Abstract
Dear Readers,
I am happy to present to you this special issue on “Marketing Frontiers and Online Marketing Trends.” The issue is an eclectic mix of research papers covering diverse aspects of “marketing.”
The issue is comprised of the following papers:
Garg and Pandey, in their paper “Decomposing the Effect of Brand Image in Influencing Information Adoption: The Case of Online Travel Agents,” focus on the availability of information in the form of online reviews offered by online travel agents that plays an important role in the travel decisions of today’s consumer. The study explores the direct and indirect effect of information quality (IQ) and information credibility (IC) on attitude towards information usefulness (AT). The study further bridges the gap in the literature on information adoption by using the brand image (BI) of the online travel agent (OTA) as a mediator.
Munikrishnan, Huang, Al Mamun, and Hayat, in their research on “Perceived Risk, Trust, and Online Food Purchase Intention Among Malaysians” focus on the perceived risk of consumers and the impact of perceived risks on the purchase intention of the “takeaway” online ordering model.
Akhtar, Khan, and Hoang in their paper “Role of Social Networking Sites in Financial Product Choice: An Investigation Through the Theory of Planned Behavior” emphasize the role social networking sites (SNS) play in the form of expert opinions and blogs available at digital platforms, on financial product choice. This study adds to the literature by providing insights into the impact of social media on financial product selection. The study provides a better understanding of investment behavior using online social platforms, blogs, and online expert opinions to policymakers and regulators like the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and service providers for enhancing the reach of their services.
The paper by Kaur, Ahuja, Jain, Singh, and Garg, entitled “Is Youth Ready for the Looming Technology Frontier in Healthcare? Examining Intentions and Adoption of Mobile Health (Mhealth),” points to the fact that owing to radical advances in the area of technology, the health sector has adapted to technologies to meet patient requirements, for example, mobile health (mHealth) care. Despite the benefits of mHealth, its success is dependent on its adoption by the population at large. Therefore, the authors have sought to explore variables in the adoption of Mhealth applications.
Zahoor in his study entitled “Capitalizing on Service Failures: Implications for Customer Engagement and Loyalty” has examined the driver influence of service recovery performance (SRP) on customer engagement (CE) and customer loyalty (CL) in the Indian retail banking setting. Results indicate that SRP positively influences customer engagement and concomitant, and customer loyalty. Banking companies are, therefore, advised to consider service failures as an opportunity, rather than a threat, to nurture customer engagement and loyalty.
The work by Asl and Khoddami entitled “A Framework for Investigating Green Purchase Behavior with a Focus on Individually Perceived and Contextual Factors” emphasizes that “individually perceived” factors are different from “contextual factors,” and individually driven factors have more impact on “green purchase behavior” than contextual factors.
Dugar and Moorthi in the study entitled “Deliberately Causing Brand Confusion: State of the (Unfair) Art” has addressed the issue of “brand confusion.” It is a time-worn yet highly relevant topic for marketers, researchers, and regulatory agencies because a colossal and ever-increasing number of legal cases on brand confusion have kept the issue alive. The study provides a commentary on the worldwide scientific literature on brand confusion, its evolution, advances, trends, and interconnections. This study contributes significantly by providing useful insights for practitioners and researchers in terms of managerial implications and directions for further research.
Baber, Upadhyay, Baber, and Kaurav in their work “Three Decades of Consumer Ethnocentrism Research: A Bibliometric Analysis” have shown interesting findings on consumer ethnocentrism using co-citation analysis.
Wishing all the readers great health along with a strong quest for new knowledge.