Chihyung Michael Ok

Waiting is an inevitable part of service encounters, and estimated wait times can shape customers’ expectations and queue-entry decisions. Scenario-based experiments showed that fine-grained estimates increased expectations of being served sooner than communicated, thereby reducing balking, with this effect more pronounced under the interval format. In contrast, coarse-grained interval estimates were less effective in encouraging queue entry. The professionalism of delivery also influenced responses. Unprofessional delivery increased balking when wait times were presented as coarse-grained point estimates, partly by lowering expectations of prompt service. These findings demonstrate that both the numerical structure and interpersonal delivery of an initial wait-time estimate shape customers’ decisions to join a queue. Although expectations may later change as updated information becomes available, the initial estimate remains consequential because it influences whether customers enter the waiting process. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Various stakeholders increasingly demand that companies adopt environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices. While this movement poses challenges for management, it also offers opportunities to build competitive advantages. Employees play a crucial role in business entities' sustainable growth and success. As such, employees are among the internal stakeholders who compel organizations to build ESG strategies. Therefore, employees' commitment to ESG management is critical to meeting companies' ESG goals and workplace well-being, eventually contributing to building companies' competitive advantages. This chapter focuses on understanding the interrelationships between ESG strategies and employee performance by examining the contributing roles of employee perception and attitudes toward their companies' ESG management practices. Employees who perceive their companies to engage in ESG programs feel better about their jobs and perform better at work. Positive relationships have been reported between ESG strategy and various employee performance metrics. Further, it is well supported that ESG efforts enhance employee attitudes toward their companies and eventually become the company's advocate. Employees' well-being is enhanced as they perceive their organization engages in more ESG management practices.

Team‐oriented tasks are inherent in the hospitality industry, requiring leaders to cultivate quality relationships with subordinates and facilitate team‐member interaction to achieve organizational goals. However, there is a lack of understanding of how leaders' political skills shape vertical and horizontal exchange relationships, leading to subordinates' performance. This study investigates the impacts of leader political skill (LPS) on leader–member exchange (LMX), team–member exchange (TMX), and service‐oriented organizational citizenship behavior (SOOCB) in an airline service setting where leaders' relationship‐building skills and influence and members' interpersonal relationship building are essential. To this end, 289 valid questionnaires were collected from flight attendants in South Korea. Results showed that perceived LPS positively affected LMX and TMX. Additionally, LMX and TMX fully mediated the relationship between LPS and SOOCB.

The body of work investigating marketing and strategic initiatives based on the marketing mix to enhance hospitality organizations’ performance has grown considerably over the last few decades. However, the literature has returned mixed findings that call into question the theoretical and practical effectiveness of the marketing mix. This study meta-analytically examines associations between multiple variables from the marketing mix and hospitality organizations’ performance through a synthesis of 185 relationships across 72 studies. The most impactful predictors were marketing expenses, franchising, and internationalization (objective measures), and quality control, strategic alliances, and market orientation (subjective measures). Marketing trends were also considered by assessing the moderating role of publication year in the respective relationships of brand image, internationalization, franchising, marketing expenses, and strategic alliances with performance. The identified antecedents offer insight into how hospitality managers strategically allocate organizational resources. Results offer compelling evidence for the hospitality marketing and strategic management literature.

This study examined serial multiple mediation effects to explain how participating in a recurring local sport event evolves into events support, contributes to community attachment, and affects the quality of life of residents who participated in the event. Using a web-based survey, 486 responses from marathon runners living in the hosting community were used for data analysis. Results confirmed the focal relationship between event satisfaction and resident marathon runners’ perception of their quality of life. Further analysis validated the sequential effects of participant satisfaction with the marathon event on supporting the event, developing community attachment, and improving quality of life. The findings suggest that hosting a recurring sport event presents a great opportunity for event organizers to enhance residents’ quality of life. Event organizers should maintain the performance of the recurring event to satisfy event participants and may develop partnerships with various organizations to enhance event participants’ quality of life.

The authors attempted to explain why the generally accepted models built on social exchange theory do not sufficiently capture these supporting behaviors. The authors used two types of perceived benefits (personal and community) and examined their direct and interaction effects on event affective commitment and advocacy. Of approximately 23,000 registered attendees of a recurring community running event, 1,897 participated in a web-based survey. This study used 528 responses from residents who participated in a marathon running program. The authors emphasize the importance of reflecting on different types of relationships (exchange and communal relationships) in understanding supporting behaviors.

This study explores hotel guest service experiences by analyzing online reviews using big data analytics. We first summarize frequently mentioned words in online reviews, identify the commonalities on the basis of frequency of word use, and use these factors to compare the contributions to the overall guest experience for lifestyle and traditional hotels. Overall, guestrooms, interaction between employees and guests, and hotel services show different magnitudes of coefficients in lifestyle hotels compared with traditional hotels. Applying sentiment analysis, results indicated that attributes representing negative sentiment affected overall review ratings more than those representing positive sentiment. However, positive and negative employee interactions in the lifestyle hotel segment were more important in the overall reviews than in the traditional hotel segment. This study offers beneficial insights into the uniqueness of lifestyle hotels and future research directions.

Purpose: This study aims to investigate the effects of coffeehouse brand experiences and brand personality traits on brand prestige, and the effects of brand prestige on brand relationship quality and loyalty in the coffeehouse industry. Design/methodology/approach: Validated measurements were identified from a literature review. The measurement model and the conceptual model depicting hypothesized relationships were evaluated based on responses from 309 coffeehouse customers using confirmatory factor analysis and a structural equation modeling, accordingly. Findings: Brand experiences and brand personality traits had direct effects on brand prestige, which in turn influenced brand relationship quality and attitudinal loyalty. Brand relationship quality directly and indirectly influenced attitudinal and behavioral brand loyalty. Research limitations/implications: The data were collected from coffeehouse customers in the USA; therefore, the results may not be generalizable to other regions or types of service industries. The results have important theoretical and practical implications for gaining a competitive advantage through brand experiences, brand personality traits and prestige. Practical implications: To enhance the coffeehouse brand prestige, it is critical to enhance patrons’ experiential interactions by using sensory appealing equipment/tools, developing sentimental slogans, active/behavioral mascots and intellectual advertising. Furthermore, it is necessary for it to build and enhance its own brand personality characterized by sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication and ruggedness. Originality/value: This study is the first to empirically test the relationships between brand experiences, brand personality traits and prestige in the coffeehouse industry.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to use Twitter analysis to explore diner perceptions of four types of Asian restaurants (Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Thai). Design/methodology/approach: Using 86,015 tweets referring to Asian restaurants, this research used text mining and sentiment analysis to find meaningful patterns, popular words and emotional states in opinions. Findings: Twitter users held mingled perceptions of different types of Asian restaurants. Sentiment analysis and ANOVA showed that the average sentiment scores for Chinese restaurants was significantly lower than the other three Asian restaurants. While most positive tweets referred to food quality, many negative tweets suggested problems associated with service quality or food culture. Research limitations/implications: This research provides a methodology that future researchers can use in applying social media analytics to explore major issues and extract sentiment information from text messages. Originality/value: Limited research has been conducted applying social media analysis in hospitality research. This study fills a gap by using social media analytics with Twitter data to examine the Twitter users’ thoughts and emotions for four different types of Asian restaurants.