Digital advocacy by employees can provide the firm with reach and desirable outcomes. Increased reach and visibility can impact an organization’s brand awareness and employer branding (Sivertzen et al. 2013; Tsimonis and Dimitriadis 2014). In addition, increased brand awareness among stakeholders can help strengthen positive associations with the corporate brand that will make it easier to attract and retain employees (Backhaus and Tikoo 2004; Kohli et al. 2015; Sivertzen et al. 2013). Digital advocacy on social media is very much a double-edged sword, and it is therefore increasingly important for organizations to develop strategies for how best to manage it (Kietzmann et al. 2011; Kohli et al. 2015). The purpose of this research is to investigate and analyse the impact of internal branding and organizational commitment on the willingness of industrial employees to undertake advocacy. Five dimensions of employer branding have been labelled: Work Life Balance, Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibilities (CSR), Training and Development, Healthy Work Atmosphere, Compensation and Benefits (Tanwar and Prasad 2017; Ambler and Barrow 1996; Berthon et al. 2006). This research proposes a second-order hierarchical latent variable model whereby employer branding acts both directly and indirectly through organizational commitment to impact employee advocacy. Data was collected via a self-completing online questionnaire from among employees of a Swedish industrial organization that has a global presence. A total of 306 complete responses were collected with 51.7% response rate. Respondents come from a diverse group of individuals, 66% male; 61%, were aged between 35 and 54 years; 28% were between 18 and 34 years; and 11% were older than 5 years. The structural model was assessed in order to determine how well the empirical data fit with theory (Hair et al. 2014; Sarstedt et al. 2014). Findings indicate that training and development and healthy work atmosphere are the most influential dimensions, followed by a healthy work atmosphere, ethics and CSR. This implicates that industrial organizations who seeks to strengthen their employer brand could focus on these two dimensions primarily. According to Anitha (2014), it is important that employees are engaged in their organization and that can be obtained with the help of a pleasant work environment and good relationships with colleagues. Regarding testing the mediation effect, all the effect that employer branding has on digital employee advocacy is mediated by organizational commitment. This means that even though the employer brand is strong, an employee will not become a digital advocate if he or she is not committed to the organization. A strong employer brand does, however, increase the possibility that a committed employee will become a digital advocate. 

Fake news is one of the most discussed phenomena in politics, social life and the world of business. Recent literature has indicated that it can be a serious threat to brands and their management. Brands can be both victims of, and either unwitting or deliberate agents of fake news. This paper presents the results of a three-round Delphi study of a panel of brand marketing scholars in which they indicated their familiarity with ten major high-tech brands, and estimated the vulnerability of these to fake news, and how effectively these brands would deal with fake news. The levels of familiarity with the brands vary considerably, and it also appears that lower familiarity with the brand (with one notable exception) is associated with higher estimates of vulnerability, and lower estimates of the management’s ability to deal effectively with fake news. The researchers considered a large number of commercial media brand ratings with titles such as, “World’s Best Hi-tech Brands”, “100 Most Valuable Brands”, “25 Best Technology Brands” and the like. Not surprisingly all these lists are marked by their differences rather than their similarities. A handful of brands such as Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft feature in all these rankings, but behind them, there tend to be differences. For purposes of this study, the researchers then settled on and included the following ten high-tech brands: Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, Google, Intel, eBay, Facebook and Dell. The fake news phenomenon is unlikely to dissipate in the future, especially as social media technologies continue to make its spread so much easier. The risk to brands will be ever-present and will almost certainly increase. Hi-tech brand custodians do and will need to be vigilant of how they might be vulnerable and to have contingency plans in place for that day in the future when their brand becomes a target. 

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to call for a scrutiny of the dualist approach to business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-customer (B2C) marketing in industries driven by consumer-generated content. It posits that individual consumer-centric factors are influential for B2B marketing as well in sectors such as the travel industry and investigates the determinants of tourists' intention to use social media websites for travel planning. Design/methodology/approach Integrating constructs from IS and marketing literature, the paper proposes information quality and perceived enjoyment as antecedents of perceived usefulness, attitude and intention to use. The research model is tested using data from social media users with experience in travel planning. Findings Results show that perceived usefulness and information quality are stronger predictors of attitude and behavioral intention than perceived enjoyment. Enjoyment was not found to be strongly influential. Relevancy and reliability of information and its usefulness concerning travel-planning needs were found more influential. Research limitations/implications - Data were collected from social media users, raising possible issues of representativeness. Practical implications - The paper offers clarity regarding antecedents of downstream user behavior which can be of significant value. Demarcations in B2B and B2C perspectives blur in the context of social media, enabling more effective integration. Originality/value The paper brings in and validates the roles of information quality and enjoyment as influencers of behavior. Identifying the travel industry as a sector having greater likelihood of B2BC convergence, the paper extends IS adoption research to user-interactive sites in the travel-planning context, which can benefit the consumer as well as the supply side.

