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Today, individuals use social media to express their opinions and feelings, which offers a living laboratory to researchers in various fields, such as management, innovation, technology development, environment and marketing. It is therefore necessary to understand how the language used in user-generated content and the emotions conveyed by the content affect responses from other social media users.

In this study, almost 700,000 posts from Twitter (as well as Facebook, Instagram and forums in the appendix) are used to test a conceptual model grounded in signaling theory to explain how the language of user-generated content on social media influences how other users respond to that communication.

Extending developments in linguistics, this study shows that users react negatively to content that uses self-inclusive language. This study also shows how emotional content characteristics moderate this relationship. The additional information provided indicates that while most of the findings are replicated, some results differ across social media platforms, which deserves users' attention.

This article extends research on Internet behavior and social media use by providing insights into how the relationship between self-inclusive language and emotions affects user responses to user-generated content. Furthermore, this study provides actionable guidance for researchers interested in capturing phenomena through the social media landscape.

The teaching objectives of the case study are to provide students with an understanding of how strategic marketing tools are applied in an international marketing context and how brands, especially brands that come from emerging markets, are introduced and managed within modern versus traditional trade (e.g. ethnic shops).

This case illustrates the challenges and opportunities related to the introduction of a brand to a new market wherein the product (traditional coffee), although part of a very well-developed product category (coffee), may have been new to consumers in the new market. The brand itself, Zlatna džezva, is a flagship brand in its home country (Bosnia and Herzegovina) within a developing market. However, both the brand and the traditional coffee experience are relatively unknown to other markets. The case study focuses on Vispak’s CEO and CMO who are contemplating their next business move in the new market. Finally, the Dutch market and consumers are presented to facilitate the process of segmentation, targeting and positioning for students. The case study concludes with a task and dilemma for managers of the company.

This case could be used in a variety of undergraduate level classes, depending on what the instructor wishes to emphasize. The authors use the case for following courses: principles of marketing, marketing management and international marketing. In all courses, the case is allowing students to obtain the greater overview of the scope of the strategic marketing decision-making. Before starting with case analysis, students should have some familiarity with central marketing issues and concepts, specifically related to analysis of environment, segmentation-targeting-positioning, product and brand management.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only. Please contact your library to gain login details or email support@emeraldinsight.com to request teaching notes.

CSS: 8: Marketing.

The current challenges international charities face with regards to their deteriorating image, as a result of recent scandals (e.g. Oxfam, Save the Children), provide the impetus for this exploratory research, where the purpose of this paper is to examine the conceptualization and dimensionality of non-profit brand image across national cultures.

The study employs a quantitative research design, using multi-country samples from India, Bosnia and Herzegovina and the UK. The authors first examine the psychometric properties of the non-profit brand image scale via confirmatory factor analysis across countries, identifying the optimal model for invariance testing. Further, the authors use multi-group invariance analysis to evaluate whether non-profit brand image (using an 18-item scale and six factors) provides equivalent measurement across cultures.

The study shows that individuals in the three countries perceive non-profit brand image equally, and as consisting of perceptions of usefulness, efficiency, affect, dynamism, reliability and ethicality. However, the results also indicate that the means of the dimensions of non-profit brand image are not comparable across different cultures.

The study extends limited current literature on non-profit brand image in international contexts, deriving insightful suggestions for further theoretical approaches in this under-developed research domain. It also yields key implications for charities and other non-profit organizations operating internationally, as they can use non-profit brand image and its dimensions as actionable tools in their communication campaigns to shape their brand image.

The purpose of this paper is to disentangle the effect of life equilibrium on organic food purchase intentions through a consideration of the evaluation of intrinsic and extrinsic food quality attributes. Furthermore, the study examines the role of health consciousness in achieving life equilibrium.

The conceptual framework was developed based on previous research and tested through a quantitative study with end consumers. The hypothesized relationships were tested using structural equation modelling.

The results obtained from this study show that the perceived quality associated with the intrinsic attributes of organic food mediates a positive influence of life equilibrium on consumers’ organic food purchase intentions. The study also confirms that life equilibrium mediates the effects of health consciousness on the evaluation of intrinsic and extrinsic food quality attributes.

The theoretical contributions of the paper lie in uncovering the complex relationships that exist among health consciousness, life equilibrium, perceived organic food quality dimensions and purchase intentions and providing new evidence showing which perceived intrinsic organic food quality dimensions are relevant in shaping consumers’ purchase intentions.

