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Generative artificial intelligence (GAI) holds transformative potential for the tourism industry, though its effects on brand performance, a critical driver of competitive advantage, remain underexplored. This study investigates the impact of GAI on brand performance in tourism, drawing on service-dominant (S-D) logic, social exchange theory, and uncanny valley theory as theoretical lenses and employing a mixed-methods approach involving interviews and surveys. Qualitative themes include GAI service design, GAI service expectation, tourist engagement, and brand performance, which collectively provide a comprehensive view of GAI’s role in tourism. Quantitative results further reveal that GAI positively influences brand performance, which evidences its impact in tourism, and that anthropomorphism moderates tourist engagement, such that GAI with greater humanlike attributes engages tourists more effectively. In turn, these insights enrich the tourism literature and offer practical guidance for tourism managers in developing future strategies involving GAI.

To reduce their fear-of-missing-out, social media users may be lured into binge-scrolling short-form videos (e.g., reels). While platforms may cultivate users' binge-scrolling behavior (e.g., to raise revenue), understanding of the impact of binge-scrolling on user wellbeing lags behind, exposing an important gap. Drawing on the Zeigarnik effect and dual-process theory, we propose user mindfulness as an antidote to FOMO-driven binge-scrolling by enabling users to better regulate their digital impulses. To explore these issues, we adopt a mixed-methods design. Study 1 employs qualitative interviews and a focus group to capture the psychological, emotional, and behavioral dimensions of binge-scrolling to develop a conceptual model. Study 2 empirically tests the model using survey data. The CB-SEM findings underscore the paradoxical role of FOMO in fueling binge-scrolling behavior on the one hand, while fostering loneliness and reducing eudaimonic well-being on the other. Importantly, user mindfulness emerges as a significant moderating factor that can disrupt this vicious cycle, creating healthier scrolling behavior. Overall, this research contributes novel insight to the dark side of binge-scrolling and offers actionable insights for scholars, policymakers, and platform designers seeking to balance the commercial benefits of scrolling and user well-being.

This research investigates the effect of perceived social media agility (P-SMA) on customers’ influencing behavior, a theoretical subset of engagement behavior, with brand trust acting as a mediator and gender (male/female) as a moderator. It also explores how these relationships differ across age groups. Two online surveys were conducted: Study 1 with 165 younger participants and Study 2 with 178 adults. Using PROCESS Macro Models 4 and 7, we tested direct, mediated, and moderated mediation effects. Both studies found that P-SMA enhances brand trust, which subsequently mediates its influence on customer behavior. Study 2 confirmed these results, showing that gender moderates the relationship between P-SMA and both brand trust and influencing behavior, with stronger effects observed among females (vs. males) in both samples. The findings highlight the importance of tailoring social media strategies to gender-based engagement patterns. Crafting content and interaction styles that foster trust can improve influence and advocacy, especially when agility is a key element of the brand’s digital presence. This research integrates P-SMA, brand trust, and customer influence behavior within a moderated mediation model. Using two age-diverse samples, it shows gender shapes reactions to brand agility, while age differences remain non-significant across both datasets.

Despite the growth of travel vloggers, little is known about how they cultivate sustained follower relationships. Grounded in social capital theory, this article examines how followers’ behavioral engagement with travel vloggers’ content contributes to vloggers’ social capital (trust, social interaction ties, and shared values) and followers’ vlogger commitment. Data from 527 travel vlogger followers were analyzed using consistent partial least-squares structural equation modeling (PLSc-SEM). We find that followers’ behavioral engagement enhances social capital, boosting followers’ vlogger commitment. Moreover, homophily (i.e., followers’ perceived similarity to the vlogger) amplifies the effect of behavioral engagement on their trust in and shared values with the vlogger. Conversely, heterophily (i.e., followers’ admiration of vloggers who have traits they lack and idealize or desire) only strengthens the effect of followers’ behavioral engagement on trust, indicating that followers’ aspirational dissimilarity from travel vloggers can likewise bolster trust. Consequently, both relatability and aspiration reinforce travel vloggers’ influence albeit through distinct psychological routes.

