Giampaolo Viglia

University of Portsmouth · Department of Marketing

Purpose Despite the well-documented importance of empathy and mentoring in entrepreneurship, there is a need for a deeper understanding of how empathy influences individuals’ “willingness to be mentored”. Design/methodology/approach This paper investigates gender differences in “Willingness to be mentored” based on the mentor’s types of empathy (c...

This conceptual paper challenges the notion that the enhanced data security of blockchain results in superior privacy. Blockchain's fundamental characteristics - immutability, decentralization, and transparency - promote an excessive reliance on historical data. This reliance, in turn, leads to inaccurate predictions and misguides consumer privacy...

The PLS-SEM method is a robust approach to researching consumer behavior. However, understanding a phenomenon only through a quantitative approach may not be sufficient in some situations. This work explains how PLS-SEM results can be enhanced by complementing a quantitative approach with other methods proposing an advanced mixed methods design. We...

Purpose The technology acceptance model (TAM) is a widely used framework explaining why users accept new technologies. Still, its relevance is questioned because of evolving consumer behavior, demographics and technology. Contrary to a research paper or systematic literature review, the purpose of this critical reflection paper is to discuss TAM's...

Purpose The intention of consumers to behave sustainably is not a reliable predictor of sustainable hospitality choices. This intention-behaviour gap represents one of the biggest challenges for marketers and environment-friendly businesses. To address this issue, this study aims to draw upon the intention-behaviour gap. The authors revise the sust...

While prior research suggests that facial expression influences consumer behavior, it remains unclear under which conditions specific emotional expressions on social media drive sales performance and customer engagement. Drawing on the facial feedback hypothesis and the emotional congruence framework, two pre-registered experimental studies (N = 99...

Purpose The purpose of this study is to demonstrate how decision-makers can enhance citizens’ sustainable disposal of e-waste through bin proximity and ad hoc communication. Specifically, the authors discuss a two-year research project that took place in Northern Italy, where the authors documented the number of products disposed of sustainably in...

Purpose This study aims to investigate the implications, risks and challenges of data privacy due to the use of immersive technology in the hospitality industry. Design/methodology/approach The authors adopt a mixed-method approach. Study 1 is a focus group. The authors then provide external and ecological validity with a field experiment conducte...

Purpose This paper aims to investigates the use of internal communications to foster workforce resilience in the cruise industry during a crisis. Drawing on the regulatory focus theory, this study explores how internal communication strategies can build employee resilience particularly at a time of difficulty. The regulatory focus theory explores t...

The Metaverse has the potential to form the next pervasive computing archetype that can transform many aspects of work and life at a societal level. Despite the many forecasted benefits from the metaverse, its negative outcomes have remained relatively unexplored with the majority of views grounded on logical thoughts derived from prior data points...

The Metaverse has the potential to form the next pervasive computing archetype that can transform many aspects of work and life at a societal level. Despite the many forecasted benefits from the metaverse, its negative outcomes have remained relatively unexplored with the majority of views grounded on logical thoughts derived from prior data points...

Despite the growing relevance of influencer marketing, recent research suggests that consumers have negative reactions to social media ads. Our research investigates how different types of disclosure (paid partnership vs. in-text disclosure) and post content (experiential vs. material) mitigate consumers' negative reactions to social media advertis...

The traceability of what we eat is a lingering issue. Blockchain enables transparency across the value chain as it tracks a product’s origin, location, and history. In this work we adopt a mix-method approach - experiment plus qualitative evidence - to understand why consumers consider the traceability offered by blockchain important and what are t...

In this editorial, we provide a background on how services have been revolutionized with cutting-edge technologies due to the occurrence of major exogenous shocks. In addition, we provide an overview of the papers published in this special issue. Finally, we suggest new areas for future research on revolutionizing services with cutting-edge technol...

