The co-creation of value is emerging as the new frontier in marketing. Value creation is now conceptualized as shared by both producers and consumers, making the terminology separating these roles increasingly archaic and obsolete. To date, the literature has emphasized this process primarily from the firm's vantage point. Current understandings point toward a balanced, shared, harmonious relationship between producers and consumers, where controlling the co-creation process with consumers ensures a predictable and satisfactory outcome for a company. Because the consumer perspective has received less theoretical and empirical attention, we conducted an in-depth investigation that details the consumers' experiences of co-creation within the context of a brand community. What we found is very different from a balanced, controlled process depicted in the literature. Based on these findings, we argue that the notions of control and predictability that have served as the established foundation for marketing theory and practice may require serious revision in light of examining how consumers create value. Because of this, our data lead us to propose some new ideas about managing brand experiences in increasingly interconnected and chaotic environments, where control is rapidly shifting more to the side of consumers, and no one now holds any sort of majority control.

Purpose Advances in technology and in subsequent guest-related amenities have the potential to improve the guest experience and also increase both guestroom revenues and ancillary room revenues. Innovative technologies will be one of the prime differentiators of hotel companies in the twenty-first century. However, it is important for hoteliers to answer questions such as which technology amenities do their guests desire when choosing overnight accommodations? Further, what are the importance levels assigned by guests of these various technology amenities? This study aims to answer the question of how leisure travelers may differ or be similar to business travelers with regard to in-room technology amenities. Design/methodology/approach The target population of this study consisted of 2,500 US residents whose email addresses were randomly drawn from a national database company. A series of t-tests and ANOVA were conducted to answer the research questions. Findings High-speed internet access and guest device connectivity were perceived more important by business travelers than by leisure travelers. Research limitations/implications Recognizing guests’ technology needs and answering those needs are important for hotel operators to remain competitive. While some segments perceive more value in certain technologies, for others it might be an indifferent amenity. Practical implications The amount of time guests spend in their rooms directly correlates to increased revenues from in-room dining, in-room amenities offered and, in general, all pay-for-use products and services such as the internet and movies. Therefore, with the right assortment and offering of technology amenities, hotels will increase their revenues from these ancillary revenues. Moreover, a hotel property with the right mixture of desired in-room amenities and services can charge higher rates for their guestroom sales. Originality/value The results of this study provide insights into the changing attitudes toward in-room entertainment technology that many hotel developers should take note of.

Based on the experience economy concept, this study develops a model that incorporates guest experiences, satisfaction, return intention, word of mouth (WOM), and personality traits. Quasiexperimental design has been used with the manipulation of different experience scenarios. This allows for the testing of causal relationships between the different types of experiences and the three dependent variables of satisfaction, return intention, and WOM. The final elements of the proposed model are personality traits measured using the “Big Five” model. MANOVA was utilized to test the effect of manipulations on the dependent variables. Additionally, the moderating effect of openness to experience and extraversion was tested. The second stage involved the creation of a structural equation model that tested the relationship between four different experience dimensions.

A fixed-target approach to high-throughput room-temperature serial synchrotron crystallography with oscillation is described. Patterned silicon chips with microwells provide high crystal-loading density with an extremely high hit rate. The microfocus, undulator-fed beamline at CHESS, which has compound refractive optics and a fast-framing detector, was built and optimized for this experiment. The high-throughput oscillation method described here collects 1–5° of data per crystal at room temperature with fast (10° s−1) oscillation rates and translation times, giving a crystal-data collection rate of 2.5 Hz. Partial datasets collected by the oscillation method at a storage-ring source provide more complete data per crystal than still images, dramatically lowering the total number of crystals needed for a complete dataset suitable for structure solution and refinement – up to two orders of magnitude fewer being required. Thus, this method is particularly well suited to instances where crystal quantities are low. It is demonstrated, through comparison of first and last oscillation images of two systems, that dose and the effects of radiation damage can be minimized through fast rotation and low angular sweeps for each crystal.

A sexual health disparity exists among U.S. Latinas, who have rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) that are more than double their peers. Previous research has identified acculturation and religiosity as key social determinants of sexual health, but such findings have been inconsistent, with some researchers identifying protective benefits and other researchers noting increased risk. The purpose of this study was to explain how intrinsic and extrinsic religiosity as well as acculturation predict risky sexual behavior using Structural Equation Modeling of a nationally representative sample of self-identified Latinas (N=1,168) from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health. Results indicated that intrinsic religiosity and acculturation assert protective effects while extrinsic religiosity increases risk. Recommendations for policy, intervention, and future research are offered.