Linking Social Media Marketing Activities to Revisit Intention through Brand Trust and Brand Loyalty on the Coffee Shop Facebook Pages: Exploring Sequential Mediation Mechanism

An empirical evaluation of technology acceptance model for Artificial Intelligence in E-commerce

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become essential to Electronic-Commerce technology over the past decades. Its fast growth has changed the way consumers do online shopping. Using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) as a theoretical framework, this research examines how AI can be made more effective and profitable in e-commerce and how entrepreneurs can make AI technology to assist in achieving their business goals. In this regard, an online survey was conducted from the online purchasers of e-commerce firms. The Partial Least Square (PLS) Smart was used to examine the data. The broadly used TAM was identified as an appropriate hypothetical model for studying the acceptance of AI technology in e-commerce. The findings of this study show that Subjective Norms positively impact Perceived Usefulness (PU) and Pursued Ease of Use (PEU), trust has a positive effect on PEU, and PEU positively impacts PU and attitudes toward use. Similarly, PU also has a positive effect on attitudes toward use and intention to use. Furthermore, the findings do not support the impact of Trust on PU and attitudes towards behavioural intention to use. Lastly, behavioural intention to use positively impacted the actual use of AI technology. This study adds theoretical and practical knowledge for adopting the TAM model in the E-commerce sector. It helps entrepreneurs to implement the TAM model in their business to use AI in a better and more appropriate way.

Creating behavioral engagement among higher education's prospective students through social media marketing activities: The role of brand equity as mediator

In today's competitive environment, higher education needs to find an effective way to convey its brand to prospective students. Given that the "digital native" (Gen Z) is becoming college aged, social media marketing has become an essential approach to engage with them. However, blasting out recruiting content on its social feeds just isn't working. By developing the higher education adjusted SMMA, structural equation modeling was adopted to figure out its effects on higher education brand equity and prospective student behavioral engagement, quantitatively. 356 3rd grade high school students in Indonesia were employed to assess the structural model. According to the findings of this study, SMMA has a considerable influence on brand equity and behavioral engagement, and brand equity has a noteworthy effect on behavioral engagement. Moreover, brand equity was found as a statistically meaningful mediator in the relationship between SMMA and behavioral engagement. The outcome advised the higher education need to organize its social in fun and interactive ways by leveraging higher education's SMMA as a pillar or benchmark on arranging social media posts and content. Yet, the content and posts should still need prioritize institution awareness and the good image of a higher education. The theoretical and managerial implication were discussed further.

Fundamental Power of Social Media Interactions for Building a Brand and Customer Relations

The spread of social networks and the high level of penetration of digital content and mobile devices have created a society in which consumers expect constant communication from companies. In addition, communication on social media is often accompanied by the hope of being able to interact on an equal footing. In this way, companies hope that the use of social networks will not only increase sales, but also increase attention, brand page traffic, and customer loyalty. The purpose of this study was to provide the grounds for identifying the correlations between the interactive potential of social media based on dialogue-oriented communication and the quality of relationships with online customers. To achieve this goal, an online questionnaire was used in which 604 respondents from Romania participated (204 social media managers and 400 online customers). The results of the study showed that it is particularly important for companies to understand the role of interactive communication in social media and to thus build a bridge between the orientation of communication towards dialogue and relationships with online customers. It was found that the correct use of social networks could also support the achievement of public relation (PR) objectives. In addition, this study has implications for the development of customer-oriented online communication strategies by Romanian companies.

How Brand Symbolism, Perceived Service Quality, and CSR Skepticism Influence Consumers to Engage in Citizenship Behavior

Brand symbolism, which stems from the vitality of the brand and feeds self-symbolism and social symbolism, has become an increasingly important strategy for firms to enhance consumer behavior. Building on attachment theory, social identity theory, and cognitive consistency theory, and using data from 439 customers of Starbucks in Lebanon, we used an integrative model to examine how brand symbolism, perceived service quality, and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) skepticism jointly affect two types of Customer Citizenship Behavior (CCB): helping other customers and policing other customers. The findings revealed that brand symbolism has a significant positive impact on CCBs and is a stronger predictor of policing other customers than helping other customers in the hospitality context. Further, perceived service quality acts as a mediator between the brand symbolism and CCB dimensions. This study discovered that CSR skepticism negatively moderates the direct and indirect effects of brand symbolism on CCBs through perceived service quality. The findings contribute to the literature by examining the boundary conditions of how and under what conditions brand symbolism affects CCBs by enrolling perceived service quality as a mediator variable and CSR skepticism as a moderator variable in the brand symbolism–CCB relationship.