Marketing and Smart Technologies

Although influencer marketing and marketer-generated brand anthropomorphism have been extensively studied, consumer-generated imagery influencers (CGIIs) have barely scratched the surface even though it is a rising phenomenon. This is the first study to explore the concept of CGIIs through social media platforms using netnography approach. Results indicate consumers' (1) positive attitude, (2) negative attitude, and (3) prediction to what CGII will represent in future. Common factor is that it is a distraction from reality, and if controlled and used right, it would have a massive reach, creativity, and engagement compared to ‘classic influencers’. Having an emotional connection is not necessary towards humans; it could be powerful and real with CGIIs too as they show care and create relationships. The utopian scenario would be bridging the gap between physical and virtual experiences. The major worry is the ethics and moral values, in which strict regulations need to be applied. This study provides a basis of what is yet to come in the metaverse era.

Modern corporations are integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) into their realities and facing challenges; lack of AI-focused strategy, poor data management, and mistrust towards this new technology hinder the success of a solid AI integration (Duan et al. in International Journal of Information Management 48:63–71, 2019; Mikalef, P., Gupta, M.: Artificial intelligence capability: Conceptualization, measurement calibration, and empirical study on its impact on organizational creativity and firm performance. Information and Management 58(103434):1–20, 2021). In this study, the authors have developed the Social Design Thinking Lab technique to investigate further the matter of AI barriers within the regions of Upper Austria, Vienna, and South Bohemia. The innovativeness of this paper lies in the confluence of three significant aspects: the role of AI technology, its impact on business, and the consequent argument of trust in AI applications. Findings differ according to the investigated target groups: regions and policymakers, AI developers, and companies. Nevertheless, common learnings point to a strong focus on change management and collaboration with regional institutions to get the most out of one’s corporate AI strategy while making sure that the main ethical issues surrounding AI are discussed.

Companies know that it is essential for their well-being to know their customers, the way they act, and the opinions they have about the services provided to them. Today, many of these opinions are posted on social media, which allow for expressing opinions freely and in many cases without great control. As such, they receive messages revealing very curious elements about the services companies provide. Spite being often not very reliable, most of the messages reveal true opinions, in which sentimental manifestations are incorporated. When properly evaluated, they support positively or negatively the opinion expressed. In this paper, we present and discuss a system for analyzing customer opinions about services provided by a hotel, which has the ability to identify sentiments expressed in the opinion texts and establish a well-being index for the hotel. Using the index, it is possible to know the “image” of the hotel to customers, according to the opinion elements identified by the system, which can help to reduce risks, identify emerging trends, and contribute to increased revenue or adjust hotel marketing actions.

The aim of this paper is to assess the acceptance of smart speakers in a retail environment, with a special focus on the perceptions of GenZ, one of the heaviest user groups. With the use of smart speakers on the rise, it is important to make sure that customers perceive them as feasible and useful devices for their daily tasks. With the retail industry being part and parcel of smart speaker integration, this short paper focuses on analyzing their usage intention in the said environment by means of a modified version of UTAUT2. To assess the reliability and validity of the proposed model, both an exploratory and a confirmatory analysis were conducted (SPSS 26). Thereafter, structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses (AMOS 26). The results show that effort expectancy, habit, social influence, and hedonic motivation have a direct, significant, positive, and direct effect on the usage intention of smart speakers in a retail environment. This study sheds light onto the perceived barriers to using voice assistants during their shopping journey. It also identifies both strong and pain points that retailers should focus on in order to establish valuable customer relationships in evolving retail service environments.

Managing human talent today is a reflection of productivity in companies which is why EQR considers human resources as the main priority in its development. An organization that is not prepared for the sudden and frequent changes that the globalized world demands are not competitive. For that reason, this study proposed the evaluation of 124 collaborators from different work areas; through the assessment of the organizational environment, psychosocial risks, and labor performance. The EDCO test evaluates the organizational environment allowing us to discover flaws in the leadership style (28.54%); resource availability (18.95%); stability (14.22%); and clarity and coherence in management (9.14%); subsequently with the FPSICO the psychosocial risk assessment was obtained, with the following results: PS (55%), TT (28.3%), and RAS (26.7%); Finally, a comparison is made with the results of the work performance evaluation: adaptation (15%), responsibility (16%) and knowledge, skill and attitude (18%). The data will allow the company to propose the implementation of total, group, and individual intervention plans depending on the identified findings.

Data growth is exponential and nearly immeasurable. We used to talk about megabytes when we spoke about data, but now we talk about petabytes with BigData. This data growth makes sensitive data and identifiers increasingly exposed. To address this issue, there is anonymization data, which attempts to “mask” the data so that it is nearly difficult to identify and correlate persons with them; yet, the data remains usable for statistical reasons, among other things. To avoid falling behind in these technical difficulties, many businesses employ free, open-source software. However, this software is not always secure or meets the user’s expectations. The goal of OSSpal is to normalize these concerns.

