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Advanced servitization is the process that involves the combination of different services that facilitate both the use of a product and customer operations. Although servitization has emerged as a frequent strategy for manufacturers to differentiate themselves from the competition, its implementation can pose major challenges and may not always result in superior firm performance. Consequently, successful advanced servitization may require specific organizational capabilities to unleash performance-enhancing effects. To date, little is known about how to effectively configure advanced servitization to achieve such performance gains.

Adopting a fit theory perspective and using a configurational approach, we examine the interplay between servitization, organizational capabilities, contextual factors and financial performance. Specifically, we focus on advanced servitization and assess its necessity and sufficiency for achieving high financial performance. In addition, we study how the alignment of servitization approaches with organizational capabilities and contextual factors affects financial performance. We analyze data from 151 manufacturers in an emerging economy using fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA).

Our findings indicate that advanced servitization is sufficient, but not necessary for high financial performance. In addition, the findings indicate that the alignment of servitization approaches with specific service-related capabilities unfolds complementarity effects that contribute to achieving high financial performance for manufacturers with different firm size and competitive intensity. The findings indicate three configurations that may serve as templates for managers to orchestrate resource allocation and successfully deploy advanced servitization.

Our study advances the servitization literature by further illuminating advanced servitization as a more complex servitization process. We show how high-performing manufacturers align servitization and organizational capabilities across different contexts, and thus provide design choices for managers in configuring servitization.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of in‐store events on customers' attitudes toward the retail brand.

The authors develop and empirically test a model of event image, event satisfaction, and retail brand attitudes using structural equation modelling. The paper draws its empirical information from a survey of customers of a cosmetics retailer.

The results provide strong empirical evidence for the role of in‐store events in retailing, as they reveal significant support for three of the four hypothesised relationships. More precisely, the results show significant effects between an event's image and customers' satisfaction with the event. Further, the results show a positive relationship between customers' satisfaction with the event and their attitudes toward the retail brand.

Retailers increasingly use in‐store events to provide customers with a unique shopping experience and differentiate themselves from competitors. The present paper highlights the important role of events as communication measures in retailing by empirically investigating the impact of in‐store events on customers' retail brand evaluation.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the term branded marketing events (BMEs), and examine the role of its experiential components as a strategic tool for the facilitation of customer brand engagement. This study examines five experiential components of BMEs at events held in Australia and France to determine their respective impact on customer brand engagement.

Surveys were distributed to attendees of ten events by six wine brands in South Australia, and six events in five sub-regions of Bordeaux.

Findings suggest that BMEs influence customers’ brand engagement and brand purchase intention in both Australia and France. However, the experiential components within the events had differing effects. Australian customers were influenced by cognitive, sensorial, and relational experiences and their increased customer brand engagement strongly influenced brand purchase intention. French customers, however, required pragmatic event experiences to build brand engagement.

Recognizing their mutual experiential and interactive foundations, this study integrates the research domains of marketing events, customer experiences and customer brand engagement, and contributes to the strategic understanding of how branded event experiences facilitate customer brand engagement.

This study aims to identify critical factors and examine their impact on alliance performance from an organizational learning point of view.

A modified total interpretive structural modeling (M-TISM) methodology was used in this study. The different paths/links in the developed M-TISM model were further validated by using the Mahindra-Ford alliance case study.

In this study, a total of seven critical factors were identified using an extensive literature review, and a hierarchical model was developed. Results show that prior alliance experience, inter-partner learning, knowledge transfer, absorptive capacity and knowledge internalization have a positive on the alliance productivity and performance. Furthermore, the findings indicate that prior alliance experience remains essential for alliance productivity and performance, while knowledge transfer and absorptive capacity can contribute to inter-partner learning and knowledge internalization in strategic alliances.

This study can help managers and policymakers to understand the identified critical factors from an organizational learning perspective and understand their impact on the alliance performance in a competitive environment. The managers should know that previous alliance experience, learning from partner firms, building an absorptive capacity, etc., are necessary to achieve superior alliance productivity and performance. For academicians, the M-TISM methodology used in this study can provide a mechanism to perform exploratory research and build a hierarchical model in different management research fields.

The study fills research gaps by identifying key factors, developing a hierarchical model, and examining their impact on the performance of strategic alliances in the Indian automotive industry.

Social media brand platforms have become a popular means for engaged customers to share information and experiences with brands and other customers. However, empirical research on how customer engagement (CE) relates to customers’ sharing intentions with the brand is limited. This study aims to investigate causal patterns of four CE dimensions – focused attention, absorption, enthusiasm and interaction – together with two cognitive structure properties in stimulating sharing intentions with the brand.

Using data from 782 Chinese customers of brand pages on the social media platform Weibo, this paper is the first to use both finite mixture partial least squares (FIMIX-PLS) analysis and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to empirically assess the impact of CE configurations on sharing intentions.

The findings imply that not all of the CE dimensions co-occur necessarily and that different configurations of them can produce superior sharing intentions, conditional on the cognitive structure of customers, including their level of brand knowledge and avant-gardism.

Although restricted to customers on Weibo, the results inform practice about how social media technology can facilitate different CE configurations and customer sharing intentions.

