Impact of actual service provider failure on the satisfaction with aggregator

The purpose of the paper is to investigate the impact of the failure caused by the actual service provider on consumer satisfaction with the aggregator firm, where the aggregator firm works as a bridge between the consumers and the actual service providers using technology, resources, information etc., thus reducing the information search cost, process-related costs, and quality risks for the consumers. We have applied retrospective experience sampling to collect data and used structural equation modeling to validate the conceptual model of the study. We found that people consider the actual service provider’s failure as the aggregator firm’s responsibility when the attributional factors (control and stability) are strong. Moreover, when consumers perceive that the aggregator firm is responsible, they will ask for less punishment of the actual service provider and more monetary compensation. Additionally, severity of the failure increases the consumer’s recovery expectations. However, the sense of power of the consumers leads to increasing expectations of punishment of actual service provider and decreasing expectations of monetary compensation. Lastly, the actual monetary compensation or actual punishment of the service provider leads to higher level of satisfaction for the consumers. We discussed the implications of the results in the light of relationship management and service recovery design of aggregator firms.     

Values,personality traits,and packaging-free shopping: A mixed-method approach

This research examines packaging-free shopping, which contributes to reducing the negative impact of plastic packaging on the environment, and its’ relationship with green consumption values, value consciousness, and psychological traits. A mixed-methods approach is adopted with quantitative followed by qualitative research. Study 1 recruits 240 respondents from social media and the lead author's university website to examine different factors that increase consumers’ likelihood of packaging-free shopping. Study 2 recruits packaging-free shoppers from Facebook Pages, explores these findings and provides further insights. Study 1 finds that consumers are driven more by green consumer values than by value consciousness, and consumers who are more conscientious are more likely to do packaging-free shopping. Study 2 supports this by finding that green consumer values drive packaging-free shopping, but this in only one part of their green efforts. The research contributes by illustrating the importance of conscientiousness specifically in the domain of packaging-free shopping and that these packaging-free shoppers are not driven in terms of value for money but by addressing their green consumer values. We recommend that packaging-free retailers and policy makers utilize promotional efforts to communicate how packaging-free shopping provides a balance with consumers’ green values for these shoppers, how it fits in with their other green efforts, and how these shopping efforts are making a difference in helping the environment.     

How do firms make money selling digital goods online?

We review research on revenue models used by online firms who offer digital goods. Such goods are non-rival, have near zero marginal cost of production and distribution, low marginal cost of consumer search, and low transaction costs. Additionally, firms can easily observe and measure consumer behavior. We start by asking what consumers can offer in exchange for digital goods. We suggest that consumers can offer their money, personal information, or time. Firms, in turn, can generate revenue by selling digital content, brokering consumer information, or showing advertising. We discuss the firm’s trade-off in choosing between the different revenue streams, such as offering paid content or free content while relying on advertising revenues. We then turn to specific challenges firms face when choosing a revenue model based on either content, information, or advertising. Additionally, we discuss nascent revenue models that combine different revenue streams such as crowdfunding (content and information) or blogs (information and advertising). We conclude with a discussion of opportunities for future research including implications for firms’ revenue models from the increasing importance of the mobile Internet.     

Ethical selving in cultural contexts: fairtrade consumption as an everyday ethical practice in the UK and Germany

Fairtrade consumers, by enacting their political and moral concerns through consumer choice, are at the same time constructing themselves as ethical selves. I will argue that they can only do so by drawing on cultural contexts. While fairtrade is instituted in supranational organizations and acts on a global level, there are still differences on a national level. On the basis of an Anglo‐German study, this paper seeks to map out the cultural contextualization of fairtrade consumption on both a supranational and a national level. The paper identifies the framing role of global consumer culture and an implicit ethics of equitability inscribed in capitalist practices of exchange and specifies how these play out differently in Germany and the UK. In both cases, there are strong references to sovereign consumer choice, and expectations of equitability in commodity exchange have been found. But while, in the British case, there is more emphasis on individual choice and taste, German fairtrade consumers seem to follow more what they perceive as an authoritative discourse. And, while British respondents envisaged the relation to be achieved with producers along the lines of a business relationship, German respondents conceptualized it more as a paternalistic employment relation between fairtrade organizations and producers. Differences will be explained in terms of distinctive consumer cultures, national moral economies and colonialist histories. I will argue that the two national settings not only offer different opportunities and challenges in terms of market success but also pose distinct ethical questions for fairtrade marketers.     

