The transport sector is the leading source of growing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions globally. To consider environmental degradation aspects due to transport, electric vehicles (EVs) have the prospect to lead road transport to electric mobility from conventional petroleum vehicles. Despite various eco-friendly benefits, the EV market penetration ratio is very low, especially in developing countries. The primary reason for low penetration is consumer limited motivation and knowledge about the EVs features. This paper uses a unified theory of acceptance and technology (UTAUT) model to assess consumer motivation and environmental knowledge towards EVs. This research used convenience random sampling to collect data and analyzed the results using the Partial Least Squares (PLS) method on the example of 199 respondents from Malaysia. The study results revealed that factors identified in the motivational context significantly influence consumer intentions to purchase EVs. Perceived environmental knowledge and technophilia have been included in UTAUT from a motivational perspective. Furthermore, a significant relationship between effort expectancy, social influence, technophilia, perceived environmental knowledge, and purchase intention towards electric vehicles has been observed, without performance expectancy. The study findings serve to inform policymakers and automakers to formulate effective marketing strategies to enhance consumer motivation, knowledge, and value creation for EVs in a sustainable era. Ultimately, the policies will help to encourage consumers to buy eco-friendly vehicles that will help reduce transport carbon emissions and attain sustainable development goals (SDGs).

Social media advertisement (ad) is a growing phenomenon designed to reach and engage customers. However, despite their continued adoption, less remains known regarding the effectiveness of social media ads to co-create brand value. In response to this gap, this study aims to deepen the theoretical understanding of consumer value co-creation through social media advertising value. The data were collected using purposive sampling from 286 experienced social-media users, and the model was tested using partial least square (PLS)-based structural equation modeling. The results indicate that entertainment, aesthetic appeal, interactivity, and trendiness significantly affect the adverting value of social media ads. In turn, ad value affects consumers’ intention for value co-creation. Consequently, our findings suggest the importance of social media advertising value where marketers may enhance consumer-brand engagement (CBE) by incorporating interesting content, which may encourage the customer’s interaction with the social media ads and strengthen value co-creation behavior. The results further contribute to nascent marketing literature by demonstrating that value co-creation acts as an antecedent to generating positive electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) on social media platforms to drive consumers’ online brand purchase intention.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the incidence of service failure in rendering service process during COVID-19. It further explores the outcomes of service recovery offered to customers in case of service failure. Like other businesses, webstores have also faced the challenges in their efforts to satisfy their customers during COVID-19. Service failure has increased due to unexpected circumstances produced by this pandemic. It has become necessary for the webstores to retain their dissatisfied customers by reconsidering their service strategies. Relevant data for the purpose of this study were collected through questionnaires from 383 respondents by using online channels. The online channels were exclusively employed for maintaining the safety of respondents during COVID-19. Respondents for this study were online shoppers who encountered service failure during COVID-19. The results indicated that the incidence of service failure has increased due to an increase in online shopping during COVID-19. Some customers tend to repurchase from the same webstore. On the other hand, some customers do not want to purchase again from the same seller and decided to switch to the alternative webstore. Based on the findings, new strategy for online shopping service providers was introduced. This strategy will be helpful for the online service providers to increase their profitability by retaining their dissatisfied customers. Service providers can minimize the number of customers switching to other webstores by reducing the events of service failure. Customer’s assistive intent can also be helpful for service providers to increase the efficiency of service recovery. Conducting a proper follow-up after providing service recovery can also reduce the switching of customer. It will be helpful for service providers to understand the customers’ expectations before recovery process and their feeling after getting service recovery.

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This study is aimed to identify the relative (direct) effect of online review ratings and perceived crowding on purchase intentions of a consumer. Our study also investigated the contingent effect of gender and perceived crowding between the relationship of exogenous and endogenous variables. This study was conducted in the Malaysian restaurant industry. We applied the purposive sampling technique to identify respondents, the mall intercept survey method was used for data collection. Smart PLS software was applied for data analysis (200 respondents). This study demonstrates through its results that online review ratings and perceived crowding have a positive effect on purchase intentions of a consumer. Moreover, if a consumer perceives crowding at a restaurant, this has a positive contingent effect on the relationship between review ratings and purchase intentions. This demonstrates that the consumer is more inclined to choose a restaurant with a high online review rating and has high perceived crowding at some unfamiliar place. Lastly, no evidence is found for the gender difference between review rating and purchase intentions; however, gender shows contingent effect and results confirmed that males preferred more crowded restaurants as compared to females. There are theoretical and practical implications for managers in the findings of this study.

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An effective strategy of service recovery that prevents customer defection after service failure is a powerful managerial instrument. The values that a customer associates and considers with repurchasing after service recovery has changed due to globalization. Although service recovery has been identified as a key driver to retain the customers, yet the effectiveness of service recovery is unclear. The literature did not offer a comprehensive service recovery strategy that can be implemented universally. Owing to varying comments on the effectiveness of service recovery, its generalizability is questionable. Grudge produced in the response of service failure that cannot be compensated with financial transactions. This study will check whether service recovery has any impact on customer’s repurchase intentions when customer has grudges and available substitutes. The findings of this research will help the managers and practitioners to allocate their resources in a proper way. Furthermore, this study will help to understand money or extrinsic compensation is not everything. Therefore, there will be some consideration beyond the materialist compensation. It will open up new avenues for researchers to view service recovery strategies with a different angle.

A service failure in online shopping exacerbates customers’ behaviour towards a brand/webstore. However, service recovery is deemed an instrumental factor to atone for the customer loss after a service failure. To examine this, the current study aims to analyse the relationship between service failure and its downstream effect on the future customer behavioural intentions (i.e., customers’ switching and repurchase. Moreover, this study incorporates the mediating role of service recovery between service failure and customers’ future intentions. The survey technique was employed to achieve objectives by collecting data from 364 Malaysian customers who purchased from any webstore in the last six months. Data was analysed through SPSS 24.0 and SEM-PLS 3.3.3. The results of the study revealed that service recovery has a positive impact on repurchase intention and switching intention. Furthermore, it is observed that due to cultural influences, the effect of service recovery on repurchase intention is less significant as compared to switching intention, which shows that in a specific culture, service recovery is less important than social loss. The practical implications of the study are two-fold. Firstly, the service provider should consider customers' expectations regarding service recovery. Secondly, service providers should not be limited to financial compensation only; instead, they should include non-financial compensation to retain customers from a specific culture.