With the advent of "smartphones", technology has helped mankind to solve some of its difficulties. On a similar note, "smart city" is a futuristic approach to alleviate obstacles triggered by ever-increasing population and fast urbanization which is going to benefit the governments as well as the masses. Modern day cities are deprived of vital elements like quality of life and socioeconomic development which can be delivered by the smart cities. Smart cities are an endeavour to make cities more efficient, sustainable and liveable. In other words, a smart city is a city that can monitor and integrate functionality of all the critical infrastructure like roads, tunnels, airways, waterways, railways, communication power supply, etc., control maintenance activities and can help in optimizing the resources while keeping an eye on the security issues as well. This research paper explores various aspects and dimensions of a smart city. To bridge the gap in literature regarding the concept of smart cities and its implementation, a framework has been developed to get better insights about the idea of smart city. On the basis of extensive and deep research of literature from diverse domains, we have identified six significant pillars for developing the framework as: Social, Management, Economic, Legal, Technology and Sustainability (SMELTS). The paper throws light upon how these factors can make the smart city initiative a successful project. The proposed framework has been used to figure out various agendas for research and traces its practical implications.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to develop and empirically test a process model (comprising of seven dimensions), for identifying online customer engagement patterns leading to recommendation. These seven dimensions are communication, interaction, experience, satisfaction, continued involvement, bonding, and recommendation.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors used a non-participant form of netnography for analyzing 849 comments from Australian banks Facebook pages. High levels of inter-coder reliability strengthen the study’s empirical validity and ensure minimum researcher bias and maximum reliability and replicability.
Findings
The authors identified 22 unique pattern of customer engagement, out of which nine patterns resulted in recommendation/advocacy. Engagement pattern communication-interaction-recommendation was the fastest route to recommendation, observed in nine instances (or 2 percent). In comparison, C-I-E-S-CI-B-R was the longest route to recommendation observed in ninety-six instances (or 18 percent). Of the eight patterns that resulted in recommendation, five patterns (or 62.5 percent) showed bonding happening before recommendation.
Research limitations/implications
The authors limited the data collection to Facebook pages of major banks in Australia. The authors did not assess customer demography and did not share the findings with the banks.
Practical implications
The findings will guide e-marketers on how to best engage with customers to enhance brand loyalty and continuously be in touch with their clients.
Originality/value
Most models are conceptual and assume that customers typically journey through all the stages in the model. The work is interesting because the empirical study found that customers travel in multiple different ways through this process. It is significant because it changes the way the authors understand patterns of online customer engagement.
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