Transformative artificially intelligent tools, such as ChatGPT, designed to generate sophisticated text indistin- guishable from that produced by a human, are applicable across a wide range of contexts. The technology presents opportunities as well as, often ethical and legal, challenges, and has the potential for both positive and negative impacts...

Transformative artificially intelligent tools, such as ChatGPT, designed to generate sophisticated text indistinguishable from that produced by a human, are applicable across a wide range of contexts. The technology presents opportunities as well as, often ethical and legal, challenges, and has the potential for both positive and negative impacts f...

Transformative artificially intelligent tools, such as ChatGPT, designed to generate sophisticated text indistinguishable from that produced by a human, are applicable across a wide range of contexts. The technology presents opportunities as well as, often ethical and legal, challenges, and has the potential for both positive and negative impacts f...

Purpose There is growing interest in the use of human-like social robots, able to undertake complex tasks whilst building consumer engagement. However, further exploration is needed on the optimal level of humanoid appearance for service robots. In particular, the literature is limited with respect to mitigating disconfirmed expectations for robots...

While consumer engagement and value cocreation research proliferate, it is important to explore these concepts from an ecosystem-based multi-stakeholder perspective as, therefore, undertaken in this article. Specifically, this study marks a pioneering attempt in conceptualizing stakeholder engagement (SE) as a core foundation of stakeholder value c...

JPIM Special Issue call: AI, Stakeholder Engagement & Innovation Value

The Covid-19 pandemic outbreak is dramatically affecting travelers’ behavioral intentions. The higher level of risk perceived has reduced people’s intention to travel, especially among those lacking self-confidence. The present study investigates how travelers’ personality traits (i.e., information acquisition and personal outcome decision-making)...

The effectiveness of sustainable disposable schemes remains an unsolved issue for policy-makers. This paper investigates the factors that can enhance consumers' ability to dispose of potentially harmful products sustainably. In a field experiment we demonstrate that the physical proximity to a drop-off point enhances the sustainability of consumer...

Purpose This study encourages a quantum leap knowledge encouraging tourism researchers to measure actual behavior. Design/methodology/approach This study enhances the contribution of scholars to the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals; it is key to understand how to alleviate the distance between consumers’ intentions and behavior. Findi...

The metaverse has the potential to extend the physical world using augmented and virtual reality technologies allowing users to seamlessly interact within real and simulated environments using avatars and holograms. Virtual environments and immersive games (such as, Second Life, Fortnite, Roblox and VRChat) have been described as antecedents of the...

Within a context of a continuous and unpredictable crisis, operators need to adapt their strategies to maximize revenues. This article explores, through a mixed-method approach, how hoteliers re-arranged their supply management strategies during the crisis. Structured interviews show that the adoption of disruptive and dynamic strategies and the co...

This paper investigates hoteliers’ short-term recovery strategies during the pandemic. Stemming from management crisis theory and the resource-based view of the firm, this article focuses on two environments differently hit by COVID-19, i.e. London and Munich. The findings show that hotels with a more managerial approach have more proactively appli...

Many service providers explicitly ask customers for a tip. This may create social pressure, thus resulting in lower tips. Building on the theory of psychological reactance, we propose that an explicit request to tip has a detrimental impact on tip size. Across two studies, a field experiment and an online experiment, we test this effect and examine...

The rise of peer-to-peer accommodation has challenged the traditional hotel business model. A lingering question is the effect of Airbnb supply on hotel performance. By analyzing 466 estimates from 33 different studies, our results reveal that the negative effect of Airbnb supply on hotel performance is moderate. The meta-regression of effect size...

This paper investigates how COVID-19 is impacting different accommodation types, and whether travellers' choices regarding accommodation type are affected by the need for physical distance. Study 1 shows that travellers are very reluctant to book shared flats on Airbnb during the pandemic. However, full flats – controlling for price levels - are pr...

Drawing on collaboration theory, this research investigates the effect of joint versus single brand advertising on tourists’ behavioral responses with two experiments. Study 1 employs a field experiment to examine the effect of joint brand advertising on tourists’ actual information search behavior. Study 2 uses a laboratory experiment to investiga...