Driven to Be Good: A Stakeholder Theory Perspective on the Drivers of Corporate Social Performance

Despite growing evidence of the benefits to a firm of improving corporate social performance (CSP), many firms vary significantly in terms of their CSP activities. This research investigates how the characteristics of the stakeholder landscape influence a firm’s CSP breadth. Using stakeholder theory, we specifically propose that several factors increase the salience and impact of stakeholders’ demands on the firm and that, in response to these factors, a firm’s CSP will have greater breadth. A firm’s CSP breadth is operationalized as the number of different sub-domains of CSR for which a firm has taken positive actions and is captured using a unique dataset from Kinder, Lydenburg, and Domini (KLD). This data set includes positive and negative firm actions across more than 35 different dimensions of socially responsible behavior. Findings based on a longitudinal, multi-industry sample of 447 US firms during the period from 2000 to 2007 demonstrate that firms which: (1) have greater sensitivity to stakeholder needs as a result of the firm’s strategic emphasis on marketing and/or value creation, (2) face greater diversity of stakeholder demands, and (3) encounter a greater degree of scrutiny or risk from stakeholder action have a greater breadth of CSP in response to the stakeholder landscape that they face.     

Brand-embedded interaction: a dynamic and personalized interaction for co-creation

Recognizing the importance of timely access to market knowledge for successful new product development (NPD), extant research has theoretically argued and empirically shown the value of consumer co-creation during the NPD process. While most research views consumer-generated content as definite or fixed, this paper reveals how firms can enhance the value of consumer-generated ideas by facilitating the exchange of relevant information during co-creation. The authors introduce brand-embedded interaction as a process that enables consumers to generate new product ideas that not only reflect user needs but also align with the brand’s goals and capabilities. Results from two quasi-field experiments using Twitter show that a higher degree of dynamic interaction and personalization during co-creation enables consumers to generate more constructive new product ideas or ideas that are valuable to both consumers and firms. Results offer important implications for both theory and practice regarding co-creation and new product development.     

Young consumers’ innovativeness in apparel choices: A model including consumer self‐confidence

In industries with network effects, consumer innovators help to trigger the critical mass needed for a product innovation to be successful. Thus, firms can benefit from actions that increase consumer innovativeness in their target markets. Consumer innovativeness has been associated with variables such as hedonic shopping motivation, impulsiveness and status seeking. There is limited work on the impact on consumer innovativeness of consumer characteristics that reflect consumers’ self‐confident ability to choose. This study proposes and tests a model for consumer innovativeness that incorporates variables from previous research and uncovers the importance of consumer self‐confidence. We collect survey data from 534 Chilean girls, ages 10–15. After building constructs with the help of exploratory factor analysis, we analyze the data with linear regression estimation (via OLS). Our results reveal that consumer self‐confidence is positively and significantly related to consumer innovativeness. Our findings also add evidence ‐from a younger age group‐ regarding the significance of status seeking, impulsiveness and hedonic shopping motivation on consumer innovativeness. Results suggest that companies could leverage consumer innovativeness by taking actions to increase consumers’ self‐confidence. Innovative apparel choices in young consumers could possibly also be strengthened by communicating status achievement and by enhancing shopping enjoyment.     

Designing the content of advertising in a differentiated market

In many markets, consumers use attribute information to assess the value they expect from purchasing a product or service. This includes many low involvement experience goods including take-out food, many packaged good categories and restaurants. In these markets, quality differences exist but many differences are horizontal in nature: the consumer is interested in finding a product that meets her unique tastes. Beyond ensuring that consumers know the brand, the category and the price; it seems advertising should provide consumers with attribute information. However, a significant proportion of advertising does not provide it. In fact, within the same category, competitors respond to messages that emphasize detailed attribute information with messages that are devoid of attribute information. These messages are uninformative about product attributes. We explore how competition in a differentiated market is affected by the ability of a firm has to choose uninformative messages. We construct a model to investigate the factors that affect a firm’s decision to use advertising with detailed attribute information or advertising that does not provide it. The model demonstrates that content decisions about advertising are affected by the differences between products, the range of heterogeneity in consumer tastes and the degree to which costs increase as a function of the quantity of information in advertising. Surprisingly, even when the cost to increase the quantity of information in advertising is low, uninformative campaigns can be more profitable than campaigns with attribute information. The analysis also demonstrates that firms can be more likely to provide attribute information when there are less consumers that are attribute-sensitive. Finally, the model shows that uninformative messages can create “artificial differentiation” in some situations.     

