. By building upon the social identity theory, this study posits that luxury hotel membership programs provide social platforms, allowing members to construct a collective identity and collective self-esteem. Consequently, collective self-esteem is proposed as an antecedent of customer–brand relationship constructs, such as commitment, switching resistance, and word of mouth. Members from two South Korean luxury hotel membership programs were recruited to participate in a survey to test these constructs’ relationship, and findings demonstrate that membership programs’ effectiveness in cultivating a robust customer–brand relationship is contingent upon members’ collective self-esteem with the program. This correlation involves the four dimensions of collective self-esteem: membership esteem, private esteem, public esteem, and importance to identity. This study is preeminent to the current literature by identifying a critical psychological mechanism, which luxury hotel brand managers can leverage to successfully launch a membership program that ultimately cultivates enduring customer–brand relationships. The results of this study also suggest several managerial implications for hotel marketers to effectively design and manage membership programs by considering collective self-esteem’s four dimensions.

Purpose This study aims to uncover how heuristic information cues (HIC) and systematic information cues (SIC) of online reviews influence review helpfulness and examine a moderating role of social influence in the process of assessing review helpfulness. In particular, this study conceptualizes a theoretical framework based on dual-process and social influence theory (SIT) and empirically tests the proposed hypotheses by analyzing a broad set of actual customer review data. Design/methodology/approach For 4,177,377 online reviews posted on Yelp.com from 2004 to 2018, this study used data mining and text analysis to extract independent variables. Zero-inflated negative binomial regression analysis was conducted to test the hypothesized model. Findings The present study demonstrates that both HIC and SIC have a significant relationship with review helpfulness. Normative social influence cue (NSIC) strengthened the relationship between HIC and review helpfulness. However, the moderating effect of NSIC was not valid in the relationship between SIC and review helpfulness. Originality/value This study contributes to the extant research on review helpfulness by providing a conceptual framework underpinned by dual-process theory and SIT. The study not only identifies determinants of review helpfulness but also reveals how social influences can impact individuals’ judgment on review helpfulness. By offering a state-of-the-art analysis with a vast amount of online reviews, this study contributes to the methodological improvement of further empirical research.

Purpose This study aims to investigate ways in which hotel loyalty programs can be designed to enhance customer’s identification with a hotel brand and develop a sustainable customer-brand relationship. Design/methodology/approach The study adopted a cross-sectional design survey questionnaire for data collection and used structural equation modeling data analysis to test the conceptual model. Findings The three loyalty program experiences proposed (member-to-member similarity, memorable loyalty program experience and loyalty program social benefits) exerted significant positive effects on customer-brand identification (CBI), which, in turn, influences customer-brand relationship elements, including trust, commitment and switching resistance. Originality/value This study expands the scope of CBI literature, which previously focused substantially on brand level experiences, by being the first to explore a new set of CBI antecedents with a focus on loyalty program experiences. Furthermore, the current study’s findings delineate specific strategies to uphold the social and experiential aspects of loyalty programs that can develop sustainable customer-brand relationships.

This study examines how destination marketing organization’s (DMO’s) social media posts and comments increase customer engagement and explores the moderating role of information richness in the smart tourism context. To test the proposed hypotheses, the current study employed social media analytics by analyzing unique panel data from 72 DMOs’ Facebook event pages. The research findings indicate that a DMO’s social media efforts (quantitative aspect) are positively associated with customer engagement and DMOs having a higher level of information richness (qualitative aspect) in their messages have greater customer engagement on DMOs’ Facebook event pages. The current study also sheds light on the scant research stream of measuring DMOs’ social media success empirically and presents the possibility of how social media analytics can be applied to hypothesis testing in tourism research instead of traditional research methods.

Extant studies on luxury have focused on exploring motivations and service attributes behind the consumption of luxury travel brands. However, the underlying psychological mechanism of how customer...

