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The purpose of this paper is to conduct an exploratory study of potential business-to-business (B2B) customers that includes an empirical analysis that investigate the effect that customer entertainment has on customer suspicion toward the salesperson, and how those negative attitudes are influenced by the relationship stage and the perceived cost of the event.

Using an experimental design, data were collected from 105 potential customers working in a B2B environment that assessed their attitudes regarding offers of varying levels of customer entertainment across differing stages of the relationship.

Results demonstrate that B2B customers have important perceptions regarding the perceived cost of customer entertainment offers by salespeople. Those evaluations resulted in a positive relationship between customer attitudes of suspicion toward the salesperson and the perceived cost of the entertainment event. However, the stage of the relationship tended to ameliorate suspicious attitudes of customers, although not in a completely symmetrical manner.

Additional testing with larger sample populations would better solidify the existence of the relationships.

This study provides a framework for practitioners that gives direction to the strategic use of customer entertainment such that it acts as a relationship catalyst, and not a relationship poison.

The paper uses a customer perspective to fill a need to better understand the instrumental role of customer entertainment in relationship marketing, and how it interacts with the perceived cost of the event and relationship stage to create differing customer attitudes.

With the development of social networking service and WeMedia, virtual brand community has become a typical platform of value co-creation and customers have become a core subject of value co-creation. The high proportion of negative members and even zombie members has become an obstacle to the sustainable development of many communities. Then, how to maintain and promote the sustainable development of virtual brand community? The purpose of this article is to examine how customers prefer community or brand.

This paper obtained data through an online questionnaire survey to test the proposed hypotheses of this study.

The findings of this study indicated that practical and social values not only promote customers to be loyal toward community but also drive customers to be loyal toward brand and their influence on community loyalty is greater than on brand loyalty, but entertainment value does not significantly affect community and brand loyalty. The effect of practical and social values on community loyalty is fully mediated by the effect of brand loyalty, and the effect of practical and social values on brand loyalty is fully mediated by the effect of community loyalty.

This research enriches the research study’s results of value co-creation theory and customer assets, thus providing a new perspective for research on customer loyalty.

This study aims to investigate how the gratifications obtained through brand-related social media content affect brand intimacy and thereby influence customer extra-role behavior.

Using the uses and gratification theory, this study proposes information, entertainment and remuneration content that motivates customers to develop brand intimacy and thereby perform customer extra-role behavior. The study also tests the moderated moderation effect of self-congruence and customer experience using 704 observations from South India in the food industry context.

The study’s results reveal the influence of entertainment and remuneration content on brand intimacy, which further influences customer extra-role behavior (civic virtue, cocreation, sportsmanship and helping behaviors). The study confirms a moderated moderation effect in the relationship between brand intimacy and civic virtue and brand intimacy and sportsmanship behaviors.

The study suggests that brands may include entertainment and remuneration elements in their social media content to build intimate customer relationships, further influencing customers’ extra-role behaviors. Besides, brands should focus on customers’ self-concepts and experiences to encourage them to act voluntarily.

This study makes a unique contribution by investigating the influence of brand-related social media content on customer extra-role behavior through brand intimacy. It uses self-congruence and customer experience to test their moderated moderation effect in the relationship between brand intimacy and customer extra-role behavior.

Positioned in the e-retailing field, this study aims to investigate the effect of the retail store’s atmosphere on consumer behavior in 3D online shopping environments, focusing on store layout as a critical influential factor.

The research uses a mixed research method approach that includes two complementary studies. First, a three-round Delphi study with domain experts is used to develop a store layout classification scheme (Study 1), resulting in five distinct types of store layout. Subsequently, 3D online retail stores that use the five layouts are designed and developed. These serve as treatments of a laboratory experimental design, which is used to assess layout impact on a number of attitudinal and behavioral variables (Study 2).

Five distinct types of store layout have been identified in Study 1, and their distinctive features are presented. The findings of Study 2 indicate that online shopping enjoyment, entertainment and ease of navigation are influenced by the store layout types of 3D online environments. Specifically, the “avant-garde” layout type facilitates the ease of navigation of customers in the store and provides a superior online customer experience. The “warehouse”’ adopts long aisles for the display of products, which simplifies the comparison of products, whereas the “boutique” layout was found to be the best in terms of shopping enjoyment and entertainment. The “department” layout shares many common characteristics with traditional department stores, providing an entertaining and enjoyable store, whereas the “pragmatic” layout emphasizes low system requirements.

The paper presents characteristics that make store layouts effective for different aspects of online customers’ experience and identifies opportunities that 3D online store designers and retailers can explore for the provision of enhanced, customized services to online customers.

This paper examines recent technological developments in store design and visual merchandising. It identifies five layout types of 3D online stores, which are different from those of brick–and–mortar and 2D online stores, and investigates their impact on consumer behavior. Further, the paper examines how each layout type influences online shopping enjoyment, entertainment, ease of navigation, online customer experience and, in turn, purchase and word-of-mouth intentions. Finally, the paper examines the moderating role of telepresence. Individuals with high sense of telepresence conceive 3D environments as “real” and are more concerned about the attributes that trigger the sense of enjoyment they experience while browsing.

