The present study assessed the social media use behavior of luxury hospitality facilities and offers suggestions to improve organic post effectiveness. All five-star tourism facilities operating in Turkey were incorporated into the study and publicly available post data on Facebook accounts of 441 facilities (out of a total of 612) were examined in the high tourist season (August) for one month. Data on 2,012 Facebook posts were obtained manually and filtered down to 1,847. The collected post data were subsequently coded using a content analysis form and analyzed via ordinal regression. The results highlighted the positive effects of interactive content and vivid content as well as the significance of the content type in achieving higher interaction among followers. The facility location and category (hotel, holiday village, thermal hotel) also emerged as significant factors affecting follower interactions.

Purpose: Health-care tourism has become a major industry in the past decade. Following the increasing activity in health-care tourism, the decision-making process of consumers in choosing an international health-care facility has become increasingly important to the related parties. The present study aims to offer a holistic model of international health-care facility choice that incorporates the important dimensions by assessing the growth drivers and the alternative factors proposed in the literature and by validating them via a survey study. Design/methodology/approach: The factors deemed important in the existing literature were used as the basis of a study in Turkey. In total, 65 structured interviews were conducted with health-care professionals and international health tourists to understand the perspective of the two important parties that affect policymaking. Findings: The findings of the study support the significance of the majority of the variables proposed as important factors affecting international health-care facility choice. Research limitations/implications: The study was carried out in four large hospital chains in Turkey; however, this creates a limitation in scope and may have limited representativeness of the overall market. The model has yet to be tested on a larger scale. Practical implications: There are significant differences in the opinions of professionals and international health-care tourists in terms of choice criteria. This indicates problems with health professionals’ understanding of the consumer decision process. Originality/value: The study provides a model that can be used to gain insights on the consumer decision process and also provides the policymakers and stakeholders of the international health-care industry with a sound theoretical foundation to build further studies upon. Only a limited number of studies was carried out in Turkey that focus on international health-care tourism, and the present study will fill a substantial research gap.

This study aims to establish actionable guidelines and provide strategic insights as a means of increasing the social media effectiveness of consumer brands. Post-related factors in addition to the contextual and temporal factors influencing consumer engagement (i.e., reposting, commenting on or liking posts), as an indicator of social media effectiveness, are considered in detail in the research model. Moreover, the model considers differences between industries as well as social media platforms. A total of 1130 posts made by four brands, two each from the durable goods and fast-moving consumer goods sectors, were collected from Facebook and Twitter in Turkey. Through predictive analysis, four different machine learning algorithms were utilized to develop easy-to-apply plans of action and strategies. The findings highlight the significant impact of videos, images, post frequency and interactivity on engagement. Furthermore, social media platforms and the brands themselves were found to be instrumental in influencing engagement levels, indicating that more than one formula is needed for effective social media management. The range and depth of the post-related factors (e.g., image type, video length, kind of interactivity) considered go far beyond those found in the significant majority of similar studies. Moreover, the unique setting and the novel data analysis algorithms applied set this study apart from similar ones.

Social commerce has become a hot topic since the beginning of Web 2.0 era; however, relevant research is scarce in emerging economies. This study aims to fill this research gap and answer the main research question of “what type of relevant personality traits and shopping motivations affect social commerce adoption intentions”. The research model was developed upon personality traits (openness to experience, need for uniqueness and buying impulsiveness) that are deemed to be relevant to online shopping and social media use. An online questionnaire was conducted on social media users. A total of 269 valid questionnaires were analyzed via structural equation modeling to test for the proposed relationships, majority of which emerged as non-linear. The findings highlight the significance of socialization motives in addition to utilitarian and hedonic shopping motives on social commerce adoption intentions. Openness to experience emerged as a significant trait that has an indirect effect on social commerce adoption intentions. Age and education materialized as significant demographics influencing shopping motivations in a social commerce setting.

This study argues that technology addiction is a natural consequence of current digital ecosystem characterized with attention economy. The fact that technology platforms architect addictive experiences by exploiting weaknesses of human brain results in consumers’ spending prolonged periods of time on screens. To remedy this problem, this paper proposes various solutions and best practices using a comprehensive approach. Proposals at individual level, family level, organization level and ultimately societal and governmental level are discussed, in order, to overcome technology addiction problem.Citation: Ertemel, A. V., & Aydın, G. (2018). Technology addiction in the digital economy and suggested solutions. Addicta: The Turkish Journal on Addictions, 5, 665−690. http://dx.doi.org/10.15805/addicta.2018.5.4.0038