This study explores the role of employees as both a target group and co-creators of employer brand equity in tourism and hospitality. Extant research has largely focused on the effects of external employer brands; however, studies on internal employer branding have been lacking. The research problem is addressed through the conceptual lens of employer brand equity. To provide empirical insights into employee experiences, exploratory in-depth interviews were conducted with 16 employees in hotels, restaurants, and retail stores in Northern Sweden. While employees constitute a target market for internal employer branding, they also co-create the employer value proposition. Employees act as brand members, representatives, advocates and influencers, increasing knowledge about the organization internally and externally. However, in practice, companies in the service sector seem to place more focus on the customer experience than on reminding the employees of the brand promise towards them. This study identifies and describes the role of employees in the employer branding process by developing a new conceptual framework. Thereby, it adds to the understanding of co-creation in employer branding, an under-researched area which has been suggested to become a new paradigm in the employer branding literature.

Purpose - This methodological paper demonstrates how service firms can use digital technologies to quantify and predict customer evaluations of their interactions with the firm using unstructured, qualitative data. To harness the power of unstructured data and enhance the customer-firm relationship, the use of computerized text analysis is proposed.

Design/methodology/approach - Three empirical studies were conducted to exemplify the use of the computerized text analysis tool. A secondary data analysis of online customer reviews (n = 2,878) in a service industry was used. LIWC was used to conduct the text analysis, and thereafter SPSS was used to examine the predictive capability of the model for the evaluation of customer-firm interactions.

Findings - A lexical analysis of online customer reviews was able to predict evaluations of customer-firm interactions across the three empirical studies. The authenticity and emotional tone present in the reviews served as the best predictors of customer evaluations of their service interactions with the firm.

Practical implications - Computerized text analysis is an inexpensive digital tool which, to date, has been sparsely used to analyze customer-firm interactions based on customers' online reviews. From a methodological perspective, the use of this tool to gain insights from unstructured data provides the ability to gain an understanding of customers' real-time evaluations of their service interactions with a firm without collecting primary data.

Originality/value - This research contributes to the growing body of knowledge regarding the use of computerized lexical analysis to assess unstructured, online customer reviews to predict customers' evaluations of a service interaction. The results offer service firms an inexpensive and user-friendly methodology to assess real-time, readily available reviews, complementing traditional customer research. A tool has been used to transform unstructured data into a numerical format, quantifying customer evaluations of service interactions.

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to analyse factors influencing the propensity to share travel experiences in social media during a trip, across a sample of Millennial and Generation Z consumers in three different countries.

Design/methodology/approach

An online survey was sent to consumers between 16 and 30 years in Sweden, UK and India. Structural equation modelling and multigroup analysis was conducted to compare results between countries and generations.

Findings

Young travellers’ need for uniqueness (NFU) and opinion leadership (OL) with regard to travel tends to increase their propensity to share travel experiences in social media during a trip. Reflected appraisal of self is strongly related to NFU and OL and may therefore indirectly influence the propensity to share. Some differences were found between generations and countries.

Research limitations/implications

Future research could consider comparisons between travellers from younger and older generations. The hypotheses formulated in this study could be tested in other countries. Further adaptions or extensions of existing NFU scales to fit in the travel and tourism context are suggested.

Practical implications

Millennial and Gen Z consumers will constitute an increasing part of travellers and visitors in the future. Through a better understanding of their behaviour, tourism managers can design strategies to engage them and increase electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM).

Originality/value

This study contributes by addressing the lack of research on “self”-related drivers of eWOM in general social media during the trip, and by providing an international perspective through cross-cultural comparisons.

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to characterize consumers with high impulse buying tendency (IBT) by comparing them with low-IBT consumers in an online shopping context.

Design/methodology/approach: Data were collected through a postal survey to a random sample of Swedish citizens, resulting in 144 responses, which were analysed statistically.

Findings: Results indicate that high-IBT consumers, compared to those with low IBT, are on average younger, more likely to be female and more frequent online shoppers with higher levels of trust in the internet. However, they seem more likely than low-IBT consumers to abandon their online shopping carts before completing the purchase, often because of need uncertainty.

Practical implications: The findings can give retailers a better understanding of consumers with high IBT and thereby increase the possibility to target and communicate with them more effectively. This is an interesting opportunity as both multi-channel shopping and impulse buying behaviour is likely to become even more common in the future.

Originality/value: The study contributes to the understanding of impulsive consumers, as it addresses the role of situational and socio-demographic attributes of high-IBT consumers compared to low-IBT consumers. The differences in online purchases, intentions to buy fashion online, shopping cart abandonment and trust in the internet suggest that even if IBT is a relatively stable and general personal trait, the tendencies to act on buying impulses may be more context-specific.

Retailers are facing major changes, including intensified competition, increased internationalization, and technological advances, which are transforming the competitive landscape at a fast pace. Simultaneously we see an emerging paradigm shift in consumers’ buying behavior. Digital devices such as smartphones and tablets allow consumers to search and shop online, irrespective of time and place and without geographical boundaries. While these devices originally were used mainly for information search, mobile purchases are becoming a natural part of many consumers’ shopping habits.

Word-of-mouth (WOM) communication is considered the most important, informal means of communication between consumers (Derbaix and Vanhamme 2003). An increasingly important extension of the traditional face-to-face WOM used by consumers is the electronic word of mouth (eWOM), especially with regard to how eWOM is used within today’s online social media outlets (Weisfeld-Spolter et al. 2014). Within the travel and tourism industry, eWOM has become vitally important, as consumers tend to trust information from consumer-generated (social) media more than information from service providers (Ip et al. 2012). This is particularly true for the younger generation of Internet users—the “e-generation,” who are “digital natives” and who have used digital technologies since they were kids. The aim of this study is to provide a better understanding on how today’s e-generation is using eWOM as tourists/travelers, from a multicultural perspective. In order to reach this aim, the following research questions are stated: (RQ1) How are e-generation consumers using eWOM when planning a trip?; (RQ2) How are e-generation consumers using eWOM during and after a trip?