Tourism studies pay relatively little attention to the importance of reflexivity arid metacognition. This article highlights the integral importance of explicitly considering reflexivity and metacognition issues as part of the research process when studying pro-poor tourism (PPT). Hence, the paper presents a reflexive and metacognitive account of the challenges and obstacles encountered while undertaking ethnographic fieldwork in PPT. Drawing on the first author's research experiences in Vietnam with informal tourism workers, it reflects the positional, ethical, and methodological challenges faced during and after the fieldwork. This article is the first to provide a critical reflection on fieldwork in PPT, thereby adding to the conceptual recognition of the importance of reflexivity and metacognition in tourism studies overall. It also shares deeper insights into the difficulties associated with research that involves poor people, whose voices remain largely absent from tourism studies.
PurposeThis study aims to broaden understanding of customer helping behaviour in the banking environment and provide strategic direction for much-needed further research regarding its role and management within the customer service journey.Design/methodology/approachGift-giving literature was further explored to identify plausible characteristics of customer helping behaviour in the banking environment.FindingsCustomers' acts of helping could be complex in nature and may involve multiple actors, including customer helpers, gatekeepers, and other members of customer helpers' networks. Moreover, customer helpers and their helping networks may operate in both offline and online environments, in various stages of the service experiences, and ultimately in the customer journeys. Furthermore, the help customers provide to other customers could be framed by socially constructed arrangements that seem to be (1) dynamic in nature, (2) comprising of joint efforts by multiple actors, and (3) within diverse and interlinked helping environments. Accordingly, several research implications for the banking environment are identified.Originality/valueKey to services in the banking environment may be the complex and synthesised helping systems among customers that evidently could affect product adoption, use, and customer loyalty of customers receiving help throughout the service experiences and customer journeys. Accordingly, guided by gift-giving literature, the current paper sets the research agenda.
Our research study investigates how expressions and acts of kindness are leveraged through non-monetary value exchange practices to improve individual and community well-being when money was scarce. A qualitative netnographic study was conducted to examine the non-monetary value exchange practices amongst members of the Barter for Better Fiji platform. Data were collected through online observation and participation, conversational interviews, and archival and netnographic methods. The interpretation of the data revealed that Barter for Better Fiji members leveraged an ‘economy of kindness’ through three non-monetary value exchange practices (i.e. bartering, near-money exchange and donating) to improve individual and community well-being. The marketing theory and practice implications of leveraging expressions and acts of kindness through value exchange practices are discussed.
This paper presents an integrative review of how social marketing principles and practices have been conceptualised and applied in tourism studies. A systematic literature search was conducted, which found 41 relevant tourism-related journal articles published from 1971 to January 2024. Thirty-six articles self-identified as social marketing, while five studies did not self-identify as social marketing. Findings show most tourism studies conceptualise social marketing from a downstream or micro- perspective, seeking to influence behaviour change in individual tourists. Studies applying an upstream or systems perspective in tourism are rare, indicating opportunities for future research in tourism to align approaches with contemporary social marketing practice. Often theory and model use are not reported, making it challenging to identify the requisite key success factors for effective social marketing interventions. Not only are the impacts of interventions rarely documented, but they also tend to be short-term. Long-term evaluation of interventions, particularly at the macro-level, is missing. A model of social marketing application in tourism is suggested that integrates approaches across the downstream, community, upstream, and macro- levels. Implications for further utilisation of social marketing to achieve sustainable tourism are discussed.
Several models have previously been proposed, suggesting factors influencing customers’ citizenship behaviours against the background of the need to care for the environment. The current research sets out to contribute to the conversation by providing an integrated understanding of the extent to which the social factor, subjective norm and the personal factors internal values and attitudes, framed by VABH, may influence green customer citizenship behaviours. A sample of 444 green customers provided insight into these phenomena. The findings indicate that internal values influence green attitudes, which motivate green customer citizenship behaviours. Subjective norm influences both green attitudes and green customer citizenship behaviours and contributed to the largest portion of the variance in green customer citizenship behaviours. Ultimately, the findings present a novel solution for promoting actual green customer citizenship behaviours, through the VABH and additionally advance understanding of the important role other customers perform in influencing green customer citizenship behaviours.
Purpose This study aims to examine customer helping and advocacy behaviours within dyadic financial service relationships involving customers and fellow customer helpers. Design/methodology/approach The gift-giving literature was used to propose a customer-to-customer interaction model, which was tested and cross-validated among electronic banking customers in South Africa ( n = 404) and Australia ( n = 244). Self-administered questionnaires were distributed to respondents who are users of electronic banking services and who previously received help with the service from a fellow customer. Data analysis included multi-group structural equation modelling. Findings The findings support the view that selected source credibility dimensions may influence greater affective commitment towards fellow customer helpers at various levels. Subsequently, further altruistic gift-giving in the form of customer helping and advocacy behaviours may result from higher levels of affective commitment. Feeling secure in their relationships with fellow customer helpers, customer recipients of help are likely to further socialise other customers who may share a common interest in the service category (e.g. electronic banking), but do not necessarily support the financial service provider of the customer. Originality/value The findings extend the conceptual domain of affective commitment and shed light on the factors contributing to the development of strengthened bonds between customers and fellow customer helpers within dyadic financial service relationships. Additionally, greater financial service socialisation and use may be achieved when the helping and advocacy behaviours of customer helpers are not restricted to a specific service provider. Subsequently, the current investigation advances knowledge of the underlying processes involved in motivating these desired service outcomes and behaviours.