The research results suggest that organic food managers should focus on developing stronger value propositions that are based more on intrinsic food quality characteristics and less on extrinsic ones.

This study recognizes the relevance of life equilibrium as a specific consumer lifestyle form, which drives organic food consumption through extrinsic and intrinsic food quality attributes.

By applying the logic of the resource-based view and process-based internationalisation theory, this study aims to provide a better understanding of the effects of product innovation capability on the export scope of firms based in developing countries and the role of export experience as a facilitating mechanism.

Using survey data obtained from three developing countries, two main research hypotheses were empirically tested: a quadratic relationship exists between product innovation capability and export scope and export experience has a moderating effect in this relationship.

Product innovation capability and export scope have a U-shaped relationship, and export experience exerts a moderating effect. The greater the export experience is, the more the relationship between product innovation and export scope changes, taking on a more inverted U-shaped form.

Firms based in developing countries need to catch-up on innovation capabilities before being able to succeed in international markets. Managers must be aware that initial investments in product innovation could not pay off immediately and that significant additional efforts might be needed to obtain noteworthy results in terms of international expansion.

This study is among the first to focus on the curvilinear relationship between product innovation capability and export scope for firms based in developing countries while accounting for the moderating role of firms’ export experience.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the curvilinear effects of firm innovativeness (i.e. product, organisational and marketing innovation) on international expansion as well as the effect of expansion on performance in the developing countries (DCs) setting.

Research hypotheses are tested using survey data obtained from firms located in four South-East European DCs. Covariance-based structural equation modelling is used to test the proposed conceptual framework.

Empirical findings support the hypothesised U-shaped relationship between product innovation and organisational innovation and the level of international expansion of firms in developing markets. The authors found an inverse U-shaped relationship between marketing innovation and the level of international expansion. Furthermore, the existence of a strong positive link between the level of international expansion and firm performance is also confirmed.

While this research utilises a sample of firms from a homogenous group of DCs, further research could use a more heterogeneous sample and thus control the model for various contingency effects (e.g. environment turbulence, market structure and competitive dynamics).

When it comes to product and organisational innovation, international expansion is achieved only with a higher level of innovativeness. On the contrary, beyond a certain level, further investments in marketing innovation do not have additional positive effects on international expansion.

This study is one of the first that explicitly focuses on examining the non-linear effects of innovativeness on international expansion in the DC context.

The purpose of this study is to explore the linkages among emotional intelligence, relational selling behavior and salesperson performance. Although existing research acknowledges the importance of emotional facets in business relationships, the role of emotional intelligence is poorly understood in the literature on salesperson performance.

Two data sets from business-to-business salespeople in various industrial and service sectors were analyzed with structural equation modeling. Mediation hypotheses were cross validated through a bootstrapping approach with bias-corrected confidence estimates.

The results suggest that two focal types of selling behaviors – namely, adaptive selling and customer-oriented selling – fully mediate the positive relationship between emotional intelligence and salesperson performance.

The study offers new insights to sales and marketing managers on how individual capabilities (such as emotional intelligence) can be transformed into high sales performance.

Drawing on the ability view of emotional intelligence and highlighting its conative facet, the current research posits that emotional intelligence affects salesperson performance through relational selling behaviors.

This paper aims to evaluate the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on startups performance and the moderating effects played by several resilience-related startup characteristics during times of crisis.

To achieve this, 94 Brazil-based startups were surveyed, and multivariate data techniques (PLS-SEM) were applied.

The results show that despite the startups performance having been affected by the pandemic crisis, the response measures, when influenced by the resilience characteristics of these companies, moderated this effect. Furthermore, our findings suggest the future challenges to be faced by these organisations in the post-pandemic period.

Proposing a framework, our survey research contributes to the dynamic capabilities theory by showing that startups resilience is linked to the micro-foundations of sensing (e.g. innovation systems, resilience culture, pivoting practices, innovativeness products), seizing (e.g. leadership/focused skills, people development and selection, agility, clear vision of business process) and reconfiguring capabilities.

Not only for theory, but this paper also contributes insights and guidelines for business practice in the face of challenges arising from times of crisis. By demonstrating the positive effect of early response measures based on resilience, our findings provide genuine managerial input that can help managers, funders and decision-makers in these companies operations against turbulent crises early on, thereby supporting the traction phase and sustaining their performance.

Previous research has examined the effects of the COVID-19 crisis in several sectors and perspectives. However, this study is the first to empirically test and clarify how the resilience and singularities of these new business models based on innovation could react to the changes caused by the pandemic.