The results inform brand managers’ segmentation efforts and CE content marketing initiatives that can induce different CE configurations and customer sharing intentions with customers that possess high avant-gard and brand knowledge characteristics.

This study is the first to substantiate how different CE configurations (as gestalts) affect sharing intentions in social media and to challenge conventional net-effects thinking about CE dimensions. Understanding how such conditional configurations foster sharing via a social media platform is advantageous because it can improve segmentation efforts to strengthen brand relationships.

Reaching customer satisfaction and brand loyalty in a business-to-business setting is still an area of rising interest to both researchers and practitioners. Compared to consumer branding, there is notably very little known about the success factors of industrial branding and how to convince buyers rationally and emotionally in business-to-business markets. Therefore, this paper aims to examine the success factors of branding in a business-to-business setting and analyze their performance impact on customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.

In total, 258 buyers of mechanical and plant engineering companies participated in an online survey. Data analysis was performed by using confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling.

The results reveal that rational brand quality consists of the three dimensions, product quality, service quality and distribution quality, whereas consistent advertising style, brand image, country-of-manufacture image and salesperson’s personality are dimensions of emotional brand associations. All dimensions positively influence customer satisfaction and brand loyalty.

This study offers a certain value compared to the relevant literature mentioned in literature review. Compared to a large majority of the papers, the integration of rational and emotional factors in an integrative and complex model implies novelty. For example, Davis et al. (2008) and Baumgarth and Binckebanck (2011) focus on specific exogenous factors in their studies, namely, brand awareness and brand image, respectively, sales force impact combined with product quality and non-personal communication. In contrast, Van Riel, Pahud de Mortanges and Streukens (2005), Chen et al. (2011) and Chen and Su (2012) conceptualized a more complex model but did not separate rational and emotional factors. Jensen and Klastrup (2008) were the only authors who made this separation, but they did not include well-known emotional success factors such as brand image or country-of-manufacture image in their research model. Furthermore, an endogenous causal chain representing an observable consumer behavior is missing. This paper fills this gap.

Noting that resource integration is a pivotal dimension of value co-creation in Service-Dominant logic, this paper aims to explore how service employees engaged in co-creation processes with customers integrate the latter’s resources.

To address the limitations of previous research on customer resources and their integration by service employees, this study turns to the concept of customer participation to identify the nature of customers’ resources. A conceptual framework of their integration by service employees underpins nine key propositions. This foundation leads to the development of theoretical contributions, managerial implications and avenues for research.

Customers can use 12 types of resources in value co-creation. Contrasting with earlier findings, the conceptual framework reveals that service employees may not only integrate these customers’ resources but also either misintegrate or not integrate them. Non-integration and misintegration may be intentional or accidental. Accordingly, value co-creation or co-destruction may result from interactions.

This conceptual and exploratory text requires complementary theoretical and empirical investigations. It also does not adopt an ecosystems view of co-creation.

Knowing the different steps of resource integration and what influences them should increase the chances of value co-creation and limit the risks of value co-destruction.

Scant research has examined the nature of customer resources and how service employees integrate them. This paper also is the first to distinguish among resource integration, misintegration and non-integration.

The research concerning brand credibility of charity brands is scantly examined. The purpose of this paper is to examine the moderating role of brand credibility within the customer-based brand equity model to investigate donor perceived brand equity of charity brands.

In a cross-sectional research design, a survey-based research strategy is followed to collect data from 448 active Muslim donors in Pakistan. The collected data are analysed by employing confirmatory factor analysis based on Smart PLS 2.0.

The results indicate that donor perceived brand association, brand awareness and brand loyalty strongly relate to perceived brand equity of charity brands. The brand credibility moderates the relationship between perceived quality, equity and brand loyalty, and equity paths.

The charity brands need to focus on building a strong brand image and reputation to uplift brand credibility which can be achieved by offering training programmes addressing various social causes such as HIV and Cancer prevention.

The proposed moderating effects of brand credibility and its application to charity brands operating in an Asian Muslim country context are unique products of this study.

The purpose of this paper is to address the following questions: how do consumers construct meaning around their inconspicuous luxury fashion experiences? What desires do inconspicuous consumers strive to fulfill? What sentiments do they associate with their inconspicuous luxury fashion consumption?

This exploratory research begins with a netnographic study of 11 online luxury blogs followed by in-depth interviews and home observations of ten luxury consumers with inconspicuous preferences in Dubai.

Inconspicuous choices are not simply for associative or dissociative motivations but several symbolic consumption schemas come into play. A typology of inconspicuous luxury fashion consumers has emerged: fashion influencers, trendsetters, fashion followers, and luxe conservatives.

The findings have potential to yield important managerial implications for fashion retailers and brand communications. The typology of inconspicuous consumers provides a basis for developing a more targeted relationship marketing program for luxury fashion brands.

This research advances luxury knowledge in fashion and consumer behavior research by unveiling how consumers construct meanings around their inconspicuous consumption. The typology developed in this study marks the starting point for further extensions to explore the complexities of inconspicuous luxury consumers, which are grounded in the roles they take on in society, how they plan their luxury consumption journey and how they eventually use these possessions for self-identification and communication to others.