Consumer behaviour is an important factor to consider in the marketing of products and services as culture plays a role in shaping the way people live and behave (Haffar et al., 2016) and it is a significant predictor of behavioural and purchasing patterns of consumers and as such it forms a fundamental part of marketing strategies and advertising techniques. The importance of culture, values (Hofstede et al., 2010, Schwartz, 2012), beliefs (Belk, 2010) and the way consumers behave in the sharing economy (SE) has become significant as these SE services are now globalized.
These cultural aspects form a significant part of the strategies implemented by marketing managers as culture is considered when consumers choose to buy or use products and services. Businesses and organizations thus require an in-depth understanding of the differences in cultures to improve the potential for success in several international markets (Haffar et al., 2016, Onkvisit and Shaw, 2004). Williams and Aaker (1998) observed through experiments that the manner in which the message of a product is presented to people of certain cultures can produce favourable or less-favourable results. Nyukorong (2014) found that a critical factor in the realization of any company’s marketing objectives lies in the understanding of the cultural nuances of the environment.
Within the SE, Gupta et al. (2019) conducted research on the likelihood of SE participants to rent products to or from peers based on their cultural differences. Findings from this research show that using the cross-cultural theory proposed by Hofstede (1980), which focuses on four cultural dimensions of collectivism, masculinism, uncertainty avoidance, and power distance (Hofstede, 1980, Gupta et al., 2019) is relatively limited in its explanation of individual culture and focuses mainly on national estimates. Lee et al. (2021) continued the research using Hofstede’s values and Ajzen’s theory of planned behaviour to design a model which predicts the intentions of users of the Airbnb platform to book an accommodation.
Literature in sectors such as ICT systems, waste management (sustainability) and consumption behaviour, highlight the efficacy of Schwartz’s personal cultural value orientation (CVO) based on seven cultural values - intellectual autonomy, affective autonomy, mastery, hierarchy, embeddedness, harmony, and egalitarianism (Schwartz, 2006) - on the consumer behaviour and engagement, thus providing a justification for the use of these Schwartz’s CVO’s in the SE. Hence, the study seeks to provide answers to the research question, how do the personal cultural values of users affect their engagement within the sharing economy? The results are based on survey responses from over 450 respondents in the Czech Republic, and this is used in the analysis to obtain results to help understand the individual cultural values using Schwartz’s CVOs and their underlying effect on the engagement in the sharing economy.
The findings will provide information about the role of personal culture in consumer engagement and thus the marketing of the sharing economy.

As consumers become increasingly demanding during their interactions with staff, threatening and intimidating acts towards hospitality firms and their frontline employees (FLEs) have soared in the consumer sovereignty era. This paper delves into consumer threat episodes and explores the nature, character, and dynamics of consumer threats towards FLEs and service firms. Currently, research in the customer misbehavior literature acknowledges different types of problem customers and explores various forms of customer incivility/misbehavior; the customer aggression literature explores the motives and outcomes of the enactment of aggressive and illegitimate acts towards FLEs. In parallel, the consumer sovereignty literature looks into how demanding, opportunistic and entitled consumers respond towards marketing strategies and how they voice complaints towards service providers along with the use of a range of manipulative behaviors towards them.
Despite this evidence, service scholars provide no prescriptions on whether and how unsuccessful service recovery efforts relate to consumer threat or how firms can cope with opportunistic consumers who try to maximize their benefit from service providers at all costs. While service researchers have developed meaningful insights into adaptive service employee responses to consumer acts and broader misbehaviors, consumer threats remain comparatively neglected. Coping with consumer threats remains important as they often require immediate action from the FLE or the firm side and dismissing excessive or opportunistic customer demands could result in switching or escalation into customer aggression towards the. Hence, providing insights on this knowledge void is of utmost importance for service firms as threat episodes can put at risk their relationship with their employees, generate additional costs for service recovery actions, and increase the chances for customers complaining online.
Through an exploratory approach, we draw on both sides of threat episodes (i.e. customers as perpetrators and FLEs as recipients) through 54 in-depth interviews, of which, 32 were with customers and 22 with FLEs in the hospitality and tourism industry.
Our findings outline the notion of threat and its underlying dimensions as well as uncover how consumers strategize their acts during threat episodes. Also, we reveal the different ways that hospitality FLEs construe and interpret consumer threats as well as their psychological responses to them. This paper recognizes consumer threat episodes as a relatively unexplored phenomenon during service encounters with disruptive consequences for hospitality firms for which the customer misbehavior literature provides little scrutiny and the service recovery literature has yet to incorporate responses in its frameworks.