Several modern-day problems, like information overload and big data, need to deal with large amounts of data. As such, to meet the application requirements, for instance, performance and consistency, more and more systems are adapting to the specificities. The existing relational database management system (RDBMS)’s processing of massive data has become an issue because these databases do not deal with a massive amount of data. NoSQL is a database management system that makes processing massive and/or unstructured data easier because it uses key-value to store the data, collections or document stores instead of tables. Many companies today tend to start a project using NoSQL. However, HarperDB aims to produce a relational and non-relational DBMS, allowing developers to choose between different solutions. This paper aims to show the most relevant differences between HarperDB, MongoDB and PostgreSQL and compare their performances. Preliminary results show that PostgreSQL performs better with structured data, but HarperDB can integrate NoSQL and SQL, which can be a significant advantage to HarperDB compared with the other solutions.

The authors used the constructs of the technology acceptance model to examine and investigate Swiss SMEs’ willingness to use a data coopetition-based customer lifetime value computing tool. The qualitative interviews revealed identifiable and actionable indications of the need for a data ecosystem that should enable the cooperative sharing of data for customer value calculations.

University students are exposed to several changes related to their families and economic independence. The academic demands impose greater responsibilities and difficulties (Trigueros et al, The influence of emotional intelligence on resilience, test anxiety, academic stress and the Mediterranean diet. A study with university students. Environ Res Public Health 17(6):2071, 2020 [1]), a reality that worsened as a result of the pandemic between 2020 and 2021 due to the loss of social contact, economic problems, and the search for sources of income to help with family expenses, generating in students the need to abandon or postpone their studies; however, it has been possible to identify factors related to their emotional intelligence and resilience, which have allowed them to successfully cope with these difficulties. This study aims to analyze the validity and reliability of the Trait Meta-Mood Scale (TMMS-24) by combining an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) model. The influence of emotional intelligence of Ecuadorian university students on resilience and academic performance in the context of SARS-COV-2 is analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) in a sample of 302 Ecuadorian university students aged 18–24 years following the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The EFA and CFA validated the TMSS-24 with acceptable fit indices, demonstrating construct validity. Through SEM modeling, resilience was found to have a significant and positive mediating role between emotional intelligence and academic performance.

The aim of this investigation is to analyze subscription retailing research’s main topics and evolution over time. A bibliometric study and a content analysis were carried out on the documents published in Web of Science database about subscription retailing. The findings show that research after the COVID-19 pandemic was reinforced. The main researched industries are e-commerce, physical retail, and e-marketplaces, and the main topics are business model definition, typologies of subscription services, namely surprise boxes, the likelihood to use subscription services, and promotions, coupons, and relationship marketing. This study contributes to the area by providing scholars with the subscription retailing research state of the art and trends, helping to guide future researches. From a managerial view, it gives insights on how to use subscription retailing.

It is vital to determine the precision with which subjective aspects are recognized in studies, especially when working with subjective elements. Emotions are thus subjective aspects since their interpretation relies on a skilled expert or program to detect them on people's faces, in writing, in speech, and elsewhere. What happens if a group of observers has differing viewpoints on the same goal? Try to eliminate subjectivity by using the Kappa index or manually checking what is going on with the environment through surveys or interviews. The Kappa index is used in this study, and the degree of coincidence is validated; however, various findings were discovered for the same aim, which is the expressions on a person's face while watching a movie. Because of the wide range of outcomes, a solution was sought, and it was proposed that the many coincidences might be grouped together using clusters. That even responded to the dominating emotion, a centroid that appears to control the type of subjective judgments made or the start of them when categorizing the emotion. In this experiment, the neutral feeling served as the beginning point, and it appeared to command the kappa coincidences, which were bolstered by three clusters, with a focus on cluster 2.

This paper proposes integrating expert perspectives and building families of ROC curves to assess the validity of the observation model against a case study. In this regard, it was revealed that by studying emotions in the face and employing computer software, coincidences may be produced. In practice, the formation of various ROC curves highlights the importance of computer and statistical analysis in such situations, as the subjectivity in these types of investigations grows. Utilize a family of ROC curves as a measure of experimental coincidence, which has shown a 60% success rate in routine testing.

The understanding of the key factors underlying the decision-making processes behind the eating behavior is a great challenge for food marketing. Government organizations as well as an increasing number of food companies are interested in motivating healthy dietary habits. However, it turns out to be a complicated task due to the high number of internal and external factors involved that must be taken into account when considering a marketing strategy. This work tries to discover if it is possible to reveal new personal (internal) and contextual (external) variables in order to explain and predict both the nutritional value and category of the foods chosen by a given individual. The results suggest that variables such as personality, satisfaction, or productivity may help to predict the nutritional characteristics of food choices.