With growing number of hotel brands in the market, the lodging industry is facing intense competition more than ever, and managers are realizing the importance of developing strong customer–brand relationship. As a result, the concept of brand love is gaining increased attention in hospitality literature and academics are examining various antecedents of this concept. However, among prior studies’ exploration of its antecedents, the relationship between engagement process and brand love has been relatively neglected. Hence, the present study explores the relationship among customer–brand engagement, cognitive brand loyalty, and brand love. Specifically, this study focuses on the role of cognitive engagement on the development of brand love, as the advent of online environment and social networking service has significantly changed customer’s pre- and post-purchase decision-making process. The conceptual model illustrates that cognitive engagement, which is operationalized as a second-order construct of attention and absorption, has a significant positive effect on brand love directly and indirectly via the mediation of cognitive brand loyalty. Consequently, the findings indicate that “how” customers process brand information (cognitive engagement) is equally important as “what” they process (content, e.g., quality) to evoke cognitive brand loyalty and ultimately brand love among hotel guests.

Purpose This study aims to provide an understanding of the concept of service innovation resulting from emerging technologies and suggest areas for future hospitality and tourism research. By thoroughly reviewing previous literature, this study provides the basis for improving customer service with service innovation. Design/methodology/approach This study examines the existing body of knowledge from leading hospitality, tourism and business journals by performing content analysis. Findings This study reveals the multifaceted aspects of service innovation practices using emerging technologies. Findings provide an evidence base to future studies by highlighting the role of technology in hospitality and tourism service innovation. Originality/value The major contribution of this study is the demonstration of an approach for both academic researchers and service providers how they can use the technology to improve customers’ perceived value, experience and engagement.

This research examines how organizational error management culture influences organizational commitment and employee turnover intention through employee psychological safety and perceived fairness....

Service recovery performance has been identified as a key component for positive organizational outcomes and organizational success. Therefore, it is crucial to investigate unique factors that can influence service recovery performance. Although scholars have studied different types of organizational climate, there is no adequate research examining the mechanism between forgiveness climate and organizational outcomes. Linking these two areas of research for the first time, this current study examines the influence of a perceived forgiveness climate on service recovery performance through psychological safety and organizational fairness as mediators. Using quantitative data collected from 431 casino employees, this study revealed that employee perceptions of forgiveness climate was significantly positively related to perceived service recovery performance. More important, the study demonstrated the underlying mechanisms linking the two concepts. Specifically, the results demonstrated the mediating effect of psychological safety and organizational fairness between perceived forgiveness climate and service recovery performance. The findings suggest that organizations should promote a climate of forgiveness to enhance employees’ service recovery performance.

This study aims to validate the underlying structures of integrated resort customers’ needs satisfaction. This work proposes a nine-item scale that captures three distinct dimensions, namely, autonomy, competence, and relatedness needs satisfaction, using a mixed method including qualitative and quantitative studies. The predictive validity of customers’ autonomy, competence, and relatedness needs satisfaction on hedonic and eudaimonic well-being examined in two different cultures: Asia and the United States. This study contributes to the tourism and hospitality research by providing evidence of customers’ needs satisfaction from integrated resort brand experience and its role in improving customers’ well-being using cross-cultural samples. Thus, the authors highlight the importance of tourism and hospitality brand experiences which are beneficial for individual life in terms of basic psychological needs satisfaction.

This study examines the impact of integrated resort brand experiences (IRBEs) on customer well-being through the satisfaction of psychological needs. Partial least squares path modeling tests the hypotheses using a sample of 535 integrated resort customers. The results reveal that four dimensions of IRBE (i.e., sensory, affective, behavioral, and intellectual) have differing effects on needs satisfaction dimensions (i.e., autonomy, competence, and relatedness). Furthermore, the results show that autonomy and relatedness needs positively influence both hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. Thus, this study strongly demonstrates that specific brand experiences play an important role in the transformation of needs satisfaction into well-being. The current article appears to have a significant application of the concept of needs satisfaction on tourism brand marketing but it has not been tested empirically. Also, this article describes the significance of multidimensional IRBE to marketing strategy.