The strength of the 'enabling environment' for development is often considered to be one of the key elements in whether development initiatives fail or succeed. Attempts to strengthen the enabling environment have resulted in a series of checklists and frameworks that imagine it largely to be fixed, static, and separated from 'beneficiaries'. In the Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) sector, there is a preoccupation with fostering an optimal enabling environment that will result naturally in 'ideal' and formalised user participation, which will in turn lead to universal access to water and sanitation. In this paper, we challenge this simplistic and linear view of an enabling environment that is perpetuated by checklists and frameworks. We conducted a three-and-a-half-year transdisciplinary participatory action research (PAR) project which sought to foster WASH solutions in impoverished informal settlements in Fiji, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. In a critical reflection on this project, we analyse the ways in which we both perpetuated problematic checklists and worked collaboratively with our participants to reimagine the enabling environment. We show how individuals challenged the expert-beneficiary dichotomy as they built 'practical authority' from their peers through taking action. Our study demonstrates that conceptualising the enabling environment as a dynamic ecology of actors, relationships and processes that includes the users of WASH as active participants was essential to supporting progress towards universal WASH access. We argue that working within the politics of development rather than seeking to render problems as technical was crucial to fostering WASH improvements that were determined by residents themselves and supported by stakeholders. Such an inclusive approach is essential to fully leveraging the co-productive possibilities of participation. If development practitioners and scholars are to achieve development outcomes in an equitable and participatory manner, they must shift their conceptualisation of the enabling environment as being a checklist of things 'out there' to one where they work to find their place within an ecology of participatory collectives.
The nature of work and employment relations of small Chinese migrant businesses in South Africa remains largely under-researched, despite the significant growth of these businesses since the 2000s. Based on 90 interviews with Chinese business owners and their African workers, we found that, although employment relations were largely transactional and adversarial, they sometimes also incorporated symbiotic accommodations with third-country undocumented immigrant workers and pockets of de facto responsible autonomy. Material imbalances of power were notably alleviated through workers' superior local language skills and cultural familiarity, enabling them to carve out space as intermediaries with customers and other local stakeholders to counter the power of employers. However, this autonomy is relatively small in scope, in large part due to the precarious nature of the employment and the workers' immigration status.
Purpose This paper aims to examine how social marketing intervention programmes to measure, evaluate and document social marketing impact. Design/methodology/approach A systematic review of 49 nutritional behaviour intervention programmes (2006–2020) was conducted. To examine the social marketing impact of the programmes, a logic model of social impact was used. The model comprises inputs (the resources used for an intervention programme), outputs (the direct products resulting from the use of resources), outcomes (short- to medium-term programme effects) and impacts (long-term programme effects on the individual, community or societal levels). Findings Most intervention programmes set the goal of encouraging their target audience to increase fruit and vegetable intake, choose healthy food items, drink less sugary beverages or consume low-fat diaries, while few others sought policy or systems change. Multiple criteria were used for impact evaluation (e.g. exposure and reach, changes in knowledge, awareness, attitudes, behaviours and body mass index). (Quasi) experiments were the most popular method used for impact measurement, followed by the pre-post model of impact. Positive changes were found in 33 programmes, often reported in terms of short-term outputs or outcomes. Long-term impact particularly on the broader societal level was not indicated. Originality/value This research offers a systematic review of how social marketing impact is measured, evaluated and documented. It also provides some guidance for social marketers on how to shift from a reductionist, behavioural outcome-focussed approach towards an “expansionist” impact approach that explicitly considers social marketing impacts on the quality of life of individuals, communities and societies.
This chapter examines the extent to which various stakeholders were involved and engaged in social marketing interventions that influenced and encouraged individuals to quit smoking. A systematic search of scholarly databases was conducted to identify articles published from 2009 to 2018. In total, 18 articles (reporting on 12 eligible interventions) were analysed. The results indicated that smokers (target audience) were the most frequently engaged stakeholder group, followed by health organisations and health-expert stakeholder groups. Involvement was more common in the earlier (design) stage, rather than in later stages (implementation and evaluation) of the social marketing process. The modes and methods of stakeholder involvement differed across stakeholder groups and the various stages of the interventions. Specific impacts of stakeholder involvement on intervention outcomes were reported in four interventions. Implications for social marketing theory and practice were discussed.
Guided by a "logic of the situation" approach our research investigated a problematic situation in community to identify and critically reflect on how consumer marketplaces and self-sufficiency meet consumption needs. In doing so, we reflect on how a situational understanding allowed the researchers to form a more complete view of how consumption needs were met in community through enabler-led marketplaces, community-led marketplaces and self-sufficiency. We also re-conceptualized our thinking as a more broadly conceived hybrid consumer marketplace to reflect our more complete understanding. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our more broadly conceived hybrid consumer marketplace and provide a foundation for further research into consumer marketplaces and meeting consumption needs.