The objective of the article is to investigate what are the most appropriate communicational strategies for social media in the context of personal brand management, which digital platforms are dominant and how they can be used in the “post-pandemic” job market of COVID-19. To this end, data collection was conducted with professionals specializing in personal branding, the process responsible for personal brand management, in the scenario of Portugal and Brazil. The research seeks to contribute to fill scientific gaps concerning the personal branding theme and provide the labor market with an updated vision aligned with the best practices used by market specialists, from the countries under analysis, in addition to the use by society in general.

The purpose of this research is to demonstrate how the online and offline consumer experience generates satisfaction, in relation to brand love. For the development of the research, a 27-item questionnaire was carried out, measured with a 5-point Likert scale, and a sample of 442 people was collected. To test the hypotheses, the structural equation model (SEM) was used and the PLS technique. Finally, the results indicate that online and offline experience has an influence on word of mouth (WOM) and satisfaction, while they both have an impact on brand love. This research contributes to the study of online and offline experience and can be used as a guide to understand omnichannel in several business.

This work aims to explore different possible articulations between Trend Studies and cultural analysis for strategy in the scope of a strategic cultural management. Different concepts and methods in both approaches can work together to better produce operational protocols for scientific and applied analysis. Here, we address culture, semiotics, strategy, and branding. Considering that both envision cultural analysis for strategic insights and outputs, these articulations can provide better contextual and cultural mapping exercises, as well as the production of more pertinent concepts and narratives for emerging changes.

The current paradigm that involves the fashion industry leads us to several topics considered relevant. Thus, the central theme of this article is to understand the profile of sustainable textile fashion consumers in Portugal. This investigation used the Sustainable Makers marketplace as a case study, in order to understand what strategies this project can implement considering the needs and values of consumers. The literature reveals, among other aspects, that more informed consumers have more trust in brands, especially these reveal their principles in relation to social and environmental sustainability. Some of the topics addressed are the consumer's purchase intention and behavior, social responsibility values, the purchase process, namely through e- commerce and through which media obtain information about the socially responsible practices of brands. It addresses the relationship between consumer and brand and the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic may have had on consumer choices in textile fashion. The recommendations presented serve to make Sustainable Makers an innovative and useful project for the final consumer.

TV consumption has increased due to COVID-19 crisis. The demand of local and valuable news has been crucial for this rise. Under the premise that the pandemic crisis could have acted as a trigger for the adoption of new forms of content production and advertising formulas for many broadcaster, this paper analyzes the transformation of the Ecuadorian national private television channel RTU. The research carried out the RTU’s financial analysis of 2018, 2019 and 2020 to understand its economic situation and the consequences of the decisions and initiatives implemented in the last years. The research also carried out semi-structured interviews with the aforementioned broadcaster managers and experts in order to understand the changes fostered given the new economic, social and technical scenario. The research allows us to evidence that the linear TV is on crisis, in special among younger audiences. RTU has drastically reduced its team due to the decrease of revenue in advertising ad the unattractive content to young audiences. Having in mind this situation, RTU is encouraging innovation on human resources management, revenue streams (digital advertising formats), distribution platforms (social network) and products/content adapted to society demands such as short videos, influencers, interaction and feedback.

Brands have identified an opportunity to develop Social Media Engagement Behaviour (SMEB) in their users through Social Media Content (SMC) tools within social networks, such as Facebook. However, they fail to understand whether users are really engaged with them or with their products, especially if both scenarios have their own identities in social networks and different followers. The present research compares the SMEB generated in both scenarios, contrasting the followers of Netflix on Facebook and the official pages of its series. Data were collected by applying two online surveys to 284 users. Subsequently, they were analysed through the PLS-SEM multivariate analysis method based on a second-order construct. The study concludes that the SMEB found in users who follow Netflix’s fan page as a brand is higher than that of its series on Facebook, thus revealing a predominance of preference, in terms of content on social networks, for the brand over the product.

Organizations need to evaluate and improve internal communication process to keep and leverage employee engagement. This investigation aims to understand the internal communication effectiveness in a B2B context. A qualitative approach was adopted, with semi-structured interviews targeting employees from different countries of an automotive B2B multinational company. The results enhance the consensus of the importance of internal communication to create employee brand engagement. Moreover, this research highlights how does employee engagement is related with employee branding. So, a conceptual organizational communication funnel framework model was developed. The focus was on (1) employee communication needs, (2) data-driven information, (3) transparent information to employees, and (4) new channel to improve employee engagement. Thus, concrete actions were suggested for managers to improve the communication effectiveness in an integrated and blended solutions. This paper is relevant for academia since it expands the knowledge on internal communication in the complex B2B market.