This study addresses the critical research issue of how supplier delivery performance can be enhanced by integrating information sharing into volume and delivery flexibility. This study developed a research model to relate information sharing on demand forecasts and inventory data between original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and first-tier suppliers. Based on a sample of 52 suppliers from automotive industry in Sweden, partial least squares structural equations modelling (PLS-SEM) was used to assess the model. The results confirm that sharing demand forecasts is a key enabler of supplier volume and delivery flexibility while sharing inventory data is not. The study contributes to enlarging the knowledge about supply chain management from the suppliers' perspective. It also contributes to knowledge by validating the conceptual model and operationalisation of constructs. The study also has practical contribution in which management should focus on improving communication and collaboration practices with OEMs for effective sharing of demand forecasts.

Retailers are facing major changes, including intensified competition, increased internationalization, and technological advances, which are transforming the competitive landscape at a fast pace. Simultaneously we see an emerging paradigm shift in consumers’ buying behavior. Digital devices such as smartphones and tablets allow consumers to search and shop online, irrespective of time and place and without geographical boundaries. While these devices originally were used mainly for information search, mobile purchases are becoming a natural part of many consumers’ shopping habits.

Blogs have incredible potential as persuasion tools and their persuasive function is of great importance as they have a great influence over public opinion (Xifra & Huertas, 2008). Individuals are increasingly referring to online product review blogs for gaining advice and receiving recommendations concerning the quality of the product of their choice. As a result, some marketers have made an effort to control or manipulate the online reputation of their products by compensating individuals to review products favorably in various online forums and product review blogs (Jensen, 2011). In return, as of late 2009, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has mandated product review bloggers to provide disclosures in their reviews when they receive compensation (payment or free products), or whenever there may be hidden interests or unspoken biases related to recommendations (FTC, 2009). 

Stakeholders expect corporations to improve their sustainability performance through observing environmental and social demands, and corporations respond to these requirements through applying corporate social responsibility (CSR). CSR can be achieved by designing a sustainable supply chain in cooperation with companies along the supply chain. The stakeholder pressure on corporations to become sustainable transfers across the supply chain to suppliers. Buying firms manage the relationship with suppliers through supply management. Then, supplying managers’ attention to customer’s sustainability demands and reflecting such demands in their supply can improve the sustainability performance of the suppliers. This improvement in performance of suppliers emanates in supplied products and services and it gives buying firm a comparative advantage against competitors. Accordingly, sustainable supply management and buyer-supplier cooperation on achieving sustainability can address the sustainability concerns of the current business world. However, very few existing studies have considered the impact of sustainable supply management on improving sustainability performance of the buying firm. The current study goes beyond improving the sustainability performance of the buying firm. Specifically, the present research illustrates how sustainable supply management and buyer-suppliers cooperation can boost sustainability performance of the suppliers.

The supply of drinking water is a crucial and vulnerable element of the Swedish infrastructure. In the past few years it has suffered several crises due to contamination and waterborne diseases. Therefore, management of water crisis has become a highly topical issue for the country's municipalities, particularly after two recent outbreaks of cryptosporidium. This protozoan parasite is often spread through contaminated water and causes a parasitic disease that affects the intestines and typically causes an acute short-term infection. The largest known outbreak of cryptosporidium in drinking water occurred in 1993 in Milwaukee, US, where more than 400 000 people were infected. In Sweden, two large outbreaks have occurred during the past few years. The drinking water in Östersund, a mid-sized city with around 59 000 inhabitants, was infected with cryptosporidium in November 2010. The number of people infected reached approximately 27 000, and the outbreak lasted for 12 weeks. Just a few months afterwards, Skellefteå, with 71 000 inhabitants, had a similar experience. At least 20 000 people were infected in an outbreak lasting 20 weeks. This type of crisis affects many people for a long time, and effective communication, therefore, is essential to limit the impact of the crisis.