It is a reality that advancement of Information Technology revolutionized the business practices and strategies of entire industries. The field of higher education is not an exception to this phenomenon. Colleges and universities around the world are investing considerable amount of money to create Information Technology resources that meet their student's and faculty's instructional needs. While universities encourage their faculties to adopt the new technologies for their preparation and delivery of classes, various other factors influence the integration or resistance of acceptance of these technologies. Age, highest education earned, teaching experience, computer competency, prior computer experience, availability of technology, Institutional support etc. are examples of these factors. Based

Medical tourism is growing in many parts of the world. As such, it should not be surprising that there is a growing body of literature focusing on the nature of scope of this tourism sector. One subset of this literature involves the motivations that tourists have to travel outside their home country for medical care. To develop a better understanding of these motivations, this study investigates the motivators most commonly used in medical tourism research and classifies them with regard to whether they are push or pull motivators. The results reveal that some of the most commonly used pull motivators include lower medical costs, service quality, international accreditation of the medical facilities, and shorter waiting times, while the least commonly used include reputation of the medical practitioners and tourists' social and cultural familiarities with the destinations. With regard to push motivators, the most commonly used are recommendations from friends, doctors, and family, inadequate insurance coverage, and desire for privacy and confidentiality of treatments. The least commonly used are lack of treatment options and distrust in home-country healthcare systems. The study concludes with a discussion of the managerial implications of these results and provides recommendations for further research in the areas of medical tourism.

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Japan is experiencing significant growth in inbound tourist numbers, with this expected to continue. This research examines the effects of this increase on the Japanese retail sector. Tourist survey data are examined, and the level of interest and tactical marketing activity from the retail sector in targeting tourists is analyzed using a content analysis of national press sources. These findings are viewed through the lens of the literature on tourist shoppers and implications for marketing managers are discussed. Findings suggest retailers need to become more sophisticated in their marketing strategies in order to effectively meet the needs of inbound tourists.

This study examines the persuasion process involved in social media marketing (SMM), particularly in the higher education sector. Based on the theoretical foundations of the information adoption model, a conceptual model of elaboration of SMM communication is developed and tested. The self-administered survey conducted among a sample of international student travellers in New Zealand examines the influence of argument quality, source credibility, audience involvement and audience engagement on their attitude formation and decision-making. The study particularly examines the mediating effects of audience involvement and engagement in SMM communication. Results based on structural equation modelling suggest that social media content quality is a significant predictor of online users’ transportation, identification and parasocial interaction effects. Despite there being additional evidence to support the arguments over social media, source credibility is found to be a strong influencer of international student traveller’s cognitive, emotional and behavioural engagement dimensions. Further, it is evident from the study that there is a strong correlation between cognitive engagement and attitude formation in SMM. Implications for tourism marketers in terms of SMM strategies are discussed.