An increasing number of service organizations considers sustainability a high managerial priority. Also, service scholars have called for more research into different aspects of sustainable services development and consumption. For example, Ostrom et al. (2015, p. 140) referred to designing and delivering services in a sustainable manner as one of the “pressing issues requiring research attention”. The generally agreed importance of sustainable services is not mirrored by service research though which is why the field still knows relatively little about how sustainable services should be designed and marketed. Indeed, the sustainability-related service literature lacks research on the sustainability framing in advertising messages and its effect on customer outcomes. What is more, scarce existing research has yielded mixed findings. For example, in the context of public bicycle sharing schemes in China (which represent a form of shared sustainable consumption), Yin et al. (2018) show that sustainable services can be effectively promoted to the public through communication efforts that highlight the sustainability and ethical features of these services. Brockhaus et al. (2017) report that service firms with a reputation for poor service quality may not benefit from sustainability efforts in terms of improved reputation. Surveying a Dutch consumer sample in relation to tour operators, Hardeman et al. (2017) show that sustainability-related self-benefit appeals are more effective than normative appeals. Taken together, existing research is limited and patchy and therefore unable to provide recommendations about the effective use of message frames in service firms’ sustainability communication. The present study identifies several research gaps, which span from studies on customer awareness of and responses to services’ sustainable properties to investigations of how sustainable services are marketed in terms of price and communication. We find that there is little research about if and how it is possible to nudge consumers toward sustainable services. Based on our observations, we propose a set of research questions that can form part of a research agenda aimed at exploring how consumers can be nudged toward sustainable services. Moreover, we propose an approach for influencing service customers’ perception and choice of sustainable services. Specifically, we advocate the use of sustainability-themed advertising, especially of temporally framed sustainability messages, to influence important customer outcomes. Our study is thus premised on the assumption that the growth potential of sustainable services can be best realized through effectively marketing sustainable services by means of communication (i.e., advertising messages). For example, in their advertisements, service organizations can emphasize the temporal distance (near or far) of their sustainability efforts and whether the efforts are present-, future- or past-oriented, that is, are ongoing, are planned or have already taken place. Future research should therefore explore the efficacy of different message frames in service ads.

References are available upon request.

Despite the rising importance of Chinese customers, we have little understanding about how they construe different aspects of their service interactions. In the Western world, where individualism guides thought and behavior, the sense freedom in choice is fundamental to decisions and evaluations of service. Deprivation of this freedom generally makes people feel uncomfortable or ill at ease. For Chinese customers, defined through collectivist or interdependent norms and roles, creates pressure to fit with others’ expectations and needs. Consequently, it is difficult to grasp the sense of freedom or ease within service. The Chinese refer to comfortableness as zìzài (自在). The literature suggests two sources of zìzài. The first, following a Confucian norm sets boundaries as roles and associating expectation. Customers behaving according to these boundary norms potentially achieve a sense of zìzài, despite the efforts involved. The second, draws from Taoist philosophical traditions, which directs people towards a natural state of self-expression. Whereby they can release themselves from the pressures of Confucian morality.
We explore the meaning of zìzài for Chinese customers and identify the factors that cause Chinese customers to feel zìzài or bùzìzài (不自在) when they are being served. We collect data through interviews (15) with customers in Taiwan where Chinese cultural traditions remain strong. Preliminary analysis points towards zìzài emerging as a liminal state whereby the customer has the sense of sufficiently fulfilling role norms while allowing elements of their identity to emerge. Our findings help provide employees understand how to respond when serving Chinese customers by knowing how Chinese customers react when feel zìzài or bùzìzài.