Little is known about self-service socialisation and the resource integration process that may transpire when customers help other less-skilled customers with self-services. Insight into these matters is important as the process may affect other customers' skill development and ability to contribute meaningfully to value co-creation in the service ecosystem. Accordingly, this research develops a conceptual framework and four research propositions outlining customers' resource integration approaches towards other customers during socialisation and service exchange, as informed by their institutions endorsing either self-reliant or compliant practices. Insight is also provided into the extent to which the resource integration approaches (transpiring against the background of customers' engagement with firms' self-service resources) may enable other customers to participate in meaningful service exchanges in the service ecosystem. Effectively, the framework advances business understandings of the distinct roles that customers may perform when socialising other customers about self-services.
Purpose In the absence of direct employee involvement, customers sharing knowledge and know-how with other customers during self-service encounters is key for promoting service quality. This study assessed the extent to which customer support and help during self-service encounters could simply be explained by multiple motivations of the social exchange theory. Design/methodology/approach A survey approach was followed. The model was tested among 258 electronic banking customers in South Africa and later cross-validated among 253 electronic banking customers in Australia. Multi-group confirmatory factor analysis with country as the grouping variable, latent variable modelling and indirect tests were performed to assess interrelationships among diverse factors that may contribute to customer support and help during self-service encounters, as accounted for by motivations of the social exchange theory. Findings Adequate model fit was obtained for the combined structural model, which was based on the invariant model. Value contribution and competence affirmation, pleasure derived from helping, reciprocity and reputation enhancement are relevant motivations of the social exchange theory that may impact customer support and help through knowledge sharing. Research implications - The study provides a simplified and more cohesive explanation of customers' motivations for engaging in customer support and helping behaviours during self-service encounters. Practical implications - Service providers seeking guidance on knowledge sharing among customers, which may lead to greater service quality, should benefit from this research. Originality/value The findings contribute to greater understanding of social exchanges by customers who provide support and help to other customers during self-service encounters, and that ultimately may affect service quality.
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the dynamic nature of behaviour change over time and to gain insights into the effectiveness of social marketing efforts at three different intervention points under three different delay time conditions. Design/methodology/approach A system dynamics simulation modelling approach was used. Findings The findings showed that the effectiveness of social marketing interventions at different points of intervention and delay times is dependent on complex dynamic system interactions and feedback loops. Research limitations/implications As the dynamic simulation model was an abstraction or simplified representation, it was only useful to gain insights into generalised patterns of behaviour over time. Practical implications The paper provided practical guidance to social marketers' intent on gaining insights into where to do and when to do social marketing rather than how to do social marketing. Originality/value The paper provided theoretical and practical insights into the temporal nature of behaviour change and the effectiveness of social marketing interventions in influencing behaviour over time.
Marketing agility is an example of dynamic capability that has significant influence on ordinary capabilities leading to superior financial performance. This makes it of interest to marketing managers. Yet the way in which this capability aligns with turbulent market environments to simultaneously influence ordinary capabilities and performance has not been adequately examined and empirically tested. This study seeks to close this gap by positing that marketing agility has both direct and indirect (through innovation capability which is an ordinary capability) impacts on financial performance. However, these relationships are moderated by market turbulence to yield both mediated moderation and moderated mediation effects. The study was undertaken in the Chinese food-processing industry where a sample of 518 companies participated. This provides an opportunity to validate theory developed in the western economies and to generalize some previous findings. Contrary to received literature we found that the impact of innovation capability on financial performance is stronger under low market turbulence; and that market turbulence moderates the indirect relationship between marketing agility and financial performance. The indirect effect is stronger when market turbulence is low than when it is high. Implications for managers and academia are discussed and limitations of the study are pointed out.
PurposeSocial marketing has gained widespread recognition as a means of motivating behaviour change in individuals for societal good. Many opinions have been shared regarding its potential to affect society or systems-wide change, leading to the macro-or systems social marketing (SSM) concepts and ideas. This paper aims to critically appraise the SSM literature, identify key features and highlight gaps for future research.Design/methodology/approachA search was conducted of peer-reviewed SSM articles published from 2000 to March 2018 inclusive. A number of online databases were mined, including but not limited to Google, Google Scholar, Scopus, PubMed, Cochrane and Medline. Key social marketing outlets (Social Marketing Quarterly and Journal of Social Marketing) were browsed manually. In total, 28 SSM articles were identified.FindingsSSM adopts a dynamic systems thinking approach; it is an orientation, not a theory or model; it is multi-method; and it recognises that intervention can occur on multiple levels. Yet, greater attention should be given to the complexities of the systems context and the power structures and relations that exist between stakeholders. Significant issues also include stakeholder voice and participation, the use and reporting of theories and models, the measurement of long-term intervention outcomes and the undesirable impacts of SSM.Originality/valueThis paper identifies issues that need to be addressed if social marketing is to become a more system-oriented means to positively influence societal change. Implications for theoretical and practical development of the social marketing field are provided.