Genuine reviews are essential for financial performance and for customer trust. In the case of a negative experience, withholding negative reviews may lead to biased online information. This paper aims to investigate two factors that may prompt customers to withhold their complaints (i.e., identity disclosure and locus of control). The study adopts...

This study investigates strategic consumer behavior in online hotel booking. Free cancellation policies enable consumers to rebook the hotel room at a later time should the price drop prior to the date of stay. A discrete choice experiment is used to infer consumer preferences for free cancellation and non-refundable rates under different scenarios...

Technology may facilitate health and wellbeing consumer engagement. When there is scant public health provision and socio-cultural norms marginalize consumers stigmatized from cancer, we reveal how a brand’s corporate social media campaign can support vulnerable consumers with resource constraints. Drawing from a transformative consumer research le...

Consumers show increasing levels of concern regarding disclosing information to companies, as retailers’ access to their personal information heightens their feelings of vulnerability. Although customers’ personal information is crucial for targeting actual and potential customers, the extant discussion regarding the determinants of customers’ will...

The “sharing economy” has been characterized as a technologically enabled ecosystem that is disrupting traditional markets. Due to the growing interest of practitioners and researchers in understanding the psychological drivers of the phenomenon, a special issue of Psychology and Marketing was commissioned. More than 80 manuscripts were submitted a...

Purpose This study aims to compare the rating dynamics of the same hotels in two online review platforms (Booking.com and Trip Advisor), which mainly differ in requiring or not requiring proof of prior reservation before posting a review (respectively, a verified vs a non-verified platform). Design/methodology/approach A verified system, by defini...

Well-designed and executed experiments prove cause-and-effect relationships. The ability to draw causal conclusions is critical to knowledge development in any field of research. In this article, we discuss the benefits of experimental designs over alternative research approaches for the social sciences, discuss advantages and disadvantages of diff...

This study examines the likelihood of cheating when consumers are offered with the option of using postponed payment plans after purchasing hedonic goods. It addresses how the nature of the good combined with payment timing affects its perceived psychological ownership, which in turn influences consumers’ cheating behavior. Three experimental studi...

Online peer-to-peer platforms empower individual users and facilitate value-oriented exchanges. Personal profiles are the main point of contact with consumers on these platforms. Although individual sellers can use these profiles to market their own products, the optimal communication strategies that maximize their revenues remain uncertain. In lin...

The objective of this article is to analyze the effect of dynamic price variability on revenue maximization. While dynamic pricing is a common practice in tourism, this is the first comprehensive study on the relationship between price variability and revenue maximization. Within the framework provided by the literature on intertemporal price discr...

Purpose This study aims to explain briefly the history and the future of revenue and yield management, offering a graphical visual model to identify the main internal and external elements to be faced by revenue managers. Design/methodology/approach Stemming from what happened in the past, the authors predict the key elements in revenue management...

This research investigates how consumers assess hotels’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices when writing online reviews. The study explores the CSR discourse in online reviews over a 10-year period, highlighting how CSR’s social and environmental dimensions relate to the main hospitality topics (experience, amenities, location, transact...

Understanding how message framing and companies' trustworthiness determine the effectiveness of green marketing communications Framing green marketing messages on the possible benefits (versus drawbacks) deriving from the implementation (or not) of a given behavior may significantly influence the effectiveness of this form of communication. Existin...

Purpose Advances have been made in the provision of nutritional and ingredient information on packaged food, however, there is a need to translate this to eating out reflecting consumer desire for greater transparency and knowledge of menu content. The purpose of this paper is to assess consumer’s preferences for food information presentation in f...

Purpose Technological disruptions such as the Internet of Things and autonomous devices, enhanced analytical capabilities (artificial intelligence) and rich media (virtual and augmented reality) are creating smart environments that are transforming industry structures, processes and practices. The purpose of this paper is to explore critical techn...

