Value co‐creation in online healthcare communities: The impact of patients’ reference frames on cure and care

The gradual transition of health care toward businesses during the past 50 years has converted passive patients into active customers. In our digital society, patients increasingly use online health communities to satisfy complex needs that healthcare professionals leave unmet, including the creation of cure‐oriented (i.e., functional) and care‐oriented (i.e., emotion) value. This research investigates patients’ reference frames (self versus other) as an information processing mechanism and their impact on value creation in online communities. The analysis of 1,687 online postings of a leading healthcare platform shows that self‐referencing is typical for information obtained through an individualistic, patient–doctor encounter; other‐referencing emerges when patients focus on the needs of their peers. Information gathered through the patient–doctor encounter and processed with a self‐referencing frame accordingly enhances cure‐related value, but limits care‐oriented value co‐creation. Other‐referencing does exactly the opposite: it creates a barrier to cure‐related value, but stimulates care‐related value. A patient's experience with the community largely moderates the impact of both self‐ and other‐referencing on cure‐ and care‐related value. These findings show that online health communities can identify and address unmet patient needs, but healthcare professionals still play a critical role in terms of ensuring information quality in online health communities.     

The Rise of Crowd Logistics: A New Way to Co‐Create Logistics Value

Patterned on crowdsourcing and crowdfunding, a new crowd practice has emerged in recent years: crowd logistics. In this paper, we propose a first conceptualization of this growing phenomenon. Crowd logistics is a novel way of providing logistics services that taps into the dormant logistics resources and capabilities of individuals, using mobile applications and web‐based platforms. Although crowd logistics has been widely discussed in the business world, it has not yet been the subject of any academic publication. Following an exploratory case study approach, we review the websites of 57 crowd logistics initiatives around the world and highlight the main distinctive characteristics of crowd logistics, as compared to traditional business logistics. We introduce a segmented analysis in which crowd logistics solutions are classified according to four types of service offered. Finally, we introduce six theoretical propositions on the future development of crowd logistics. At a theoretical level, our findings contribute to enriching the service‐dominant logic perspective in the logistics field by conceptualizing the crowd as a co‐creator of logistics value. At a managerial level, our findings contribute to identifying which types of crowd logistics services are more likely to threaten or disrupt traditional business.     

Investigating social motivations,opportunity and ability to participate in communities of virtual co‐creation

Communities of virtual co‐creation are emerging as a new form of consumer engagement, where through a collaborative and interactive process, ideas and knowledge from consumer are applied differently to create new value for the consumers themselves, the company and all stakeholders. The aim of this paper is to explore the drivers, namely motivation, opportunity and ability, of consumer willingness to participate in communities of virtual co‐creation. The role of social motivations, that is, altruism and social reputation, particularly relevant inside online communities, is investigated. Data were collected through an online survey on 180 consumers from diverse nationalities. The unit of analysis was a virtual co‐creation activity for food products. Findings show that consumer motivation and ability have a relevant influence on willingness to participate in co‐creation projects, while opportunity has not. In particular, ability showed to be the most relevant factor, suggesting that virtual co‐creation initiatives should be properly designed to facilitate the engagement of consumers. Further, results indicate that consumers' motivations are driven by both altruism and social reputation, where altruism plays a greater role. This confirms that social relations are key motivational drivers in virtual communities, where value is created through interaction with like‐minded people, exchange of information and experiences, provision of support.     

Inter‐Organizational Learning in Supply Chains: A Focus on Logistics Service Providers and Their Customers

The learning process between supply chain entities is explored from the perspective of senior third‐party executives. Through grounded theory, a theoretical framework emerged that extends our understanding of learning within a supply chain by identifying the major constructs and learning stages comprising the basic social process of inter‐organizational learning. This framework provides significant insights into the complex process employed in a supply chain to share, disseminate, and store information; co‐create knowledge; and to derive a competitive advantage.     

Negative brand meaning co‐creation in social media brand communities: A laddering approach using NVivo

Social media brand communities (SMBCs) have been heralded for their co‐creative, participatory potential whereby consumers actively contribute to the proliferation of meaningful brand avenues in a virtuously circular relationship with brands. Elevated loyalty and enhanced brand equity have been posited repeatedly as likely outcomes of a positively engaged community of brand aficionados. However, evidence to the contrary as negative brand co‐creation or brand co‐destruction has been progressively piling up in the extant literature. This paper contributes to the meaning co‐creation in SMBCs literature primarily on two grounds: first, by offering a methodological framework for adapting the laddering research technique in a mixed methods vein to SMBCs data in a thread‐specific context, by leveraging the analytical capabilities of NVivo CAQDAS software; second, by addressing bottlenecks in the applicability of the proposed methodology in light of negative brand co‐creation.     

Exploring the customer's intention to switch firms: The role of customer‐related antecedents

This study examined the customer‐related antecedents of the customer's intention to switch firms. Customer citizenship behavior was a key element in this study. Scholars have extensively studied the antecedents of customer citizenship behavior. However, the way that customer citizenship behavior relates to other attitudinal variables and the intention to switch has scarcely been analyzed. The proposed hypotheses were verified using partial least squares variance‐based structural equation modeling applied to 947 users of beauty care service firms in five countries. The results suggest that customer citizenship behavior is an antecedent of satisfaction, trust, and attitudinal loyalty. Two of these variables influence customers’ intentions to abandon relationships with the service provider. The implications of these findings enhance managers’ and scholars’ understanding of the determinants of customers’ intentions to switch firms.     

Creating Value for Customers,Clients, Partners and Society: An Introduction to the Special Issue on Food Waste

ABSTRACT

Roughly one-third of edible food produced in the world is wasted, that is, it is never consumed by humans, despite the persistent demands for nutrition throughout the world. The American Marketing Association defines marketing as “…the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.” When it comes to food, an increasing number of these key stakeholders question how a global marketing system that routinely wastes a startling fraction of its product comports with “…value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large,” and whether the food marketing system can do more to sustainably convert scarce planetary resources into global nutrition. We introduce the articles in this special issue, which provide an intellectual and empirical basis for exploring how the global marketing system generates a substantial amount of food waste and how the food marketing system can do more to reduce the amount of wasted food.     

The influence of in‐store personnel on online store value: An analogical transfer perspective

In today’s multichannel retail environment, consumers’ experiences in one channel influence their perceptions of another channel. Specifically, consumer evaluations of a firm’s online store have been found to be influenced by consumer interactions with the firm’s in‐store personnel. This paper is among the first to address this assumption and test it empirically. Drawing upon the analogical transfer paradigm, we propose hypotheses and accordingly model in‐store personnel’s competence and friendliness as determinants of online store usefulness, online store enjoyment, and online store value. Using consumer data collected from two Dutch multichannel retailers, we test this model with partial least squares modeling. The results provide clear support for the model and confirm that consumers may use characteristics of in‐store personnel as analogies when evaluating a firm’s online store. Implications for research and retail managers are discussed.     

A rational asset pricing model for premiums and discounts on closed‐end funds: The bubble theory

This paper provides a new explanation for closed‐end fund (CEF) discounts and premiums using the local martingale theory of asset price bubbles. This is a rational asset pricing model that is shown to be consistent with the existing empirical evidence on CEF discounts/premiums. Additional testable implications of the model are derived, which await subsequent research for their resolution. This bubble theory also applies equally well to understanding discounts and premiums on exchange traded funds.