Purpose Experience and value creation have become integral themes for tourism service providers. This study aims to understand the role of different types of experiences in formulating customers’ perceived value. Studies on this area are scarce, especially in the cruise industry. Design/methodology/approach A research model that includes two value variables, namely, functional and wellness values, and four cruise brand experience variables, namely, sensory, affective, behavioral and intellectual factors, was tested through partial least-squares (PLS) structural equation modeling approach. A total of 389 usable cruise customer responses were obtained and analyzed using SmartPLS software. Findings Results revealed the relative effects of sensory, affective, behavioral and intellectual factors on perceived functional and wellness values. The positive impact of perceived value on customer satisfaction and behavioral intention and the moderating role of service expertise in the relationship between cruise experience and perceived value were examined. Research limitations/implications Future research can examine how types of leisure facilities (e.g. casinos, restaurants, bars and shows), cultural differences (e.g. Eastern and Western) and customers’ travel characteristics (e.g. visiting purpose and companions) may influence the relationships between cruise brand experience and perceived value. Practical implications From a practical point, the relationships among multidimensional cruise brand experience, functional and wellness values, customer satisfaction, revisit intention and service expertise provide a clue on how cruise brands can enhance customers’ perceived value to retain current customers. Originality/value This study contributes to literature by providing a theoretical framework and empirical evidence for predicting and explaining cruise customers’ behavior. From a managerial perspective, this study identified critical factors that are essential to value creation and discussed the implications of predictive factors on developing marketing strategies that enhance customers’ positive attitude and behavior toward the cruise brand.

Integrated resorts have recently become a very popular destination for tourists. However, there is a lack of knowledge about general customers’ behavior in the integrated resort setting. Thus, this study focused on the perceptions, emotions, and behavioral intentions of recreational customers who had previously visited an integrated resort. The authors examine the structural relationship among the cognitive (i.e., passion and motivation), affective (i.e., affective attitude), and conative intention outcome of general integrated resort customers. Structural equation modeling analysis of 401 survey participants showed that the link between extrinsic motivation and obsessive passion reduced affective attitude. By contrast, the association of intrinsic motivation and harmonious passion promoted affective attitude. The conative intention outcome of customers is directly influenced by intrinsic motivation and affective attitude. This study contributes to academic and practical implications in the integrated resort brand marketing by focusing on recreational customers’ behavior.

PurposeThis study aims to apply the perspective of self-determination theory to investigate the effects of needs satisfaction on customers’ emotional bond and perceived fit with the integrated resort brand.Design/methodology/approachTo provide empirical evidence, this study uses an online survey analyzed with structural equation modeling.FindingsThe results suggest how integrated resort experiences enhance the needs satisfaction for autonomy, competence and relatedness, and that customers are likely to have an attachment and compatibility with the brand. This study also documents that strong attachments and compatibility are predictive of behavioral intention.Research limitations/implicationsThis study provides a theoretical perspective through self-determination theory for explaining how needs satisfaction impacts customers’ brand-related attitude, which can be used to guide future studies. Insights from this research will be used to design and evaluate customers’ experience in tourism and hospitality industry.Originality/valueAlthough the concept of needs satisfaction has studied on the employees’ behavior, a scarcity of research has been offered to explain customers’ behavior. Thus, this study makes a significant contribution to the hospitality and tourism research by testing the needs satisfaction as an antecedent of customers’ brand-related behavior.

With the rise of the sharing economy, Airbnb has become the predominant example of the online peer-to-peer accommodation market in the hospitality industry. This study adopts a mixed method approach to systematically and comprehensively capture various service aspects of Airbnb. Two main studies are conducted to identify key service quality (SQ) attributes of Airbnb, verify the dimensionality of the SQ attributes, and examine the effects of these attributes on customer satisfaction (CS). The first qualitative study generated a list of SQ attributes by collecting and analyzing 16,430 online reviews. In the second study, online survey (N = 322) is conducted to identify multiple dimensions of SQ attributes and examine their asymmetric effects on CS using impact-range performance analysis and impact asymmetry analysis. Findings suggest that Airbnb has multiple SQ attributes associated with website, host, and facility that produce distinctive effects on CS.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This study examined the impact of employee satisfaction with management and coworkers on their performance as medical tourism facilitators. The proposed hypotheses were tested with structural equation modeling based on data collected from major hospitals in South Korea. Results supported assumptions that satisfaction with management is positively correlated with customer orientation and job satisfaction of medical tourism facilitators, as well as with the assumption that satisfaction with coworkers has a direct impact on customer orientation. This study has practical implications as organizations develop effective internal marketing (i.e., communication) strategies to improve the performance of medical tourism facilitators.