While customer journey research is proliferating, acumen of the broader stakeholder journey (SJ), which addresses any stakeholder's (e.g., an employee's, supplier's, or customer's) journey with the firm, remains more nascent. In particular, understanding of the role of psychological mechanisms in shaping collective or grouped stakeholders’ journeys, aggregated stakeholders' shared trajectory of role-related touchpoints and activities, enacted through their joint engagement, which shape their shared experience with the firm (e.g., the shared journeys of employee unions or teams, customer advocacy groups, supplier collectives, competitors' organizations, or industry associations), lags behind. To bridge this gap, we adopt group-centric dynamic social impact theory (DSIT) to examine the effect of dynamic social impact (social influence) on grouped stakeholders' journey with the firm. Drawing on the 7C framework, we develop a set of propositions that explore the effect of grouped stakeholders' DSIT tenets of stakeholder consolidation, clustering, correlation, and continuing diversity on their joint engagement and experience through their journey with the firm, offering novel insight. We conclude by deriving key theoretical (e.g., by inviting future empirical testing of the propositions) and practical implications from our analysis (e.g., by proposing strategies to facilitate constructive stakeholder interactions).

While studies have examined corporate sociopolitical activism (CSA) from multiple perspectives, research has not yet examined how different CSA types shape consumer-level brand outcomes or when those effects strengthen or weaken. Addressing that gap, this research examines how CSA types expressed through brand communication influence consumer brand engagement (CBE) and consumer-based brand equity (CBBE), considering need for cognition (NFC) as a boundary condition. Building on three pretests, four quasi-experiments show that servant activism, which is high in moral intensity and low in business relatedness, generates the most favorable brand outcomes, whereas citizen activism also outperforms low-moral-intensity forms. Study 2 shows that CBE mediates the positive effect of servant activism on CBBE. Study 3 shows this indirect effect is stronger among high-NFC consumers. Across studies, moral intensity appears more influential than business relatedness under the conditions tested. These findings offer guidance for advertisers and marketers designing brand communication that builds engagement and equity without inviting skepticism.

Despite the exponential growth of innovations that leverage artificial intelligence (AI), the understanding of how different firm stakeholders engage with these innovations lags behind, exposing an important gap in the literature. Bridging this gap, this interdisciplinary Special Issue explores the growing role that AI-leveraging innovations play in cultivating stakeholders' engagement, as elucidated in nine articles featured in this Issue. To theoretically ground the articles, we develop an organizing framework that integrates the investment model's notions of intrinsic and extrinsic (resource) investments and resource investment-based stakeholder engagement. We conceptualize stakeholders' (a) intrinsic engagement as their (e.g., cognitive/emotional) resource investment in their interactions with AI-leveraging innovations, and (b) extrinsic engagement as their resource investment in maintaining or growing the result(s) of their prior interactions with these innovations, taking a more relational perspective. The framework also assesses the predicted differential effect of thinking (vs. feeling) AI-leveraging innovations on the association of stakeholders' (a) intrinsic (extrinsic) engagement with AI-leveraging innovations and their perceived innovation value, and (b) their perceived innovation value and trust in the innovation, as formalized in a set of propositions. We conclude by linking the featured articles to the propositions, and outlining research priorities in this emerging interdisciplinary topic area.

Purpose: Drawing on dynamic capability theory (DCT) and the attention-based view (ABV), this study investigates how supply chain adaptability influences innovation in chain restaurants’ cross-regional expansion, with a focus on the mediating role of internal coopetition (cooperation and competition) among teams. It aims to understand the mechanisms linking supply chain adjustments, team dynamics and innovation outcomes in diverse market contexts.

Design/methodology/approach: A mixed-methods approach was employed. First, qualitative data were collected through semi-structured interviews with 15 chain restaurant managers, which were analyzed using thematic analysis to identify key themes. Next, quantitative data were gathered from a three-wave survey of 407 respondents across multiple restaurant types. To test the hypotheses, the data were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling and combined importance-performance map analysis (cIPMA).