As contemporary lifestyle evolved, social media platforms adapted to be attractive for consumers who spend increasing time in their smartphones and who are interested in content that is short and easy to consume. Short video apps thus emerged, becoming relevant in the social media landscape. TikTok, a social media application used for creating and sharing short videos, has become especially popular. The videos in TikTok usually include music, short plays, lip-synching, dancing, or light-hearted humor. So far, TikTok has been downloaded more than a billion times around the world. Given this context, it was decided to conduct research to address the following research question: Which are the outcomes of short video marketing strategies on TikTok in small business activities? The methodological approach was qualitative, based on interviews to business owners. The findings show that TikTok enables a different way of promoting a business offer, which relies on entertainment and consumer proximity to the businesses. The app TikTok offers an alternative to more traditional communication channels and enables the creation and sharing of low-cost videos that can nonetheless create awareness, traffic and sales, including in international markets. Additionally, on TikTok, business owners can build on their knowledge about their markets to engage with consumers, relying on genuineness, as this research shows.

We live in an era where we witness constant changes and advances, especially at a technological level. Both consumers and organizations are becoming increasingly digital. This new consumer requires the use of digital to be managed in a much more interesting and challenging way, seeking to engage him/her as a basic condition to preserve the attractiveness of a brand. The use of storytelling as a consumer engagement strategy is increasing in several domains, but there is still scarce research relating consumer engagement to advertising in a digital storytelling format. This investigation is thus a contribution, aiming to understand the impact of the various components of digital storytelling on the different dimensions of consumer engagement. Adopting a qualitative and exploratory methodology, four focus groups directed at the Z generation were conducted to understand digital storytelling’s impact on consumer engagement. A content analysis was then performed using a qualitative analysis support software, and the results were supportive of the existence of a relationship between the components that make up the stories and the engagement they provide to the brands. The components most valued by consumers are, respectively, the message, the plot, the verisimilitude, the music and the characters. However, the message is the storytelling component that most impacts consumer engagement.

In this research, we provide an overview of the increasing area of environmental sustainability in the sports management field and discuss future research opportunities. Through a division of topics that we consider most impactful, a selection of the research that has been implemented is presented, as well as their results and possible future directions. We conclude with a final reflection to extend and deepen sustainability studies in sport management.

Consumers’ concern with the industry’s impact on the environment has been increasing, so they increasingly seek to adjust their buying and consumption behaviour to the need to preserve and conserve natural resources. Although the existing literature on green marketing is increasingly common, the relationships between its critical concepts still need to be more conclusive. This research focused on one of the main consumption trends: green consumption. Given consumers’ growing preference for sustainable business practices, an exploratory structural path analysis was developed to understand the primary benefits consumers value the most and how they are relevant for brands to create consumer-brand relationships. For this, this research tried to clarify the relationship between a product's functional and emotional benefits (utilities and warm glow), the green transparency perceived through the information provided by companies and brands, the connection between brands and consumers, brand loyalty, and green brand equity. Results suggest that the perceived green value (GPV) increases when utilitarian environmental benefits and warm glow benefits of products and corporate green increase. The greater the green perceived value, the greater the connection created between consumers and brands and, consequently, the greater the brand loyalty. Loyalty is one of the paths leading to the generation of green brand equity. Therefore, companies must understand the importance of green perceived value to achieve high consumer involvement levels.

In the present economic and technological context, decisions must be made quickly, and some business planning processes do not comply with the needed velocity. At an entrepreneurial level, new business start-ups and in some sectors, like the agrifood industry, not only need speed decisions, but also the companies do not have the capacity and knowledge to make those decisions. Particularly in the case of marketing, it is possible to observe a greater difficulty since it is difficult to have the knowledge, technique, and tools to analyse the market and design the adequate strategy to fulfil and satisfy the market needs. The expert decision support system in marketing (ESM) presented here was built to allow the mountain olive oil producers and distributors in Portugal to speed up their decision ability, overcoming the time-consuming process embodied in rigorous business analysis. An ESM is built based on knowledge and allows diagnosis and development of marketing scenarios that boost opportunities detection and market corrections. In industries characterised by micro-business and for new business creation, this technology is important and can be the first consultation service to offer to the companies to improve their performance.

The major goal of green technology is to lessen the greenhouse effect and control global warming. Hence, the main idea is to come up with new inventions that do not deplete natural resources. The research, here, is attempted to examine the factors influencing consumers to purchase hybrid cars like environmentally friendlier automobiles that are gaining more popularity. Hybrid car is a vehicle that uses at least two or more power supply as to make the vehicle move. The combination of an internal combustion engine and electric motors is one of the uniqueness owned by hybrid cars. This study discusses various theoretical models and proposes a conceptual model based on those theories, especially on UTAUT2 (Extended Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology) which adapted and identified seven independent variables (performance expectancy, social influence, environmental concern, price value, hedonic motivation, facilitating conditions, and health benefit) and one dependent variable (behavioral intention to purchase) from the related literatures. Though there is huge importance or advantages of hybrid cars, there have been many people in Bangladesh till now who are not currently buying/using hybrid cars. This study is significant and rationale in environmental, marketers, and economic perspective. The expected outcome of this study will enhance new understanding on the profile of Bangladeshi consumers in purchasing hybrid cars as well as marketers, and policymakers can take opportunity to take decisions by utilizing the findings of this study.

