Consumer Connectivity in a Complex,Technology-enabled,and Mobile-oriented World with Smart Products

Today's consumers are immersed in a vast and complex array of networks. Each network features an interconnected mesh of people and firms, and now, with the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT), also objects. Technology (particularly mobile devices) enables such connections, and facilitates many kinds of interactions in these networks—from transactions, to social information sharing, to people interfacing with connected devices (e.g., wearable technology).We introduce the POP-framework, discuss how People, Objects and the Physical world inter-connect with each other and how it results in an increasing amount of connected data, and briefly summarize existing knowledge on these inter-connections. We also provide an agenda for future research focused on examining potential impact of IoT and smart products on consumer behavior and firm strategies.     

Capturing Online Presence: Hyperlinks and Semantic Networks in Activist Group Websites on Corporate Social Responsibility

The rise of Internet-mediated communication poses possibilities and challenges for organisation studies, also in the area of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and business and society interactions. Although social media are attracting more and more attention in this domain, websites also remain an important channel for CSR debate. In this paper, we present an explorative study of activist groups’ online presence via their websites and propose a combination of methods to study both the structural positioning of websites (hyperlink network analysis) and the meanings in these websites (semantic co-word maps). We focus on the websites of SOMO, the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations, and of one of its campaigns, makeITfair, concerned with labour conditions in the IT industry worldwide. This allows us to show how this combination of methods can further our understanding of the way activist networks’ online presence can provide insights into the tactics these networks apply to achieve institutional change on CSR issues. Meanwhile, we identify some notable differences between styles and word use in the two organisations’ websites. We conclude with a set of suggestions for future research.     

Research in marketing in Europe: Some reflections on its setting,accomplishments and challenges

In this paper we present some reflections on the development and state of research in marketing in Europe. After briefly putting European research in a historical perspective, we devote a major section to discussing the institutional setting in which research takes place. We believe that the institutional setting is a crucial determinant of research. We then discuss numumber of European research accomplishments. We essentially limit ourselves to marketing models and industrial marketing, our own major areas of interest. In the final section we list some challenges for the future and discuss how they could be turned into opportunities.     

Personalization without Interrogation: Towards more Effective Interactions between Consumers and Feature-Based Recommendation Agents

Software agents that provide consumers with personalized product recommendations based on individual-level feature-based preference models have been shown to facilitate better consumption choices while dramatically reducing the effort required to make these choices. This article examines why, despite their usefulness, such tools have not yet been widely adopted in the marketplace. We argue that the primary reason for this is that the usability of recommendation systems has been largely neglected – both in academic research and in practice – and we outline a roadmap for future research that might lead to recommendation agents that are more readily adopted by consumers.     

Entrepreneurial network development: Trusting in the process

An entrepreneur's network can provide a significant source of social capital, which, in turn, may increase a new venture's likelihood of success. Entrepreneurship research has frequently examined how such networks develop, and reviewing extant studies suggests that trust plays a significant role in this process. Despite its recognized importance, limited research exists examining how trust evolves during and interacts with the entrepreneur's venture network development. Accordingly, we propose that an entrepreneur's reliance on exchange relationships based on affective and cognitive trust will vary as the entrepreneur moves through the network development process. We conclude by discussing both the model's implications and future research avenues.     

Customer Experience Creation: Determinants, Dynamics and Management Strategies

Retailers, such as Starbucks and Victoria's Secret, aim to provide customers a great experience across channels. In this paper we provide an overview of the existing literature on customer experience and expand on it to examine the creation of a customer experience from a holistic perspective. We propose a conceptual model, in which we discuss the determinants of customer experience. We explicitly take a dynamic view, in which we argue that prior customer experiences will influence future customer experiences. We discuss the importance of the social environment, self-service technologies and the store brand. Customer experience management is also approached from a strategic perspective by focusing on issues such as how and to what extent an experience-based business can create growth. In each of these areas, we identify and discuss important issues worthy of further research.     

Understanding Programmatic Creative: The Role of AI

In this article, we expand the concept of programmatic advertising to include programmatic creative as a vital component. While artificial intelligence (AI) has already automated the media buying process, the advertising creative process still requires extensive human efforts. Such discrepancy calls for AI to transform the advertising creative process. We provide a framework for understanding and investigating programmatic creative by drawing evidence from the advertising industry in China. We specifically discuss how big data and machine learning algorithms underpin programmatic advertising. We argue that AI will integrate programmatic buying and programmatic creative in the future. We also discuss the technological, regulatory, and legal challenges faced by programmatic creative. We argue that new theories and methods are needed to conduct research in this area and provide guidance for the advertising industry.     

