Despite the lack of consensus in existing literature regarding the societal functions of advertising, brands have been increasingly incorporating aspects of their stance on key social issues and/or contributions to societal wellbeing, into advertising messages. However, notable failures of contemporary societal advertising campaigns indicate that their effectiveness in achieving marketing objectives and advancing social causes remains ambiguous. To appraise the commercial and social consequences of societal advertising, the present research proceeds to examine its interrelationship with the social value system and conceptual differences with similar concepts. Although advertising is able to reflect and also reinforce a subset of existing social values, effective contribution to positive social change is likely to necessitate synergies between elements of the entire marketing process. Overall, given its risks and limitations, there is not sufficient evidence to posit that the practice of societal advertising is always for the best interest of business and society.

Purpose: By focusing on a Greek traditional learning university, during and post Covid-19 restrictions, the study aims at examining the concurrent effects of teaching and assessment format on students' academic performance. The inclusion of case studies in course assessment post Covid-19 restrictions is also expected to give a rough insight into students' employability skills and workplace readiness. Design/methodology/approach: The academic performance of 489 undergraduate students, as determined by the grades they earned, was measured in the final exams of business-to-business marketing and integrated marketing communication courses, held in January 2021 and 2022 at a Greek public university. The primary predictor variable or interest was “teaching and assessment format”, and took two values: (1) online teaching with multiple-choice assessment format (during Covid-19 restrictions) and (2) traditional classroom teaching with in-person case study and open-ended assessment format (post Covid-19 restrictions). Findings: Grades were found to be affected by the participants' year of study, the type of marketing course, in which they were examined, and the teaching and assessment format employed. Either in whole or by gender, students appear to perform significantly worse in the traditional teaching with in-person case study and open-ended questions assessment format. Practical implications: Good pedagogical practice in the use of digital technology is advised to incorporate diverse teaching tools and assessment methods. Originality/value: Examination of the concurrent effects of teaching and assessment on academic performance unveils significant variation in students' academic performance under different formats, which may be attributable to multiple reasons.

Companies have been increasingly conveying activist advertising messages to international audiences in response to persisting social ills and unsustainable business practices. Given the ambiguity surrounding the effects of international advertising, this study aims to compare the response of local consumers to a multinational brand’s standardized activist advertising strategy with creative executions adapted to the national contexts of Greece and the USA. The selected brand originates from the USA. The paper used a systematic qualitative approach and sentiment analysis using Microsoft Excel and Azure Machine Learning add-in. Analysis conducted on 1,051 user comments in January 2023 regarding two publicly accessible social media posts of a multinational haircare brand showed both similarities and differences in consumer responses. 662 comments were in English and 389 comments were in Greek. The study’s dataset was anonymized entirely and de-identified. The results indicate that consumer sentiment was largely negative in both countries. Although the relative share of negative comments was significantly higher in the USA (96.7%) than in Greece (59.4%), both groups of consumers placed their emphasis on the same themes (e.g., children and products). Therefore, they have perceived the main message similarly, irrespective of the execution differences. Overall, the findings can be attributed to strategic and tactical issues of the activist advertising campaign, as well as to sociocultural particularities of the national context. In the case of international advertising, attempts to incorporate the brand’s stance on a controversial sociopolitical issue into its advertising strategy pose significant risks to business organizations.

The study examines international tourists' satisfaction with Corfu and the factors affecting it, with the purpose of informing sustainable tourism governance and development. Primary data were collected from a sample of 237 international tourists. The findings were evaluated by a panel of key stakeholders of the Corfiot tourist industry. Overall, results suggest that excluding price level, participants demonstrated satisfaction with most aspects of Corfu's tourism product. However, they identified problems with the road network, cleanliness, and environmental protection. Bivariate and multivariate statistical analyses indicate that satisfaction is influenced by demographics, activities at the destination and perceived problems. The research demonstrates that tourists' satisfaction can be determined both prior and during their stay on the small island. Destination marketing organizations are encouraged to focus on targeting receptive tourists and introduce targeted actions to improve tourists' experience at the destination, while ensuring sustainable governance practices.

Online conversation communities have become an influential source of consumer recommendations in recent years. We propose a set of meaningful user segments which emerge from user embedding representations, based exclusively on comments’ text input. Data were collected from three popular recommendation communities in Reddit, covering the domains of book and movie suggestions. We utilized two neural language model methods to produce user embeddings, namely Doc2Vec and Sentence-BERT. Embedding interpretation issues were addressed by examining latent factors’ associations with behavioral, sentiment, and linguistic variables, acquired using the VADER, LIWC, and LFTK libraries in Python. User clusters were identified, having different levels of engagement and linguistic characteristics. The latent features of both approaches were strongly correlated with several user behavioral and linguistic indicators. Both approaches managed to capture significant variability in writing styles and quality, such as length, readability, use of function words, and complexity. However, the Doc2Vec features better described users by varying level of contribution, while S-BERT-based features were more closely adapted to users’ varying emotional engagement. Prominent segments revealed prolific users with formal, intuitive, emotionally distant, and highly analytical styles, as well as users who were less elaborate, less consistent, but more emotionally connected. The observed patterns were largely similar across communities.