Today organizations face new challenges that have caused marketing to place greater emphasis on the strategic communication of companies, so marketing strategies have fostered a change in the organizational structure, because it must be adjusted to the preferences, tastes, and needs of today's world. The present investigation has as its main problem the commercial ignorance of the product toward potential clients, this leads to the little application of marketing strategies that negatively affect the level of sales of the company, thus inferring in the low positioning in comparison with its competition, being the main objective to diagnose the current situation regarding the marketing and sales strategies of the bottling and packaging company “DSC WATER”. The methodology applied was with a quantitative approach and descriptive scope, supported by the deductive and bibliographic method, with a non-experimental and transversal design; using a survey aimed at recurring customers and whose results indicate that more than 60% of customers show distrust in the quality of the water offered and do not receive promotions from the company, in addition 85% of customers agree I agree that the application of marketing strategies is necessary for the development of sales. Finally, the development and implementation of marketing strategies are established as a recommendation, which allows the business to position its brand, capture the attention of potential customers, and have adequate growth in the market.

Historically, business organisations are always looking for a new approach to marketing and advertising their products to reach their target customers. The introduction of the Internet helped businesses to reach more potential customers than it was before. Currently, the newest technologies that have become the centre of attraction in marketing are metaverse and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Marketing practitioners and scholars continue to show interest in technological metaverse and NFTs as an up-and-coming platform for enhancing consumer satisfaction experience virtually the same as the experience in physical stores. The aim of this study is to examine the impact of commingling of metaverse and NFTs in marketing with the lens of bibliometric analysis through R Bibliometrix. This study contributes to the marketing and financial technology literature by showing academic work's impact, quantity, and quality on metaverse and NFTs. The study sectionalises methodology, results, and conclusions and gives future research insights.

The digital transformation allowed the existence of new realities, with a greater focus currently on the immersive reality and how brands can get with their consumers, personalized and entertaining experiences so that they buy their products in this new concept of decentralization. However, consumer behaviors are not systematic and in new contexts, it is necessary to study their behaviors and especially what they are predisposed to buy. If e-commerce has gained a greater place in the lives of consumers in recent years, it is necessary to understand what the difference is between a new concept of reality. The purpose of this study was therefore to provide a broad synopsis of pertinent studies in the last 15 years about this new paradigm. This systematic review was guided by the principles of PRISMA-ScR. In doing so, the findings from 30 studies were analyzed and suggestions were made for future studies. The results not only synthesize existing empirical evidence of the consumer buying decision and the different realities but also identify some knowledge gaps in the literature to guide future studies.

Colour types differ slightly depending on the manufacturer even when the same colour type is applied in a product design. However, the colour effects on consumer behaviour have been centred on hue units. Therefore, this study focused on the pale colour, bluish-white. Both positive and negative effects have been discussed regarding this colour, in reference with the perception of healthy food and the human face. Research is rare in the context of attractiveness in industrial product design on this topic. Study 1 extracted pale colour, which is popular for evaluating the colour itself, from the exterior design colour of existing cars. In Study 2, the colour was applied to a fictitious car design, and its effect on attractiveness was compared to that of pure white. The randomized controlled trial in Study 2 supported the following hypothesis: in the context of automobile exterior design, pale colour has a negative impact on attractiveness, even if the colour is appealing. This result indicates that when considering the colours of product design during the development phase, the judgement may be erroneous if the survey is conducted about the colour alone. In addition, in digital showrooms, when presenting the colour of a product design in a format separated from the product, it is important to design the presentation to bridge the discrepancy between the presentation and the actual product. In the practical application of marketing, it is necessary to pay particular attention to the pale colours that have dual impacts.

The process that human mind follows to buy any article involves a series of steps. This work reflects from a neuropsychological point of view, the implication that executive functions have in this process. Inhibitory control, emotional regulation, decision making, planning, cognitive flexibility, error correction, and internal language regulating behavior are the executive functions that are analyzed on the possibility of generating an automatic or conscious behavior to make a purchase, for example, when an article is acquired because there is the need versus when a purchase is made only because of impulsive. As conclusion, evidence of the complex dynamics when buying a thing is left, where it is possible to consider executive functions for future marketing campaigns, thus, increase the sales of a specific product.

Inclusive advertising is used to communicate through brands and campaigns the values they allow, their ideologies, and attitudes which search to promote equality or positive behavior toward society. This study pursues as an objective to gather information about how commercial spots coming from Mexico, Argentina, and Ecuador in 2019, referred about inclusion and diversity, around the ranges of; communication, special needs models, switching roles between men and women, stereotypes and inclusion, throughout ongoing YouTube campaigns. Each analysis is based on the qualitative method in which the content is examined to determine the characteristics assigned to non-traditional models of selected commercial spots, locating those with effects in speech and with the social impact each ad carries. Denotative and connotative focused analysis diagrams are used as a fundamental tool to describe the elements that constitute inclusion and diversity within advertising creativity. And semi-structured interviews with the creative directors of some advertising agencies coming from the three countries previously mentioned, with the objective of getting to know their intention or objectives regarding the use of this type of campaign.

