Tacit knowledge about customers held by contact personnel is a priority for better satisfying customer needs and creating added value. This research project seeks to develop a model to analyse the impact of tacit knowledge on loyalty for rural tourism lodgings. A questionnaire was applied to the clients of rural tourism lodgings who had either already consumed rural tourism services at least once or were then currently consuming such services. By applying structural equation models, the results demonstrate how tacit knowledge does improve the performance of employees in engaging in affective bonds and enables better understanding of the needs and expectations of customers. Furthermore, the results confirm how tacit knowledge about customers represents a resource able to promote customer loyalty and thus a very strong potential source of competitive advantage.

An increasing interest in relationship marketing (RM) has occurred recently. RM has been presented as a strategic response to firms in the attainment of competitive advantages through the creation of interdependence, trust, and commitment between the firm and the customer. RM is important for firms in general and for service firms, particularly those characterized by high interpersonal contact, in which the service is inherently more relational. Tacit knowledge of employees as a result of interactions could allow a firm to obtain and maintain customer satisfaction in visits or/and subsequent uses. In this research we discuss a set of theoretical implications for service firms in which different relationships between tacit knowledge and the elements of RM are shown. In addition we argue that tacit knowledge should be seen as a source of sustainable competitive advantage in RM.

Since the alignment of the Principles for Responsible Management Education (PRME) for responsible education in management with the SDGs, both launched by the United Nations, the role of Higher Education Institutions (HEI) has become a fundamental pillar for the academic training of future leaders to contribute to the architecture of a sustainable society. However, the academic literature focuses primarily on educational institutional analysis rather than on student outcomes. University students not only reflect a growing awareness of environmental, social, and economic challenges but also display attitudes that influence their personal and professional choices. This paper focuses on a qualitative survey oriented to the attitudes toward sustainability of 129 university marketing students, carried out in two universities in the Iberian Peninsula (University of Almeria—Spain and University of Beira Interior—Portugal). By means of a t-student analysis between the two sample groups, it was analyzed whether the attitudes of students from both universities differ from different perspectives, the personal valuation of the importance of a more sustainable society, the specific integration of sustainability in business, the preference of training toward PRME-oriented educational organizations, or the labor insertion as a worker in sustainable companies. The results of this work can guide academic institutions in the evaluation of their efforts in curricular changes, course redesign, pedagogical proposals, and adjustments in mission and institutional objectives.

Sustainability teaching has come to the fore as a foundation for addressing the unprecedented challenges that the planet and the society face. However, the effectiveness of higher education institutions (HEI) in their pivotal role in educating and instructing the students who will occupy leadership, management, and marketing positions in the future has been questioned. The objective of this study is to examine the performance of sustainability teaching based on an importance-performance analysis of the perceptions of marketing students in two HEI: the University of Almería and the University of Beira Interior. We analyze whether students differ in which learning approaches they consider important for integrating sustainability into their competencies, whether they consider them effective, and how their opinions differ depending on the HEI they come from. This study contributes to guiding universities in their actions to ensure that graduates are prepared to navigate the complex landscape of sustainability in their upcoming work career.