This article offers an understanding of and reduces gaps in the existing literature regarding cognitive distortion (e.g. gambling fallacy) and problem gambling behaviour. The primary objective of t...

The present study identifies the key antecedents and outcomes of customer brand engagement in the integrated resort context using a mixed method. A qualitative study reveals that integrated resort brand experience is multidimensional, and varying effects on brand engagement is found from a quantitative study. In particular, sensory and affective experiences all positively influence cognitive engagement. In addition, behavioral experience influences behavioral engagement, whereas intellectual brand experience positively affects cognitive and behavioral engagements with the integrated resort brand. Furthermore, the results show that brand engagements positively influence customers’ behavioral intention in the future. Hypotheses were also tested by employing multi-group structural equation modeling. Male, low-education, and low-income level customers placed more importance on sensory brand experience than female, high-education, and high-income level customers. The findings of this study can provide academicians and practitioners a guide to improve customer engagement and loyalty toward an integrated resort brand.

Customer–brand relationships exist in many tourism categories; however, these relationships are rarely specified in the integrated resort category. Because an integrated resort consists of ...

The main purpose of this study is to identify relationships between customers’ service evaluations embedded in online reviews and customer satisfaction and demonstrate the unique role of price and location in the restaurant industry. Approximately 250,000 online reviews of restaurants were analyzed to answer (1) How cognitive and affective evaluations written in a review influence customer satisfaction and (2) How price plays a moderating role in the relationship between text-based service evaluations and customer satisfaction. By incorporating spatial dependency, geographically weighted regression analysis was conducted to identify the pure impact of affective and cognitive evaluations of restaurant services and to develop a sophisticated satisfaction prediction model. This study found the significant impact of cognitive and affective service evaluations on customer satisfaction, which was moderated by price. Moreover, this study highlighted geo-spatial dependency by demonstrating that spatial auto-correlation matters only for restaurants in the lowest ($) and highest ($$$$) price groups.

Recently, there is increasing interest in integrated resort based destination which is a converged location for both gaming and non-gaming travel services including lodging, eating and drinking places, entertainment, retail, and convention targeted for large market segments. This paper reviews a content analysis of integrated resort papers published in the hospitality and tourism literature over the past 26 years (1991–2017). Based on a detailed examination of the contents, a database consisting of information on (1) study expansion, (2) study locations, (3) major subject domains, and (4) research methodology was developed. A series of trends that describe the growth of integrated resort research has been identified. The findings provide the first thematic overview of the integrated resort industry derived from literature. General and academic interests are discussed, along with limitations and suggested areas for future research.

Despite the significance of understanding customer behavior in the integrated resort setting, only limited research has been conducted on this topic. Thus, this study aims to identify and a...

This study examined the mediating effects of perceived organizational support and affective commitment in the relationships among perceived supervisor support, organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) (individual and organizational), and turnover intentions. The proposed relationships were tested by conducting the same study involving restaurant employees in three different countries – India, USA, and South Korea. The mediating effects of perceived organizational support and affective commitment between perceived supervisor support and turnover intentions were found to be consistent across the three countries. However, the relationships among OCBs differed. While affective commitment was significantly related to both OCBs in the South Korean sample, affective commitment was significantly related only to OCBs towards organization in the US sample, and neither relationship was found to be significant in the Indian sample. This study helps to explain how contextual factors influence responses to eac...

This study aims to examine the moderating effects of customer personal characteristics on the satisfaction-loyalty link in order to overcome potential response bias and common-method variance in the link by using both real-life purchasing behavior data and survey in a cross-method and panel data. Two separate data collection procedures dealt with survey and customer relationship management (CRM) data. A total of 391 members of restaurant loyalty program participated in the survey. Also, additional data were gathered on restaurant CRM. Data were analyzed using SEM and multi-group analysis. This study confirmed the nonlinear relationship between customer satisfaction and brand loyalty due to the significant moderating effects of customers’ personal characteristics on subsequent stages of the link.