This paper demonstrates that the typical digital phenomenon of ephemeral marketing can also appear in the case of food when triggering multiple senses, such as smell and taste. Five traditional Czech bread and pastry products (BPPs) were chosen, each produced by a large national producer, a medium-sized regional producer, and a local bakery. We then aimed to identify how the selection between competing BPPs takes place with a focus on their sensory aspects. A sensory evaluation by 105 untrained consumers showed that aroma was the only sensory factor not differentiating the preferences. Two focus groups with regular consumers of BPPs explained that the aroma of certain BPP neither influences choices when eating BPP nor subsequent purchase decisions. The only exception was the traditional bread with a sourdough starter, where the aroma was essential in both sensory evaluation and focus groups. Paradoxically, during the act of shopping itself, the ambient aroma of BPPs in the store is the most significant attractor stimulating non-preferential purchasing decisions. There is a substantial decrease in the importance of the aroma of BPP when comparing the “purchase-consumption” phases. We claim that using qualitative research is crucial, as quantitative categories pre-defined by researchers for the sensory evaluation may block the evaluators from expressing “outside the box” ideas.

Agro-industrial wastes are considered a source of utilization, due to the development of research projects framed in valorization issues where the agro-industrial sector is characterized by high rates of generation of organic waste from fruits such as peels, trimmings, stems, seeds, fruit malformations, among others, which can sometimes represent more than 50% of the fresh fruit (Torres-León et al., in Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, [1]). In that sense, losses include the waste of critical resources such as soil, water, chemicals, energy, and labor (Sagar et al., in Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety 17(3), [2]). Therefore, the importance of the circular economy lies in the rational use of natural resources from non-renewable sources, starting with the elimination of the concept and/or practices that lead to waste, through sustainable production and consumption techniques with the incorporation of new technologies that allow closing cycles in the waste value chain and generating from these by-products that, due to their physical, chemical, and/or microbiological characteristics, have potential for use in the industrial sector (Despeisse et al. in Technological Forecasting and Social Change 115, [3]), promoting the generation of strategies that mitigate environmental problems, originated both by the generation and disposal, as well as by factors resulting from the development of the productive sector. In this aspect, circular agriculture has explored the environmental understanding of farmers and their willingness to pay, without affecting current ecosystems so the project to be developed aims at the industrial valorization of organic waste generated in strawberry crops in the municipality of Sibaté, framed in the circular economy. This becomes important, as far as the project activities are concerned, because it allows to provide the reader with an approach of the current scenario, the farmer's perception in contrast with standardized instruments, and the approach of possible solutions for the strengthening of the community in the rural area, as well as to contribute with the strengthening for future generations aimed at improving and proposing alternatives that mitigate the current problems of the field, through spaces of social appropriation of knowledge that promote the closing of gaps and facilitate the entry of farmers to new markets.

Although digital nomadism is already an old concept, its visibility has recently become popular, and there are still very few scientific studies developed in this area. This research offers a significant contribution, to the systematization of this concept as it explored the origin of this phenomenon, the characteristics associated with the digital nomad and their preferences regarding destinations. The study provides a set of valuable insights that the entities responsible for destination management might use to format their offer in order to gain attractiveness towards this tourist segment.

In this paper, the authors continued research previously conducted on six selected websites of Polish agritourism farms. The aim of the conducted analysis was to determine whether the expert analysis, based on literature and distinguished quality websites factors, is coherent with the users’ analysis, based on the WebQual questionnaire. The conducted analysis involved an expert evaluation. The factors, which were taken under consideration during the analysis, were distinguished from literature and grouped accordingly with the WebQual questionnaire sections and focused on the aesthetics, functionality, and usability of each analyzed website. The main objective of the paper is to discover if there are any discrepancies between the two conducted assessments, as well as to answer the question about the quality of the websites of agritourism farms in Poland.

This article discusses the processes of the increasing use of technology and digital media to promote tourism destinations. This paper aims to present the increasing use of technology and digital media to promote tourism destinations. Not only as a theoretical concept but also as an opportunity for small or medium-sized businesses that operate in the tourism sector. It presents the current trends in digital tourism, focusing on digital media and how technology is shaping, influencing, and informing travel decisions impacting tourists’ behavior. Our critical overview suggests that we are dealing with a phenomenon rooted in the new opportunities given by the digital expansion with relevant effects for the tourism destinations promotion. However, contributions on this topic within the existing literature remain scarce. Accordingly, we discuss the main studies on this issue and its results to conclude about the current importance of digital media for tourism destination promotion and future research agenda.