Pay what you want (PWYW) is a relatively new and promising pricing mechanism, where consumers have full control over the price they pay. It can potentially increase profits, but its practical applications have produced mixed results. The time of payment, and its implications for consumer uncertainty, might constitute an important determinant of the...

Previous research has found that peer-to-peer platforms have overly positive reviews. Guided by Construal Level Theory, this research investigates the relationship between social distance, empathy, and tourists’ intention to leave negative online reviews. The first study is a qualitative analysis which compares peer-to-peer settings (i.e., Airbnb)...

Due to the widespread adoption of revenue management strategies within the hospitality business, pricing has become more and more a central topic both for academics and practitioners. In particular, pricing has evolved towards value-based approaches, dynamic and customized through the use of price differentiation. “Rate fences” are the criteria tha...

One of the major challenges for the tourism sector is enacting sustainable behaviours. A key strategy for hoteliers is developing persuasive messages, with the goal of encouraging guests’ voluntary participation in green programmes. Through the lens of prospect theory and construal level theory, the present study investigates to what extent a loss...

Online ratings provide valuable information to operators. However, the use of this information for revenue maximization purposes remains at a moot point. This article proposes a new method to decompose ratings based on their relevance to hotel performance. From a methodological standpoint, we propose a multi-criteria decision analysis approach. The...

Drawing on the services marketing and sharing economy literature, the study identifies the leading reputational attributes that boost popularity in sharing economy platforms. As popularity stands as a purchase decision-making tool, the purpose of this paper is to jointly examine the influence of personal reputation and product description. A sample...

This research investigates whether handwriting during the tourism experience reduces subsequent negative and extreme online rating scores. We portray that handwriting, due to a more deeply rooted elaboration of information, activates emotional empathy. Study 1, a field experiment in the hospitality context, suggests that handwriting reduces the ext...

Web retailers invest significant resources to improve the proportion of website visitors that make a purchase, also known as the conversion rate. Improving this rate is particularly important to SMEs that have traditionally lagged behind larger firms as they have found it difficult to justify the significant investment involved in website developme...

Purpose Customer willingness to pay (WTP) was initially set out to estimate the perceived value from a purchasing experience. However, purchasing decisions have changed as value co-creation has been increasingly applied in the hospitality industry. In adopting a service-dominant (S-D) logic lens, this paper aims to empirically test how co-creation...

Purpose This paper aims to investigate how employees’ emotional competences affect customers’ responses in the context of emotional-driven and personalized services. Specifically, it proposes a model to analyze the influence of employees’ emotional competence on rapport, trust and loyalty toward the service employee and the company. Design/method...

This chapter explores the disruptive effects of the most recent technological innovations on the hospitality industry. The authors analyze the educational implications of these disruptions and discuss a series of curricula enhancements to be included in the students’ offer, and they argue that these challenges be addressed through strong relations...

Consumer engagement has been heralded as strategic in facilitating sales growth, competitive advantage, and profitability. Expanding the notion of consumer engagement to the stakeholder context, this study examines the determinants of multi-stakeholder digital engagement. Based on a digital setting (Expo2015), this study collected all the social me...

The emergence of peer-to-peer platforms, known as the sharing economy, has empowered people to market their own products and services. However, there are information asymmetries that make it difficult to evaluate the reputation of the seller a priori. This article examines how sellers have to enhance their personal reputation to optimize revenues....

Agritourism aims to deliver a particular kind of travel experience when compared to more mainstream types of hospitality, calling for the development of a specific model to design pricing strategies. This research examines the impact of three groups of factors on price: (i) internal attributes, classified as common or distinctive to other hospitali...

The purpose of the paper is to explore how digital storytelling enables a consumer relationship experience in online peer-to-peer communities. Within the value cocreation framework, digital storytelling is interpreted as an encounter communication practice where consumers adopt the role of storytellers and story receivers. This study adopts a quali...