Highlights • The first attempt to develop reliable and valid OI and ODI measures to assess the employees’ psychological attachment and separation in the foodservice industry using the mixed method. • The results from EFA and CFA showed that a single dimension is appropriate to capture the scope of both employee's OI and ODI in the foodservice industry and are consistent with major social identity studies., This study is to test whether social identity theory can be applied to employees in the foodservice industry. Modified measures of OI and ODI using a mixed-method developed and tested and presented empirical evidence for the reliability and validity of the scales. To specify the domain of construct, the existing measures of social identification varied across studies were reviewed. A preliminary list of OI and ODI measurement scales were generated based on previous measures and data from personal interviews with foodservice workers. An expert group reviewed items and removed irrelevant and redundant ones. Also, two online surveys were conducted to validate the measurements and identify the underlying structures of the constructs. The findings of this study suggest that the final measures of OI and ODI using the categorical dimension approach are one-dimensional, reliable, and valid.

This study explores the underlying factors of customer value in a restaurant setting by applying machine learning-based natural language processing techniques to the analysis of a vast amount of online customer reviews. The study identifies 14 factors that reflect a holistic view of previous research on customer value. The findings suggest that the comprehensive approach incorporating cognitive and affective aspects into the experiential perspective of value gain deeper insights into the nature of customer value. Moreover, the study uniquely finds new factors that prior research has rarely investigated. This study proposes a methodological framework that enables researchers to test the quantitative measure of customer perceptions derived from unstructured online reviews. Practitioners will be able to use the findings to understand customers better and enhance service operations.

This study aims to identify the role of integrated resort customers' value co-creation attitude on their co-creation behavior by applying service-dominant logic in the integrated resort setting. The proposed model is tested using data collected from five integrated resort sites in Croatia. Partial least squares structural equation modeling is used to explore the relative impact of multidimensional value co-creation attitude, including interaction, knowledge sharing, and responsive attitudes, on customers' co-creation behavior (i.e. participation and citizenship behavior) toward integrated resorts. Findings suggest that customers' interaction and responsive attitudes positively influence their future behavioral intention. In addition, customers' participation behavior significantly and positively mediates the relationship between their responsive attitude and citizenship behavior. Given the importance of understanding and managing customers’ experience, findings are also beneficial for academic researchers and integrated resort service providers.

This paper aims to gain knowledge on customers’ experience toward integrated resorts in Croatia. Customer perception toward integrated resorts was collected via face-to-face survey. The multidimensional experiential values and behaviors of 354 customers were studied. The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Croatian customers are engaged with the integrated resort experience. This engagement influences their satisfaction and behavioral intention. Specifically, customers with high playfulness and service expectations tend to engage positive behavioral intention toward the integrated resort brand. This paper offers the first insight into the relationship between experiential value and behavioral intention in the integrated resort setting.

The purpose of this study was to compare the influence of two survey modes – telephone random digit dialling (RDD) and stratified sampling of an online panel – on Canadian Problem Gambling Index (CPGI) scores and co-morbidities. An identical gambling survey was administered to 4000 South Koreans selected via random dialling of cell phone numbers and to 4330 South Korean members of an online panel. The online panelists were found to have significantly higher levels of tobacco use, drug or alcohol problems and mental health problems, higher employment status and lower happiness levels. However, even when controlling for these variables, CPGI scores for the online panel were significantly higher than those for the telephone interview. This appears to be due to higher levels of pathology among online panelists combined with potentially more valid self-reports due to enhanced anonymity.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to achieve three objectives: to investigate perceived quality of work life (QWL) need attributes among frontline employees in the lodging industry, to assess the asymmetric relationships between QWL attributes and job satisfaction (JS) and to prioritize QWL attributes for the effective management of JS. Design/methodology/approach – Data were analyzed using exploratory factor analysis, impact range-performance analysis and impact-asymmetry analysis. Findings – Each QWL attribute showed significant and various asymmetric or linear impacts on JS or job dissatisfaction (JDS). Practical implications – Study results provided critical information for hotel managers to prioritize several attributes, such as safe work place, fair pay, empowerment and effective training, to enhance JS and reduce JDS for frontline personnel. Originality/value – This study sheds light for identifying the underlying structure of QWL and further investigate the asymmetric relationship between QWL attributes and JS/JDS using need satisfaction, self-determination and three-factor theory in the lodging industry.