Conscious tourism is a philosophy that evolves from sustainable tourism, incorporating the ethical dimension in which significant interest groups of the tourist experience participate, such as human beings, host communities, the business sector, and public institutions. Ecuador is a pioneer in promoting this philosophy based on equality and participation in tourist activity focused on the ideology of “give and take”. In previous publications, conscious tourism was conceptualized and characterized from the perspective of experts, and case studies were carried out from the perspective of the receiving tourist. This research advances by incorporating the participation of internal tourists who choose a tourist destination in the City of Quito through a survey with a sample of 801 domestic tourists. The case study results identify the knowledge and perception of this philosophy within domestic tourism. Analyzes the relationship between satisfaction and loyalty of tourists based on variables such as motivation, image, quality, or involvement with conscious tourism, which will be very useful when designing and implementing policies that seek social profitability and sustainable economic development.

The relationship between tourism and technological trends has generated greater possibilities for the actors in its value chain, including an increase in the flow of tourists and the possibility of a more enriching experience. Thus, the use of new technologies has become indispensable for the development of tourism activity. Tourism generates a gamified and intensive management of information, a situation that opens the way for the development and use of ICT for its benefit, supporting the reorganization of resources, efficiency and security in processes and facilitating data analysis and decision-making. With the above, the aim is to identify technological trends applied to marketing, sales and commercialization, through the proposal and application of a technology watch model and the creation of bibliometric maps in VOSviewer using concurrence analysis, in order to visualize the relationships between technological trends and the aforementioned links in the tourism value chain. In this way, it became evident that the most relevant application is found in the sales and marketing links; through the promotion of destinations on social networks, the sale of airline tickets, museum tickets and online accommodation bookings. Using technologies such as: augmented reality, virtual reality, geolocation and big data in the marketing link and artificial intelligence, IoT, big data and virtual reality for the sales link.

This study develops some sustainable tourism advertising effects and consumer environmental awareness-raising and examines them by advertising certification and advertising format in a field experiment. The tourism advertising effects are analyzed by five dependent variables: trust and credibility, environmentalism, ad relevance, realism, and flow. Several ANOVA and multiple comparison tests were performed to understand whether these variables varied between groups. Experimental research findings indicate that flow and video format affect tourism advertising and consumer environmental awareness-raising. This study demonstrates the importance of understanding the concept of sustainable tourism and awareness-raising. It also points to identifying the best communication strategies to promote a sustainable destination, as different communication methods may lead to different results. In addition, it provides valuable information for marketers to consider when implementing their communication strategies.

We are facing times when the accessible tourism topic and market segment are increasing and facing challenges within the tourism industry due to the lack of interest in developing this market. It is also known that people with disabilities are entitled to be able to travel with accessibilities and being considered as an equal part of the market. This study aims to understand how the literature and academic community is scoping these fields of the accessible tourism and accessible tourism marketing and strategic marketing. Through a sample of 109 indexed articles, a descriptive analysis was carried out and the results presented in this study.

There is a tough competition among various local tourism Destination Management Organizations (DMO) as destination developers to attract visitors and resources. Despite smart tourism concept development and appreciation of its importance, tourism specialists working in the local tourism DMOs throughout various countries have encountered problems to ground the business intelligence to the practical level of their scale and needs. There are various technological advances and forms of data analytics used by national DMOs, but digital gap on a local level having competitive advantage from it is a common issue. How to manage and turn data into insights for tourism development and make it operational? This framework combines the structure of geographic information system (GIS) database management, business analytics, tourism development performance management, and data visualization to guide the local DMO tourism specialist in drawing knowledge from the various related data. A case study from a local DMOs in Latvia is conducted to demonstrate the practical validity of the proposed business intelligence framework to manage destinations more effectively and toward sustainability.

Virtual reality or VR is the simulation of a real or imaginary environment, which can be experienced as an abstraction of the real environment, which in turn allows the user to interact through a technological device within that simulation. Likewise, the user has the ability to modify the surrounding system by means of motion sensors, which will allow him/her to feel, and perceive as he or she is immersed in virtuality. Thanks to VR, sensorial perception is amplified, allowing to enhance our experiences of the real world, so that VR provides us with safe space of learning. Because of it, there has been seen necessary to review the scope of VR in marketing education, addressing that technology advances present excellent tools useful for the training of better professionals, as well as being support into rehabilitation processes, such as in learning difficulties at all marketing educational levels.

Museums represent a collection of ancient and modern knowledge which must be protected, disseminated, and transmitted in the best viable way. Digital development and technology in recent years have made it possible to transform the way of interacting with museums through virtual tours (Palmieri et al in Springer Series in Design and Innovation, pp 71–82, 2023 [1]), which gained strength in times of pandemic, the products generated for virtual tours range from physical reproductions/faithful virtual images of historical artifacts to digital libraries that can be used by experts and others, in addition to 360º technology which allows a 360° viewing angle to be covered in two axes. That is, we can see everything around the point where it was made the photo or video. In this article, the virtual tours offered by some museums are analyzed, as well as the use of these tours as a tourism marketing strategy, giving the user the opportunity to interact with the place they plan to visit in a new way (Cóndor-Herrera and Ramos-Galarza in Marketing and smart technologies. Smart innovation, systems and technologies, pp 443–449, 2022 [2]).

