Purpose: Along with traditional marketing channels, social media outlets are integrated as a part of the marketing mix. Social media has changed the dynamics of interaction between companies and consumers that foster this relationship. Managing brand fan pages on social networking sites is a specific way the companies are using. Customers can become brand fans on these pages and indicate that they like the brand posts, share on their wall or simply comment. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact of cultural differences on the effectiveness of social media metrics and scientifically tested brand engagement in terms of commitment, loyalty and brand recommendations. Design/methodology/approach: The authors analysed 1,922 brand posts from five different brands of a single product category in three different countries. Ordinary least square and hierarchical moderation regression was used to test the hypotheses. Findings: Results show that all determinants are not equally suitable for enhancement of number of likes, comments and shares. More specifically, vivid and interactive brand post determinants enhance the number of likes. Furthermore, interactive brand posts enhance the number of comments while vivid brand posts enhance number of shares. Moreover, impact and intensity vary across different cultures. Originality/value: Brand fan page moderators can obtain guidance from the research in formulating their social media marketing strategies in order to decide which post determinants to place on the fan page.

Historically, infectious diseases have been the leading cause of human psychosomatic strain and death tolls. This research investigated the recent threat of COVID-19 contagion, especially its impact among frontline paramedics treating patients with COVID-19, and their perception of self-infection, which ultimately increases their agonistic behaviour. Based on the stressor–strain–outcome paradigm, a research model was proposed and investigated using survey-based data through a structured questionnaire. The results found that the perceived threat of COVID-19 contagion (emotional and cognitive threat) was positively correlated with physiological anxiety, depression, and emotional exhaustion, which led toward agonistic behaviour. Further, perceived social support was a key moderator that negatively affected the relationships between agonistic behaviour and physiological anxiety, depression, and emotional exhaustion. These findings significantly contributed to the current literature concerning COVID-19 and pandemic-related effects on human behaviour. This study also theorized the concept of human agonistic behaviour, which has key implications for future researchers.

The participation of mobile technology could be a massive development to ensure the citizen’s safety by linking various government agencies under the umbrella of the m-government (m-govt) security response system (SRS). Based on the novel phenomenon of m-govt SRS, this research provides a comprehensive theoretical model to discover citizens’ adoption intention. Our findings proved that transparency and trust mediate the influence of information quality characteristics and channel characteristics, while perceived usefulness mediate the influence of awareness on citizens’ intentions to use; which reduce uncertainty and enhance citizens’ willingness to adopt the m-govt SRS. This study proved that perceived response time is a key construct in the context of providing m-govt SRS to enhance citizens’ intention to use. The outcomes make a noteworthy contribution to theoretical literature and having practical implications regarding understanding various aspects of m-govt SRS adoption among citizens, which provide the broadest view to government agencies for successful implementation of these services.

The purpose of the study was to analyze the factors affecting the acceptance and adoption of e-Health applications among African expats in China from the patient’s perspective. This research used extended technology acceptance model (TAM) with the addition of privacy and trust. The survey method with the structured questionnaire was used to collect data from more than 300 African expats in three Tier 1 cities of China. Hypotheses were tested using partial least squares (PLS) method, a structural equation modeling (SEM) based statistical technique. The results show that perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use (PEU), and privacy have significant effects on intention to use (INT) e-Health technologies. Moreover, PEU endorses positive impact on perceived usefulness. The results also revealed that gender was partially associated with the acceptance and use of e-Health technologies. However, surprisingly, trust had an insignificant effect on INT of e-Health. The results of the current research provide the foundation for the development of policies and strategies for the enhancement of e-Health services to African expats in China. Moreover, the acceptance model of current study can be modified easily because of its generic approach for the investigation of adoption of e-Health services among other developing countries’ expats in China.