The effect of social networks structure on innovation performance: A review and directions for research

Research on growth of innovations introduced to the market has gradually shifted its focus from aggregate-level diffusion to exploring how growth is influenced by a given social network structure's characteristics. In this paper, we critically review this branch of literature. We argue that the growth of an innovation in a social network is shaped by the network's structure. Borrowing from the field of industrial organization in economics, which defines itself as the study of the effect of market structure on market performance, we describe this new wave of research on growth of innovations as the effect of social network structure on innovation performance. Hence, social network structural characteristics should be incorporated into research on new product growth as well as into managerial marketing decisions such as targeting and new product seeding.We review how social network structure influences innovations' market performance. Specifically, we discuss (1) a networks' global characteristics, namely average degree, degree distribution, clustering, and degree assortativity; (2) dyadic characteristics, or the relationships between pairs of network members, namely tie strength and embeddedness; (3) intrinsic individual characteristics, namely opinion leadership and susceptibility; and (4) location-based individual characteristics, namely the degree centrality, closeness centrality, and betweenness centrality of an individual network member.Overall, we find that growth is particularly effective in networks that demonstrate the “3 Cs”: cohesion (strong mutual influence among its members), connectedness (high number of ties), and conciseness (low redundancy). We identify gaps in current knowledge, discuss the implications on managerial decision making, and suggest topics for future research.     

Estimating attractiveness,hierarchy and catchment area extents for a national set of retail centre agglomerations

There is a legacy of research aiming to conceptualise and empirically estimate retail store catchment areas, however, a dearth that frames such considerations within the context of retail agglomerations and their position within regional or national networks. As a result, this paper provides an extension to single store or shopping centre retail catchment estimation techniques, and presents an empirically specified and tested production constrained model for a national network of retail centres in the UK. Our model takes into account the spatial interactions between potential customers and a hierarchical network of retail centres to estimate patronage probabilities and catchment extents. The model is tested for a large metropolitan area vis-à-vis real world shopping flows recorded through a survey of shoppers. Finally, we present an open source software tool for custom model fitting, and discuss a range of theoretical and empirical challenges that such a model presents.     

A Voting Mechanism Designed for Talent Shows in Mass Media: Weighted Preference of Group Decision Makers in Social Networks Using Fuzzy Measures and Choquet Integral

As the development of social networks tends to shape people’s view about choices, decision making theories are challenged by numerous unprecedented difficulties, from both the theories and practice. One hot topic is how to design a voting mechanism for talent shows in mass media that not only attracts public attention but also reflects an objective and fair principle. Weighted voting, where the voting power of a representative is proportional to the population in his or her district, has been widely adopted in legislative selections and talent show competitions. However, weighted voting system may cause disenfranchisement of some representatives and reduce the entertainment and interest of talent shows because of the ignorance of complex interactions among the representatives. In this paper, possible interactions among representatives are analyzed by investigating the associated social networks and subsequently some fuzzy measures are utilized to quantify these interactions. Specifically, the weights determination model is adopted in this situation for defining fuzzy measures to avoid the disenfranchisement, and a multiple-group hierarchy decision model is developed to solve social network group decision making problems where the Choquet integral is employed to reduce the impact from synergy and redundancy between representatives. Moreover, a voting mechanism for talent shows in mass media is provided. Finally, an illustrative example, and a close look at the current algorithmic issues and future trends from different angles are provided.

     

Social Media Analytics

In this contribution, we introduce “social media analytics” (SMA) as an emerging interdisciplinary research field that, in our view, will have a significant impact on social media-related future research from across different academic disciplines. Despite a number of challenges, we argue that SMA can provide other disciplines – including IS – with methodological foundations for research that focuses on social media. Furthermore, we believe that SMA can help IS research to develop decision-making or decision-aiding frameworks by tackling the issue of social media-related performance measurement, which has been challenging until now. Moreover, SMA can provide architectural designs and solution frameworks for new social media-based applications and information systems. Finally, we call for an interdisciplinary SMA research agenda as well as a significantly increased level of interdisciplinary research co-operation, which must aim to generate significant advancements in scientific methods for analyzing social media, as well as to answer research questions from across different disciplines.     

From Multi-Channel Retailing to Omni-Channel Retailing: Introduction to the Special Issue on Multi-Channel Retailing

The world of retailing has changed dramatically in the past decade. The advent of the online channel and new additional digital channels such as mobile channels and social media have changed retail business models, the execution of the retail mix, and shopper behavior. Whereas multi-channel was in vogue in the last decade in retailing, we now observe a move to so-called omni-channel retailing. Omni-channel retailing is taking a broader perspective on channels and how shoppers are influenced and move through channels in their search and buying process. We discuss this development conceptually and subsequently discuss existing research in this multi-channel retailing. We also introduce the articles in this special issue on multi-channel retailing and position these articles in the new omni-channel movement. We end with putting forward a research agenda to further guide future research in this area.     

