Bonnie Farber Canziani

This paper applies a proposed concept of underlying consumer purpose and psychological bonding to the entrepreneurial hospitality industry, including hotels, restaurants, and bed and breakfast establishments. Since the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, the industry has seen a huge surge in pent-up demand. Event planners’ expectations have risen. Students are flocking to the industry where there is almost a guaranteed employment upon graduation. The hospitality industry, being one of the largest industries worldwide, faces intense market competition. To succeed, it relies on various factors, including customer satisfaction, loyalty, trust, affective commitment, and share of wallet The model applied in the paper has recently been published in the Journal of Asia-Pacific Management. The model synthesizes multiple theories, that includes need fulfilment theory, goal theory, and congruency theory. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate that a comprehensive understanding of consumers' needs, goals, values, and self-image is crucial for marketers to enhance service experiences, achieve sustainable success, and help consumers attain their desired psychological outcomes. To combat this somewhat sceptical view of service mix development benefitting the hotel firm primarily, we propose the need to broaden hotel marketing and innovation strategies to include recognition of purposeful fulfilment of consumers' psychological needs/tasks, goals, values, and self-concept. Doing so will strengthen the organizational commitment to hotel consumers, leading to sustainable success for the hotel firm and other hospitality-related businesses. To exemplify further the usefulness of consumers' underlying purpose, we have supplied a variety of hotel examples in figures that demonstrate how hotels can create innovative products or services by utilizing a single meaningful purpose to communicate distinct competencies in meeting consumers' psychological needs and goals and asserting values congruence and self-image congruity. These easy-to-understand models can be applied to the hospitality industry. The paper includes examples and illustrations throughout. Implications for future research and further applications are discussed.

This study investigates consumer preferences for brand tone when they are under a stressful situation (i.e., lockdown during the covid-19 pandemic). Five mutually exclusive brand tone choices were presented to consumer respondents (informative, comforting, trustworthy, inspiring, and humorous). Consumer preferences for these were inspected and analyzed against demographics and self-reported items related to pandemic-induced stress and coping behaviors. The statistical relationships between stress and individual brand tone preferences varied from negligible to negative. No positive associations were noted. Gender and marital status showed significant associations with brand tone selections. Marketing managers should be aware that consumers continue to prioritize informative messages during uncertain times. However, the use of comfort is also helpful during turbulent times and may be particularly appropriate for female consumers seeking social connections. Regarding study limitations, this research focused on u.s. residents during a single pandemic crisis. Respondent stress was self-reported.

This qualitative study integrated understudied factors such as gender, race/ethnicity, and major that affect the content and emotional tone of college students’ writing about global issues. Textual analysis was performed on 1511 written essay responses to an open-ended assessment prompt that was conducted for regional accreditation purposes. There were significant differences in topic choice and concomitant emotion intensities related to student demographics. Findings suggest critical strategies for instructors focusing on global engagement, including acknowledging the role of student agency and potential emotional engagement in selected global issues.

Purpose: This exploratory paper examined consumers' use of information sources and intentions to book future travel in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. Authors expected that general news and travel information accessed on the Internet would impact travel intentions.Design/methodology/approach: Data were collected from 547 US online consumer panelists when all states were under “stay-at-home orders” in April 2020.Findings: Differences existed in the impact of three stressors (health, personal and financial) on the use of information sources (general news and travel sources) and ultimately on booking intentions.Practical implications: The lack of influence health stressors had on travel research activity raises a question for the travel industry as to critical choice of messages to be imparted during pandemic environments.Originality/value: A three-factor model was used to assess the determinants of booking intentions during uncertain times. Authors applied the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) framework to explore information searching for travel during the pandemic.

This study focuses on the creation of a family identity as a central communication objective in business storytelling. We contribute to the field of business website marketing by identifying, through textual analysis of US winery website narratives, how businesses communicate family brand identities. Results show that three claims that are critical for family brand identities—character, temporal continuity, and distinctiveness—do appear in the website texts. Our study provides beginning evidence that family identity does not require family ownership alone but can be built upon complementary narrative elements and tactics, including kinship references and heritage storytelling. Both content and linguistic style of narratives are useful in conveying a family brand identity to an external public for website design. Implications are discussed.

Exploring differences within a U.S. sample of Hispanic direct sellers provides insights into the impact of acculturation on satisfaction survey responses. The scope of the study is constrained to sellers who self‐identified ethnically as Latino/Hispanic on a U.S. national survey of direct sellers. Findings show evidence of cultural heterogeneity within this sample of Hispanic direct sellers that corresponds to their uses of English and Spanish in selling activities. Practical implications suggest that Spanish Dominant Sellers claim higher satisfaction ratings and higher performance estimates than do English Dominant Sellers. English Dominant Sellers indicate greater use of Web 2.0 technologies for selling. Implications and future studies are discussed.

Purpose: Wine is an important profit center for restaurants. The purpose of this paper is to address some of the challenges and opportunities at the nexus of wine and hospitality, with an eye on relationship building between smaller wineries and dining establishments. Design/methodology/approach: The paper is essay style with acknowledgments made to extant literature, as well as US industry-based intelligence. Findings: Primary challenges facing small wineries trying to enter the restaurant market revolve around constraints imposed by the traditional distribution system mindset, as well as pricing issues affecting procurement and markup of wine for restaurant use, limited abilities to provide sufficient inventory and the lack of time and people resources. Counterpoint discussion reveals opportunities related to increased focus on experience-based wine sales in restaurants, the importance of the story and the value of co-branding. Practical implications: Partnerships with restaurants can be a delicate yet desirable part of a small winery’s strategy. The key is to develop a mutually beneficial relationship, while fulfilling the objectives and missions of both winery and restaurant. When wineries and restaurants carve out the time and invest the people resources to successfully and purposefully co-brand, optimum symmetry is formed which leads to mutually valued dining and special gastronomic experiences for the winery/restaurant partners and their customers. Originality/value: In a viewpoint format, the paper outlines and discusses the key elements of relationship building between small wineries and restaurants.

Muscadine wine, fresh muscadine grapes, and other derivatives have enjoyed a heritage niche for decades in the Southeast. Muscadine growers in North Carolina in the United States (US) have asked whether the purchase of muscadine wine is linked to consumption of the fruit itself or even familiarity with other muscadine-based products in terms of spillover effects. The authors explored the interdependency between the market for fresh muscadine grapes and muscadine wine purchase. Consumer panel data were obtained from a State of North Carolina agency with oversight of the grape and wine industry; the agency contracted quota sampling of online consumers from six states in the US South. A total of 543 cases were used in the present study. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS)^® was employed in analysis. Results show that prior muscadine wine knowledge and knowledge of other muscadine products, e.g., jams, juices, smoothies, sauces, and health/beauty products were significant factors associated with buying muscadine wine. Beliefs about muscadine grapes as a healthy ingredient showed a slight influence, while direct experience with fresh muscadines and consumer attitudes towards buying local or US products were insignificant. Therefore, marketing efforts should focus on increasing consumer exposure to and knowledge of muscadine wine and other muscadine related products.