Brand Attachment and Consumer Emotional Response to Unethical Firm Behavior

Attaching consumers to a brand is a cornerstone of relationship marketing as attachment increases loyalty. This research investigates another possible benefit of attachment, its potential and limits for shielding brands from firms’ ethical missteps. Merging motivated reasoning and attachment theories, two studies focus on how brand attachment influences consumer judgments of firm ethics and the emotional and behavioral consequences developing from those. A field study indicates that attachment attenuates judgments of unethical behavior, contributes to emotional ambivalence, and affects purchase intentions. A subsequent experiment corroborates these findings and shows that the buffering role of attachment is limited to conditions when the information about firm ethics is moderately rather than extremely negative. Implications focus on advancing research on ethics and emotional ambivalence in consumer brand relationships and on managerial implications.     

Is transparency a good thing? How online price transparency and variability can benefit firms and influence consumer decision making

The internet has empowered consumers and changed the way they search and shop for products and services by increasing the availability and transparency of pricing and other comparative information. However, what is less clear from a managerial perspective is just how transparent pricing information should be. While it might seem that increasing price transparency would reduce consumer search, we find that it may actually increase search and delay. In this article, we review the use of firms’ application of price transparency in practice and propose that specific types of information can influence how transparent prices are to consumers, and how such transparency can influence consumer decisions in a way that is beneficial for the firm. We focus on a specific form of transparency: whether or not the consumer knows the range of pricing. We also discuss whether a high variability pricing approach versus a low variability pricing approach influences consumer decision making—and whether this influence is moderated by transparency.     

When and how consumers are willing to exchange data with retailers: An exploratory segmentation

Consumer data is a crucial resource for retailers. Yet accessing this data increasingly requires consumers to willingly participate in data exchange. This paper draws on social exchange theory and privacy calculus to investigate differences in consumer willingness to exchange data with retailers. Consumers are also profiled on their perceptions of retailer's use and abuse of data, along with the antecedents and outcomes of these perceptions. We employ a cross-sectional quantitative survey and collect data from a sample of 463 US consumers. For statistical analysis, we employ a latent class segmentation and identify six consumer segments which differ in their perceptions of the consumer-retailer data exchange. The key drivers of these segment differences include privacy concerns, technology readiness, and general trust of, and engagement with, retail brands. The segments also differ in their subsequent views towards the use and abuse of their data by retailers, including willingness to exchange data. Hence, when accessing and utilizing consumer data, it is important that brands identify different segments, and adapt their approach accordingly.     

Dual consumer–organisation identification in international alliances and partnerships: consumers’ supportive intentions towards local and foreign firms

This study investigates whether firms that are evaluating potential partners might benefit from considering how consumers view these organisations, specifically the extent to which consumer identification with local and foreign partners influences consumer satisfaction with a co-branded product and consumers’ post purchase/consumption supportive intentions towards each partner. Data came from institutions of higher education in Hong Kong and Sri Lanka that operate in collaboration with a foreign partner. A conceptual model was developed and then tested using structural equation modelling. Dual consumer–organisation identification was found to be a significant predictor of consumer satisfaction with the co-branded product and consumers’ supportive intentions towards each partner. Furthermore, the perceived identity attractiveness of each partner was significantly related to the consumers’ identification with each partner. The results suggest that organisations which indulge in collaborative arrangements with foreign firms should recognise that each partner plays a significant and distinct role in generating consumer satisfaction and positive post-purchase/consumption behaviours.     

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.     

On consumer trust and product loyalty

Using a multidimensional conceptualization and drawing on previous theoretical frameworks, this study identifies the dynamic relationships between consumer trust and product loyalty, and explores the mechanism, by which these constructs are formed. It further examines the nature and direction of the chain of effects related to the formation of consumer trust and loyalty and their links, all in the context of the core relationship between consumers and firms from the production to consumption, and back to production again. This analysis implies that blind consumer loyalty to a product may lead to the elevation of producer's power and give a blank card for setting prices, adjusting quality and altering services, and ultimately reversing consumer sovereignty. The analysis also implies that consumer satisfaction domain spans much more over and beyond the consumption of a product and the consumer–firm relationship extends way beyond having the product and paying for it.     

Consumer reactions to corporate tax strategies: The role of political ideology

This study contributes to research on how stakeholders react to corporate tax strategies (CTSs). In two experiments we show that consumers are more likely to react negatively to ‘aggressive’ rather than to reward ‘conservative’ CTSs. The impact of CTSs on consumer reactions is mediated by the perceived ethicality of the firm and moderated by individuals' political identification. Right-leaning consumers are less likely than left-leaning consumers to punish companies engaging in tax avoidance. This moderation depends on the personal connection customers have with a particular brand: both left-leaning and right-leaning consumers punish firms they feel close to when such firms engage in aggressive CTSs. The study extends our understanding of the benefits and risks associated with different CTSs. It contributes to debates on the morality of CTSs, showing that political ideology shapes individuals' perceived ethicality of corporations engaged in aggressive tax avoidance.     

