Purpose: Travel companies are increasingly hosting online communities to extend their initiatives of customer relationship management and gain additional insight into their business. While the benefits to companies from hosting online communities are clear, another closely related issue has not been given comparative attention: Why do customers engage voluntarily in online travel communities? The purpose of this paper is to answer the question by developing and testing a conceptual model that exploring the influence of socialization interactions on customer engagement with the community. Design/methodology/approach: Hypotheses were tested by applying structural equation modeling based on survey data collected from an online travel community (n=665). Findings: The results supported the research hypotheses and demonstrated that socialization interactions (i.e. information and social exchange) in the online travel community are important catalysts for customer engagement. Originality/value: The contribution of this study is twofold. First, from a theoretical perspective, it offers new insights into the conceptualization of customer engagement and its antecedents in the context of the online travel community. Second, from a pragmatic perspective, the conceptual model derived from this research aids practitioners in stimulating customer engagement from the perspective of socialization interactions.

Drawing from social resource-social capital theory, this paper aims to clarify and characterize the role of harmonious learner–instructor and learner–learner relationships in promoting experience and retaining learners in online learning environments. Hypotheses are tested by applying a structural equation model and the data are collected from a survey of online learning website (n = 539). The results suggest that harmonious relationships have a positive impact on learners’ experience (i.e. perceived performance, enjoyment and social presence), which, in turn, strengthen learners’ continuous intention to use the e-learning platform. And learners’ expertise moderates the relationships between harmonious relationships and learner experience. Based on the analysis results, this study can provide educational institutions with useful tactics to retain learners in the e-learning environments.

Purpose: The social media expands the scope of museum marketing. Through the social media marketing, visitors get a rich and colorful visual experience, and the museum can quickly and effectively convey various information to visitors. At present, the research on social media in the museum industry mainly focuses on the level of technology use, while the research on the marketing application of social media is relatively scarce, especially from the empirical perspective. This study constructs a conceptual model to identify the impact of SMMAs on visitor experience in the context of the museum industry through the empirical analysis. Design/methodology/approach: A survey is conducted with a total of 538 visitors who follow the fan page of the Palace Museum Weibo. The collected data are analyzed via structural equation modeling. Findings: The results show that SMMAs have significant effects on social presence and social support, which in turn significantly affect flow state. Moreover, the results demonstrate that social presence and social support partially mediates the relationships between SMMAs and flow state. Originality/value: The contribution of this study is twofold. First, from a theoretical perspective, it offers new insights into the conceptualization of social media marketing. Second, from a pragmatic perspective, the results are helpful to guide museums how to carry out social media marketing activities. Peer review: The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-12-2020-0564