Findings: Four qualitative themes emerged, including adaptation's role in triggering innovation, team collaboration, team conflict and supply chain duality (bright and dark sides). Supply chain adaptability–comprising sensing, seizing and standardization–was found to boost product and service innovation. Internal coopetition mediates these relationships. The cIPMA reveals that sensing is the primary bottleneck for both product and service innovation (followed by standardization), while coopetition is necessary only for product innovation–thus an approach that prioritizes sensing and standardization will substantially boost restaurant innovation performance. Meanwhile, an approach that emphasizes coopetition would be more beneficial to achieve breakthrough product innovation.

Practical implications: The findings suggest that chain restaurant managers may enhance their restaurant's cross-regional performance by aligning supply chain adaptability with local market demands and by fostering team collaboration while managing competitive tensions. Blending standardized processes with localized adjustments and leveraging digital platforms for region-specific marketing may also boost innovation and performance.

Originality/value: This study advances the literature by combining DCT and ABV to emphasize standardization's dual role as a stabilizing factor and an innovation driver. It proposes a new composite attention allocation approach to coopetition and applies that approach to internal team dynamics, filling a critical gap in supply chain research. The study's mixed-methods design provides robust insights.

Purpose: This paper develops and empirically tests a new motivational model explaining consumers' intentions to continue sharing used goods via online platforms as a form of pro-environmental behaviour. Specifically, it introduces and conceptualizes consumers' product sharing for reuse engagement (PSRE) as an intrinsic motivational factor and examines how it interacts with extrinsic motivation in the form of economic benefits, as well as with enjoyment derived from using a sharing platform.

Design/methodology/approach: The proposed model is tested using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) based on survey data collected from consumers who are experienced in sharing used apparel products through a specialized online sharing platform.

Findings: The results show that intrinsic motivation, operationalized as product sharing for reuse engagement, and extrinsic motivation, represented by economic benefits, exert comparable direct effects on intentions to continue sharing used goods. In addition, PSRE exerts an indirect effect through the enjoyment of the sharing process. Most importantly, the findings reveal a motivational substitution effect: as PSRE increases, the influence of extrinsic economic benefits on sharing intentions weakens, indicating that highly engaged consumers rely less on financial incentives.

Originality/value: Building on sustainability and consumer engagement literature, this study introduces the novel concept of product sharing for reuse engagement in the context of pro-environmental consumption. Its primary contribution lies in the uncovering of the motivational mechanism that suggests a distinct form of interaction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivations in shaping sharing intentions. By demonstrating a negative moderating effect of PSRE on the impact of extrinsic motivation on intentions, the findings extend existing motivational theories. Furthermore, by highlighting the role of enjoyment in sustaining sharing behaviour, the study provides insights for sustainability-oriented consumer practices that use online platforms.

Recent luxury research highlights the key role of sustainability in meeting consumers' expectations. Although many brands in the champagne industry adopt environmental initiatives, their effectiveness remains mixed, yielding an important literature-based tension. Relatedly, understanding of the importance consumers attribute to the environmental actions of brands (vs. key luxury attributes of the product) also lags behind. Addressing these gaps, this research examines how the environmental actions of brands, heritage, and perceived quality influence customer satisfaction. Drawing on a sample of 790 French consumers, our structural equation modeling findings indicate that brand quality exerts the strongest positive impact on customer satisfaction, followed by brand heritage. However, the brand's environmental actions do not have a significant direct effect on customer satisfaction. Although consumer engagement positively mediates the effects of the brand's environmental actions and brand quality on customer satisfaction, it does not mediate the effect of brand heritage on customer satisfaction. Environmental concerns positively moderate these effects. Overall, this research offers novel theoretical insights and practical guidance for managers seeking to integrate authentic environmental initiatives without compromising the core identity of luxury brands.