Scott Weaven

Emotion is not peripheral, but rather foundational to tourism’s appeal. It shapes imagination and transforms destinations into meaningful experiences. Yet, while the tourism industry increasingly leverages emotional storytelling to inspire action, academic research has not kept pace. This systematic literature review examines how emotion has been theorised, measured and modelled. Despite decades of critique, a limited emotional repertoire persists, with generalised constructs, such as satisfaction, continuing to dominate at the expense of tourism-relevant emotions, such as romance, awe, boredom, amusement and envy. Theoretical integration remains weak, and emotion is typically examined in post-travel contexts, overlooking the pre-travel, acquisition stage where industry campaigns concentrate their emotional appeals and investment. In response, the article advances six propositions that reposition emotion as a core construct in tourism marketing. Together with the Tourism Emotion Framework, these contributions offer a practical and theoretical foundation for designing, measuring and mobilising emotion across the travel journey.

This study explores how phygital profiling and dynamic personas enhance personalized customer experiences across the evolving customer journey. Drawing on Foursquare data from 27,148 users and over 2 million check-ins across four global cities, we construct digital twins using location-based social network graphs. We compare the effectiveness of phygital versus digital profiling and dynamic versus static personas in two key tasks: point-of-interest (POI) recommendation and social connection mapping. Results show that phygital profiling significantly outperforms digital profiling, and dynamic personas yield more accurate, real-time personalization than static approaches. These findings underscore the value of integrating physical and digital data in capturing the complexity of modern consumer behavior. The study offers theoretical and practical insights for advancing adaptive personalization and customer engagement strategies in increasingly hybrid consumption environments.

Indigenous peoples continue to be underrepresented in small businesses in Australia. The aim of this paper was to explore the financial practices impacting the sustainability of Indigenous small business owners. We sought to find out how Indigenous Australian small business owners sustain their small businesses by exploring the associated financial practices. To achieve this, we conducted 45 interviews with Indigenous small business owners and stakeholders. We analysed the interviews to identify themes and then grouped the themes into three categories: (1) personal, relational and institutional considerations; (2) operational (internal and external) challenges; and (3) development challenges (that hinder business operations). We found unreasonable, unsustainable and/or unjust financial practices across the personal, relational and institutional considerations that Indigenous Australian small business owners face. Based on these findings, we recommend changes to provide government-funded opportunities for Indigenous graduates to offer business training. We also advocate for increased access to funding for Indigenous small businesses and analysis of loan frameworks nationally to identify ways to transform financial practices associated with lending. Our recommendations, if adopted, could help to further strengthen support initiatives that benefit Indigenous Australians.

Anthropomorphism, the attribution of human-like traits, qualities, and mental states to non-human agents, is increasingly ubiquitous in artificial intelligence (AI) applications within service provisions. While imbuing anthropomorphism into AI agents enhances user interaction, it also has a dark side that poses significant ethical concerns by potentially causing harm to consumers. In response, our study constructs a framework to explain how anthropomorphic features in AI agents can lead to misplaced trustworthiness among consumers. We adopt a sociotechnical perspective and employ a case study design to achieve this. Our findings hope to advance the social sustainability of AI to promote responsible production and consumption patterns in global service markets.

Purpose: Corporate apologies, relative to other responses to well-publicized past transgressions, have distinct implications, sparking a rich tradition of apology research. But in addition, each apology is unique, such that it becomes critical to address individual content (what), spokesperson (who), timing (when) and delivery (how) elements. This paper aims to clarify how people evaluate key apology elements (individually and collectively) and the associated trade-off between short-term risks (e.g. business costs) and long-term benefits (e.g. relational assets), in light of key contingency factors that represent the level of the transgression-related threat to the firm. Design/methodology/approach: An in-depth conceptual review, analysis and synthesis of corporate apology theories, research, business practices and case examples underlie the development of a conceptual framework that features 6 key tenets and 16 formal, testable propositions. Findings: The holistic apology framework details how and why different corporate apology elements individually and collectively influence firm performance, in the presence of key transgression-related factors. The outlined tenets and propositions, in turn, provide clear guidelines for how to design and implement effective corporate apology strategies in response to publicized transgressions, as well as a platform for academics to advance research in this domain. Research limitations/implications: This paper contributes to apology theories by proposing 6 key tenets and 16 formal, testable propositions, incorporating apology mechanisms, contingencies and strategies (i.e. corporate apology typology), thus providing a more comprehensive view of corporate apologies in the marketing discipline. Practical implications: This paper introduces 6 official tenets and 16 associated propositions that collectively (and interactively) serve as strategic guidelines for managers and opportunities for academics to advance research in this domain. Originality/value: The proposed conceptual framework offers a novel, holistic understanding of the fundamental components of a corporate apology.

Recognizing the potential of social media as an integral driver of communication that facilitates two-way conversations, this scoping review seeks to identify and synthesize salient benefits and challenges of social media usage reported in social marketing communication. Following a systematic literature review procedure, 31 social marketing studies utilizing social media communications channels were identified. The findings were thematically grouped under eight main topics: targeted reach and raising awareness, continuous consumer insight, ongoing interaction and dialogue, promoting behavior change, cost and time efficiency, discussing sensitive issues, building relationships and social media challenges. Identified taxonomies inform future research.