The evolution of e-commerce has, in recent times, made a significant advance largely due to the forced digital transformation and to Sars-cov-2. Thus, augmented reality (AR) technology is increasingly being adopted by companies either to increase brand value or to improve the shopping experience for their consumers. This work aims to present a comparative study between some shopping applications using AR, augmented reality shopping applications (ARSAs), which are carried out in stores or online. The applications were studied in articles in Open Access format and the focus was to understand what their conclusions were as well as the problems and trends of future research toward this type of technologies.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, digital alternatives to office-work, classroom teaching, business meetings, and leisure activities, etc. were seen by most as a supplement to, not a replacement for, meeting people face-to-face. With the experiences many have had these last two years, including travel restrictions, vacationers’ views of digital travel might be expected to have changed. This study is based on surveys of views on digital travel in the summers of 2021 and 2022. We presented vacationers with descriptions of digital travel products and activities, followed by questions about willingness to pay for these. We identified a small segment of vacationers who see digital travel as a substitute for physical travel, and a significant group of vacationers who see the digital travel experience as a pre-taste of actual travel. The vacationers were asked for comparisons of their willingness to pay for digital services with ticket prices that a tourist would normally pay at a destination. Although we could identify a market for digital travel products, it remains to be seen whether players in the travel industry can offer products and services that are attractive enough to raise significant revenue. There is not necessarily a high correlation between intention to pay and actual willingness to make payments, but the study indicates that there is an emergent market that businesses in the travel economy can potentially utilize.

Social media and existing platforms on the Internet are resources that have improved the level of exposure of brands, products, and services; small and large companies have used these resources to the point of becoming monotonous over the years at the time of entering the digital market. This inconvenience, added to the excessive number of social profiles, the mismanagement of these platforms and the great technological advancement forces different companies to use new alternatives to innovate the process of buying and selling products or services. Virtual reality (VR) has become the tool to be used to grant a unique experience at the moment of interaction between consumers and suppliers. In this sense, this work proposes a review of the current state of the inclusion of VR in e-commerce, it has been identified that virtual reality is a resource that allows a close approximation to reality in which users have the possibility of having a unique experience with a product or service in a fast, modern, and safe way.

The starting point of the present research work is the lack of interest shown by students of high school in learning inorganic chemical nomenclature, mainly due to the rote learning of the contents. From this scenario, the main objective is to analyze how mobile learning application can help students in the learning of inorganic chemical nomenclature, supporting the idea that mobile educational resources effectively influence students’ learning. The research assumes a qualitative-quantitative approach applying objective tests to the study population composed of 27 students in the experimental group and 24 in the control group. The results of the pretest objective tests compared with those of the posttests show a positive change in the academic performance of the students after the application of a set of didactic strategies that integrate active methodologies with mobile applications. Additionally, students are interviewed to know the level of academic satisfaction achieved after the use of mobile applications for their learning. The research concludes that students are more motivated to learn, they strengthen cooperative learning because they learn socially, they begin to make better use of mobile devices especially at home to improve their autonomous learning, they find a practical sense to the knowledge they acquire in each class, in short they are the essence of the teaching–learning process.

All the changes that the COVID-19 pandemic produced in human beings have yet not been quantified. People acquired new commercial habits which are reflected in a new and different lifestyle. Therefore, in this manuscript, the ethnographic method to obtain quantitative and qualitative data from 122 participants is conducted. The proposed methodology allows the presentation of information on the clothing garments preferred during a confinement period. This information was used to develop an augmented reality (AR) application where certain details and the three-dimensional garment is shown. Blender was used to develop the garment and Unity was the selected software to develop the application. In addition, modules such as AR Foundation, ARCore XR Plug-in, and DOTween were also used to create the augmented reality environment for Android smartphones. Statistical analysis reveals the relationship between the economic situation vs. the consumer behavior. It highlights the usage of comfortable and informal clothes with neutral colors such as white, black, gray, and brown. To validate this proposal, the corresponding tests were performed on 111 smartphones of the initial participants. Subsequently, through the usability SUS test, the operation of the application was verified obtaining 84.46/100 as a total score. Finally, this manuscript contributes to the definition of the consumer’s psychographic profile during and after being confined.

The creation of a brand manual that includes QR triggers makes it possible to unify and update the traditional editorial design with new technologies. The present study exposes a construction model of these corporate identity manuals and all the processes that must be carried out to obtain positive results in their application. The unit of analysis of this research was developed with three brand manuals from companies in the city of Quito, to which augmented reality QR triggers were included, which allowed access to complementary audiovisual material that helps the suppliers of these companies to use and apply the mark appropriately.