This case study assesses the asymmetric relationship between the relative importance of service quality attributes and overall customer satisfaction in Korean casino settings, using impact-range performance analysis (IRPA) and impact asymmetry analysis (IAA). Results validated the rigor of IRPA and IAA over importance–performance analysis (IPA) in identifying key determining attributes of customer satisfaction/dissatisfaction among various casino service quality attributes based on three-factor theory. The theoretical and practical implications of this study’s findings are included to enrich both academicians’ and casino industry professionals’ understanding of customers’ perceptions of and attitudes towards casinos, and the development of a marketing strategy.

Flight attendants' working conditions are harsh due to frequent night shifts, long shifts, and long sequences. This study sought to identify the antecedents and consequences of flight attendants' job satisfaction and assess the significant relationships among the study variables. Two hundred and twelve flight attendants in South Korea airlines were randomly chosen. Significant antecedents of job satisfaction were revealed to be self-efficacy and perceived benefits of organizational support. The indirect effect of emotional dissonance via burnout on job satisfaction was significant, and the significant positive effect of job satisfaction on organizational commitment was confirmed. Findings may guide employers in developing internal marketing strategies, including more effective benefit and reward systems, and career development programmes.

This research attempted to develop a measurement scale of switching barriers in full-service restaurants by identifying existing components of switching barriers. A qualitative procedure identified the following four categories of switching barriers: preference, switching costs, relational investment, and lack of alternatives. A further quantitative analysis resulted in production of a multi-item scale of switching barriers. The quantitative analysis found that the two positive dimensions (preference and relational investment) were far stronger barriers in encouraging patrons to return to a restaurant than were negative barriers (switching costs and lack of alternatives) in terms of keeping customers from defecting. As a caveat, due to sample limitations, the findings apply only to full-service restaurants in the United States.

The aim of this study was to examine the structural relationship among gambling motivation, gambling passion, and behavioral intentions to gamble between recreational and pathological gamblers. Specifically, this study aimed to shed light on the different ways in which gambling motivation and affective attitude are associated with recreational and pathological gamblers. Using a purposive sampling method, 400 subjects were selected for and participated in this study during their visits to a casino. Study results echoed the notion of distinctive and separate gambling motivations and passions between recreational and pathological gamblers. Also, results identified specific areas to which casino operators or policy makers should pay special attention in developing effective marketing strategies to promote responsible gambling.

The significance of brand concept has been increasingly recognized in the MICE industry due to its ability to create a compelling competitive edge. Complementing the major limitation of a study on attendee-based brand equity [Lee, J. S., & Back, K. J. (2008). Attendee-based brand equity. Tourism Management, 29(2), 331–344], this study reexamines attendee-based brand equity by additionally sampling regional CHRIE conferences (RCs) and comparing the data with I-CHRIE's annual conference (IC) in the context of our theoretical model. This research not only increases the theoretical validity of the previous model of attendee-based brand equity, but also explores brand equity as captured through the differential brand knowledge effect by comparing IC and RCs.

This study examined the relationship between the following key variables: internal service quality, self-efficacy, job satisfaction, self-esteem, and organizational commitment. The study sought to identify ways to improve casino employees’ job satisfaction, further enhance employees’ organizational commitment, and possibly decrease job turnover intention. A total of 328 Korean casino dealers responded to a survey questionnaire developed to test the study model. Results showed that all internal service quality dimensions (i.e., training, communication, and perceived benefits) positively influenced job satisfaction, as did self-efficacy. Job satisfaction subsequently and concurrently influenced self-esteem and organizational commitment. Based on study findings, management can glean practical implications for enhancing the quality of effective communication strategies, career development programs, and empowerment.