Purpose The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the marketing literature regarding Islamic countries, in particular the United Arab Emirates (UAE), by assessing the impact of electronic word of mouth (e-WOM) on brand image and on the online purchase intentions of consumers. Design/methodology/approach Using a descriptive research approach, this study used quantitative data to assess how the online purchase intentions of consumers in the UAE are influenced by e-WOM and brand image. Findings E-WOM has a significant impact on online purchase intentions and brand image among consumers. Brand image significantly influences the online purchase intentions of consumers. Research limitations/implications The conclusions may not be generalizable because not all areas of the UAE were represented in this study. In future studies, a larger and more inclusive sample would help to overcome this limitation. Practical implications This study will help marketers to understand the power of e-WOM, an important marketing tool, and to use resources more strategically to attract new customers. Originality/value E-WOM is the most commonly used and most effective medium of sharing opinions and reviews pertaining to various products and services in the market. Understanding how it influences the purchase intentions of consumers is imperative and has strong implications for marketers.

This paper explores the role of Marketing mix strategy and its overall positive or negative impact on customer's satisfaction and loyalty. Product, price, place and promotion variables need to be managed by understating psychological traits of customers buying nature. The literary discussion highlights that customer expectations with regards to product quality, price, and product accessibility are managed by communication techniques using advertising agents. The discussion proceeds in analytical style using previous theory as base point to evaluate the role of marketing mix in relation with customer satisfaction turning into loyalty. Inductive data collection approach has proved a great help to extract gist of past research results. A large proportion of data has been gathered from secondary resources including journals, books and old research papers. The results show that all four aspects of marketing mix are equally important and any imbalance among them can damage overall results. Customers' buying intentions are greatly affected by his/her expectations in context of a product quality, price, and product accessibility. The relationship between customer satisfaction and loyalty depends on the elimination of perception gap, service gap, operational gap and behavioural gap that needs to be managed by giving focused attention to these matters. This paper reviews prior literature and proposes to think carefully to use marketing mix strategy to met customer expectations by eliminating any communication or perception gaps that further extend customer loyalty.

PurposeThe aim of the study is to examine the impact of the big data analytics capabilities (BDAC) on the organizational performance. The study also examines the mediating role of ambidexterity and the moderating role of business value of big data (BVBD) analytics in the relationship between the big data analytics capabilities and the organizational performance.Design/methodology/approachThis study collected primary data based on a questionnaire survey among the large manufacturing firms operating in UAE. A total of 650 questionnaires were distributed among the manufacturing firms and 295 samples were used for final data analysis. The survey was conducted from September to November in 2019, and data were analyzed based on partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).FindingsThe big data analysis (BDA) scalability is supported by the findings on the performance of firm and its determinants such as system, value of business and quality of information. The roles of business value as a moderator and ambidexterity as mediator are found significant. The results reveal that there is a need for managers to consider the business value and quality dynamics as crucial strategic objectives to achieve high performance of the firm.Research limitations/implicationsThe study has significant policy implication for practitioners and researchers for understanding the issues related to big data analytics.Originality/valueThis is an original study based on primary data from UAE manufacturing firms.

Purpose This paper aims to systematically review how corporations are increasingly using social media to strategically disseminate information to investors, including different research tracks, then identify the gaps to propose future research opportunities. Design/methodology/approach The authors searched for relevant scholarly work on Scopus and Google Scholar databases published during the period 2000–2020 in English. Both quantitative and qualitative papers were reviewed. Articles were filtered based on their relevance to the study's goal, resulting in the selection of 84 articles. A total of 16 articles were selected for inclusion in the systematic review. Findings In light of the existing studies’ limitations, this paper derives and summarizes 16 leading future research tracks. Results indicated that corporations could use social media to reduce information asymmetry between managers and investors. Nevertheless, social media for information disclosure purposes is used in a strategic way, whereby only positive news and voluntary information are disseminated. Research limitations/implications The implications for investors are that they can make better decisions by engaging in the process of “the wisdom of crowd,” which is facilitated by reciprocal communication. The implications for corporations are that sharing earning information through social networking platforms presents them with an opportunity to effectively manage their investors by reducing negative perceptions and increasing market response. Originality/value As far as we know, this is the first paper that uses a systematic literature review over the social media research field.

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