A hubris theory of entrepreneurship suggests that financial forecasts are often informed by the use of heuristic methods prone to overconfidence. While overconfidence can be advantageous during the start-up phase, it is also linked to overoptimistic forecasts, non-optimal outcomes and firm failure. This article uses a data set from 203 micro and sm...

Purpose Online consumer reviews have become increasingly important for consumer decision-making. One of the most prominent examples is the hotel industry where consumer reviews on websites, such as Bookings.com, TripAdvisor and Venere.com, play a critical role in consumers’ choice of a hotel. There have been a number of recent studies analyzing var...

Dynamic pricing techniques allow using a number of variables in a tactical way compared to standard catalogue prices. This study merges in a conceptual model the relevance of the tactical and the strategic dimension of these variables, classified according to their tangible, reputational or contextual nature. To empirically validate the hypotheses,...

The work explores whether self-storytelling is a powerful predictor of personal reputation in a collaborative community of the sharing economy realm. By proposing that powerful self-storytelling allows an attractive positioning in respect to potential others, the paper extends the literature of brand storytelling and brand archetypes shifting the p...

The workplace is a captive environment where the overall contribution of the meal served could be an important element of the overall diet. Despite growing demand little information is available to aid healthy dish selection. This study identifies information valued by consumers in the UK, Greece, Denmark and France using best-worst scaling. Value...

In the travel industry high-speed trains and airlines are increasingly competing for passengers, and the diffusion of price optimization based on real time demand fluctuations poses new challenges in the analysis of price competition between operators. This paper presents an analysis of how different competitors simultaneously adjust their prices i...

The reference price, used by consumers to evaluate market prices, has tremendous relevance in dynamic pricing. Reconciling current heterogeneous theories and studies on reference prices, this paper analyzes the impact of hotel price sequences on consumers' reference prices through a lab and a field experiment. Experiment 1 tests the importance of r...

New services, like fabrication spaces, 3D printer rentals and virtual marketplaces, have made it easier for empowered consumers to co-create innovative products without almost any involvement of traditional companies. Adopting a consumer-grounded view, this work takes a step forward from the existing service literature by investigating the link bet...

What is the influence on reference price when the source of price information is anonymous versus social? This article investigates the formation of reference prices given an observed sequence of past prices in a service context. An experimental study suggests that, considering the same price information, if the source is social (i.e., the prices p...

Over the past few decades marketing practices have shifted with the sudden growth of social media and the proliferation of devices, platforms, and applications. This rapidly changing environment presents new opportunities and challenges for marketers, who need to stay up to date with the development of e-marketing. Viglia instructs readers in the t...

Chapter 5 presents in detail the concept of overbooking, a revenue management technique used to maximize profits. The approach of this whole chapter is analytical, with the use of mathematical formulas. In addition, there is a discussion of the behavioral consequences, particularly in terms of unfairness, in line with what was highlighted in previo...

In the concluding chapter, as a review of the concepts of the previous chapters, the author presents a case study applied to the hospitality industry. In particular, the power of online travel agencies, as opposed to that of the hotels themselves, in recent years in regard to booking rooms is explored. These findings apply widely to other services,...

Starting with an introduction on the relevance of online marketing today, Chapter 1 defines the product categories and classifications generally used in the market. To support the argument, a literature review of the different key concepts, such as experience, search, and utilitarian and hedonic products, is provided. The goal is to re-discuss the...

This chapter presents the different online marketing channels. It starts with display advertising and moves on to the subject of search engine optimization. These tools, along with e-mails with personalized newsletters, are necessary for companies to have a strong, effective presence on the Internet. Also, the completely new framework represented b...

This chapter is fully devoted to pricing. After explaining the many price models available for online marketing, the author discusses the general area of dynamic pricing. The issue of fairness to consumers is explored with real cases and applications from different industries. Next is an explanation of reference price, the standard against which co...