Influencer marketing furthers the goals of relationship marketing. Companies use influencers to advertise their products through social networks such as Instagram. This digital advertising is aimed at shifting the company’s goals from customer acquisition to retention and commitment. While several articles provide interesting advances analyzing social media and sustainability goals, research about influencer types and their impact on engagement preserving corporate sustainability is limited. Thus, the objectives of this study are: (1) Select general influencer traits as positive characteristics in promoting a product; (2) analyze them for micro and macro influencer scenarios; (3) explore potential differences in their adequacy determining customer engagement and preserving corporate sustainability. Credibility, pleasantness, and emotions are the criteria analyzed through multivariate analysis applied over two independent samples of followers. Pleasantness and appearance in the macro influencer scenario and perceived integrity in that of the micro influencer appear to conflict with the desired transparency of the message, while transmission of emotions plays an essential role in both scenarios. This is a very important finding. Companies should assess candidate influencers’ emotional projection skills, in addition to evaluating the brand sponsorship costs and defining the target audience for the advertisement, always under the premise of preserving corporate sustainability.

Purpose: There is a lack of research proving how electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) is a valuable source of information in the hospitality industry for developing hotels' intellectual capital. To fill this gap, this study aims to examine hotel managers' decision-making processes regarding the acceptance and management of eWOM and its impact on the Italian hotel ecosystem.Design/methodology/approach: This work takes advantage of the previous contributions to present a hotel's decision-making process model regarding structural capital. It includes eWOM as a context variable and changes implemented as a dependent variable in a comprehensive model. The structural equation modelling applies to a database obtained through a survey addressed to Italian hotel managers.Findings: The results show that eWOM plays an essential role in managers' motivations to explain hotel changes implementation. The hotel leverages eWOM information and interaction through structural, relational and human capital to enhance products, services and strategies.Research limitations/implications: This work contributes to the extant literature by providing a comprehensive framework to explain the consequences of eWOM knowledge management from the intellectual capital view in the Italian hotel ecosystem.Practical implications: For practitioners, this research demonstrates how hotel managers should accept and manage eWOM knowledge through intellectual capital to make determinant decisions that improve hotel performance.Originality/value: There is a scarcity of research on modelling the acceptability and management of eWOM in the hotel ecosystem from practitioners' perspectives. This work is the first attempt to determine how eWOM knowledge management boosts hotel intellectual capital and improves service innovation and performance.

To manage their competitive goals, e-tourism service companies, in direct and in indirect channels respectively, need to know the antecedents of customer loyalty. Customer loyalty, generated by satisfaction in its various forms, is the cornerstone of the company’s assets and financial sustainability. Current literature does not provide a comparative analysis on this issue. To fill this gap, this research presents a model that includes customer satisfaction and participation as the main drivers of customer loyalty. The empirical research relies on one survey conducted by a market research company addressed to Internet users in Spain with experience in online purchases of tourism products. The estimation method is 3SLS (Three-Stage Least Squares), a simultaneous equations model applied to the database obtained. The results reveal a different potential of the two types of e-channels in producing higher levels of loyalty through customer participation. Increasing the participation of customers in indirect e-tourism channels results in higher returns on loyalty while the impact is lower in the direct channels. These findings are especially interesting for tourism service providers.

Las últimas décadas se han caracterizado por un rápido desarrollo de tecnologías de la información y la comunicación (TIC). Este fenómeno ha sido aprovechado con especial intensidad por las empresas del sector turístico, afectando a las funciones de distribución y comercialización de sus productos/servicios y generando cambios en su sistema de distribución. Desde la revisión de la literatura y el análisis cualitativo, esta investigación identifica tres criterios de dichos cambios: la estructura del sistema, la posición de poder de los operadores y los procesos productivos y productos-servicios turísticos. La aplicación de análisis factorial, exploratorio y confirmatorio, sobre una base de datos de intermediarios turísticos españoles, permite validar un modelo causa-efecto para cada criterio de cambio. Los resultados sitúan en una posición ventajosa a los intermediarios virtuales mayoristas, mientras que los movimientos en número de intermediarios tradicionales y proveedores no se perciben como relevantes. The last few decades have been characterized by the rapid development of information and communication technologies (ICT). This phenomenon has been particularly intensively used by the tourism industry, affecting the functions of distribution and marketing of its products/services and generating changes in its distribution system. Based on a review of the literature and qualitative analysis, this study identifies three criteria for these changes: the structure of the system, the position held by operators, and the production processes and product-service resorts. The application of exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis to a database of Spanish tourism intermediaries allows a cause-effect model for each criterion of change to be validated. The results indicate that virtual wholesalers have an advantage in the distribution channels, whereas the movements in the number of traditional intermediaries and providers are not perceived as important.