The fairyland of Second Life: Virtual social worlds and how to use them

Virtual social worlds, such as the Internet site Second Life, have acquired a high degree of popularity in the popular and business press. In this article we address the increasing importance of virtual social worlds, and discuss how companies can make use of their potential. We first present how virtual social worlds evolved historically, how they fit into the postmodern paradigm of our time, and how they differ from other social media, such as content communities (e.g., YouTube), social networking sites and blogs (e.g., Facebook), collaborative projects (e.g., Wikipedia), and virtual game worlds (e.g., World of Warcraft). We subsequently present how firms can make use of virtual social worlds in the areas of advertising/communication, virtual product sales (v-Commerce), marketing research, human resources, and internal process management. We also highlight the points companies should pay particular attention to in their activities, the 5Cs of success in virtual social worlds, and the future evolutions that we expect to shape this sector over the next 5-10 years: a trend toward standardization and interoperability, improvements in software usability, increasing interconnection between reality and virtual worlds, establishment of law and order, and the transformation of virtual social worlds to business hubs of the future.     

Social Media Metrics — A Framework and Guidelines for Managing Social Media

Social media are becoming ubiquitous and need to be managed like all other forms of media that organizations employ to meet their goals. However, social media are fundamentally different from any traditional or other online media because of their social network structure and egalitarian nature. These differences require a distinct measurement approach as a prerequisite for proper analysis and subsequent management. To develop the right social media metrics and subsequently construct appropriate dashboards, we provide a tool kit consisting of three novel components. First, we theoretically derive and propose a holistic framework that covers the major elements of social media, drawing on theories from marketing, psychology, and sociology. We continue to support and detail these elements — namely ‘motives,’ ‘content,’ ‘network structure,’ and ‘social roles & interactions’ — with recent research studies. Second, based on our theoretical framework, the literature review, and practical experience, we suggest nine guidelines that may prove valuable for designing appropriate social media metrics and constructing a sensible social media dashboard. Third, based on the framework and the guidelines we derive managerial implications and suggest an agenda for future research.     

Exploring the Challenges of Incorporating Social Media Marketing Strategies in the Restaurant Business

The purpose of this study is to explore the adoption, challenges, and current uses of social media in small restaurants. Past research in this area is scarce, and most focuses on larger establishments. To address the research objectives, 20 small restaurants in Northeastern United States were interviewed. Literature identifies a variety of goals that social media can play in fostering interactions, engagement, relationships, and building communities online, but this study shows that few restaurants attempt to do this. Even though in most small restaurants social media significantly contributes to their marketing strategy, the majority of small restaurants use it as a low-cost advertising tool to gain exposure, generate interest, inform, and spread word of mouth. The study suggests ways in which social media could be embraced by small restaurants to help them address the challenges they face, so they can go beyond using social media as merely an advertising tool.     

If you love something,let it go mobile: Mobile marketing and mobile social media 4x4

Social media applications—including collaborative projects, micro-blogs/blogs, content communities, social networking sites, and virtual worlds—have become part of the standard communication repertoire for many companies. Today, with the creation of increasingly powerful mobile devices, numerous social media applications have gone mobile and new entrants are constantly appearing. The purpose of this article is to take account of this evolution, and provide an introduction to the general topic of mobile marketing and mobile social media. Herein, we define what mobile social media is, what it is not, and how it differs from other types of mobile marketing applications. Further, we discuss how firms can make use of mobile social media for marketing research, communication, sales promotions/discounts, and relationship development/loyalty programs. We present four pieces of advice for mobile social media usage, which we refer to as the ‘Four I's’ of mobile social media. Finally, we conclude by providing some thoughts on the future evolution of this new and exciting type of application.     

Experiments on strategic choices and markets

Much of experimental research in marketing has focused on individual choices. Yet in many contexts, the outcomes of one’s choices depend on the choices of others. Furthermore, the results obtained in individual decision making context may not be applicable to these strategic choices. In this paper, we discuss three avenues for further advancing our understanding of strategic choices. First, there is a need to develop theories about how people learn to play strategic games. Second, there is an opportunity to enrich standard economic models of strategic behavior by allowing for different types of bounded rationality and by relaxing assumptions about utility formulation. These new models can help us to more accurately predict strategic choices. Finally, future research can improve marketing practice by designing better mechanisms and validating them using experiments.     

Introduction to the Special Issue — Social Computing and Service Innovation: A Framework for Research

ABSTRACT

Recently, we more and more observe service innovations emerging from social interactions among a network of actors inside and outside of organizations. Social computing technologies are the main facilitators of social interactions, hence increasingly play a vital role in the service innovation. Yet, research on the role of social computing in service innovation lacks clear theoretical and empirical basis. This special issue was designed to stimulate research on the intersection of social computing and service innovation. In this paper, we outline a broad research framework in this regard, including the papers in this special issue and areas for future research.     

Responsible Leadership in Global Business: A New Approach to Leadership and Its Multi-Level Outcomes

The article advances an understanding of responsible leadership in global business and offers an agenda for future research in this field. Our conceptualization of responsible leadership draws on deliberative practices and discursive conflict resolution, combining the macro-view of the business firm as a political actor with the micro-view of leadership. We discuss the concept in relation to existing research in leadership. Further, we propose a new model of responsible leadership that shows how such an understanding of leadership can address the challenges of globalization. We thereby propose positive outcomes of responsible leadership across levels of analysis. The model offers research opportunities for responsible leadership in global business.