Taking marketing strategy risks with seemingly no expected gains

This paper investigates the competitive rationale for firms to invest in marketing activities aiming to enhance valuation and achieve differentiation and competitive advantage, while carrying the strategic risks of causing unintended negative consequences. We build a stylized theoretical model where firms offering similar (homogenous) products are competing by determining their marketing strategy and pricing. Each firm must choose between several marketing activities that have different potentials of enhancing consumers’ product valuations while carrying some risk of lowering consumer valuation if unintended negative outcomes occur. The stochastic nature of marketing implies that (1) even when both firms invest the same amount of money aiming to enhance product valuations by the same level, there will be a variety of (posterior) vertical differentiation scenarios where the consumers could value either firm’s product as better as or worse than the rival’s. (2) The firms may employ marketing activities that do not even lead to gains in consumer product valuation in expectation. The duopoly model analysis indicates that associated with strategic pricing, even such stochastic marketing activities may constitute desirable strategies for two a priori symmetric firms in order to avoid a Bertrand type competition as the benefit from differentiation is found to be significant enough to offset the unintended negative outcomes. The oligopoly model analysis indicates that there is an increased incentive to take marketing risk when there is a greater level of competitive intensity in the marketplace. Preliminary experimental evidence is presented to support the main findings from theoretical model analyses. The paper thus provides important managerial implications for firms contemplating investment in seemingly risky marketing activities.

     

All That Glitters is Not Gold: Digging Beneath the Surface of Data Mining

This article develops a more comprehensive understanding of data mining by examining the application of this technology in the marketplace. In addition to exploring the technological issues that arise from the use of these applications, we address some of the social concerns that are too often ignored.As more firms shift more of their business activities to the Web, increasingly more information about consumers and potential customers is being captured in Web server logs. Sophisticated analytic and data mining software tools enable firms to use the data contained in these logs to develop and implement a complex relationship management strategy. Although this new trend in marketing strategy is based on the old idea of relating to customers as individuals, customer relationship management actually rests on segmenting consumers into groups based on profiles developed through a firm's data mining activities. Individuals whose profiles suggest that they are likely to provide a high lifetime value to the firm are served content that will vary from that which is served to consumers with less attractive profiles.Social costs may be imposed on society when objectively rational business decisions involving data mining and consumer profiles are made. The ensuing discussion examines the ways in which data mining and the use of consumer profiles may exclude classes of consumers from full participation in the marketplace, and may limit their access to information essential to their full participation as citizens in the public sphere. We suggest more ethically sensitive alternatives to the unfettered use of data mining.     

Where is the power in numbers? Understanding firm and consumer power when crowdsourcing

This work utilizes the theory of social power as a lens through which to analyze the power structure of firms and consumers involved in crowdsourcing and discusses the managerial implications of this power balance. The results of this analysis reveal how power is structured differently in each form of crowdsourcing, with consumer power being strongest in the case of idea crowdsourcing and weakest in the case of microtask crowdsourcing. These differences in power have implications for managers who initiate and maintain crowdsourcing endeavors. Understanding the structure of consumer power in different types of crowdsourcing allows firms to better prepare for the wide range of possible outcomes as consumers inevitably push their own agendas regardless of whether or not these agendas are aligned with those of the firm.     

Competing Online: Studying Consumer Choice Drivers for Online Financial Services

ABSTRACT

Given the rapid increase in the consumer use of online services and the increase in competition between firms that compete online, firms are faced with a crucial challenge. Having invested significant resources in transitioning consumers from using offline services to using online services, they now need to understand what drives consumers to choose between competing online services. Our study seeks an exploratory answer to the above challenge. Specifically, we consider, “what role do factors that drive consumers into using online services play in assisting firms better compete in the online space?” This paper explores the above question by quantifying the value that consumers of an online financial service place on having access to in-depth product information, an affordable online service, an easy to use online service, access to offline capabilities, and available marketing promotions. The results reported in this paper are based on a web-based discrete choice experiment in which 2,209 consumers were asked to compare various online financial service offerings, differing from each other in terms of the relative availability of our critical factors. The results demonstrate that consumer preferences (relative utilities) for various factors of an online financial service are different. Our results enable practicing managers to understand the factors that drive consumer choice when faced with competing online services. We believe that these results have both managerial and research implications for design, management and operations strategy formulation for online services.