Brands are increasingly considering the use of chatbots to supplement, or even replace, humans in service interactions. Like humans, chatbots can follow certain service scripts in their encounters, which can subsequently determine the customer experience. Service scripts are verbal prescriptions that seek to standardize customer service interactions. However, while the role of service scripts is well documented, despite the increasing use of chatbots as a service mechanism, less is known about the effect, on consumers, of different service scripts presented during chatbot service encounters.

An experimental scenario was developed to test the research hypotheses. Respondents were randomly allocated to scenarios representing a 2 (service interaction: human, chatbot) × 2 (service script: education, entertainment) design. A total of 262 US consumers constituted the final sample for the study.

The findings indicate that when employing an education script, a significant positive effect occurs for human service agents (compared to chatbots) in terms of both satisfaction and purchase intention. These effects are fully mediated by emotion and rapport, showing that the bonds developed through the close proximity to a human service agent elicit emotion and develop rapport, which in turn influence service outcomes. However, this result is present only when an educational script is used.

This paper contributes to the emerging service marketing literature on the use of digital services, in particular chatbots, in service interactions. We show that differences occur in key outcomes dependent on the type of service script employed (education or entertainment). For managers, this study indicates that chatbot interactions can be tailored (in script delivered) in order to maximize emotion and rapport and subsequently consumer purchase intention and satisfaction.

Based on the online brand community, this study focuses on how online brand community experience affects customer voice and discusses the relationship between community engagement and community commitment. Specifically, we examine the mediation effect of community engagement between community experience and customer voice and also the moderation role of community commitment.

The survey data is collected through the online survey of people who participate in the online mobile phone brand community. In total, 369 members of online community users (Huawei and Apple communities) were collected as the research samples. Then the structural equation model analysis was tested through the SPSS 25 and Mplus 7 in a two-stage analysis program.

The results show that (1) customer online brand community experience has a positive impact on customer voice; (2) community engagement mediates the positive relationship between online brand community experience and customer voice; and (3) community commitment plays a moderating role between customer experience and customer voice. Compared with low level customer's community commitment, when customer's community commitment is high, the level of community engagement has a greater mediation effect on the positive relationship between community experience and customer voice.

On the one hand, the model of customer community experience to customer voice built in this paper has not been fully validated. Whether the model can get more robust results needs to be extended to more different community scenarios. On the other hand, this paper is actually cross-sectional data, which cannot strictly reveal the causal relationship. The authors recommend that future research may use other research methods to further reveal its internal mechanism.

This paper shows that customer's community experience has an important impact on customer voice behavior. Among them, information experience and sociability remain as the important factor affecting customer voice behavior, which is quiet important for maintaining brand community and product or service improvement. Brand community managers need to consistently create multiple forms of information presentation and interaction channels to enhance the information and social experience of community members.

First, this paper puts forward a new perspective on customer comments or feedback-customer voice, which provides a solid foundation and reference value for future scholars to explore such important phenomena. Second, the relationship between community experience and customer voice behavior was examined, which enriched the research on community experience and also discovered another positive significance of community experience in community construction. Finally, the authors examine the mediation effect of community engagement on customer voice behavior. Community engagement is one of the important indicators that reflexing community performance, which is of great significance to the brand community.

Social media brand pages have emerged as an influential relationship-building tool and continue to grow in popularity as an integral part of the marketing strategy across diverse industries. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to provide a framework for building relationships through customer engagement in Facebook brand pages (FBPs).

Using a sample of 327 undergraduate Facebook users in Sri Lanka, the conceptual model of the study depicting relationships between eight latent constructs, is tested using structural equation modeling (SEM) in AMOS 21 statistical software.

The data analysis reveals that customer engagement with FBPs is positively influenced by customer motivations; information, remuneration, social interaction and personal identity in apparel/fashion, FMCG and hotel/restaurant FBPs. However, the relationship between entertainment motive and customer engagement is found to be insignificant. Additionally, customer engagement is found to be positively related to FBP trust and FBP commitment. Further, the study highlights that the different types of FBPs are guided by different relationship principles. Hence, the strength of the relationships between customer motivations and customer engagement, and, further, the relationships between customer engagement and FBP-specific relationship outcomes are dependent upon the type of the FBP. Moreover, customer engagement is found to be mediating the relationships between motivations (information, remuneration, social interaction and personal identity) and FBP trust.

The study provides strategies for FBP marketers. It emphasizes the value of FBPs as an effective marketing tool to build up relationships with customers. Marketers are advised to identify and address what customers expect from the FBPs to engage them on FBPs and strengthening their relationship with the FBP itself.

The study provides insights into the nature of engagement in FBPs by incorporating the motivations and FBP-specific relationship outcomes of customer engagement in a single framework. The study focuses on the development of a framework explaining the role of customer engagement in building customer relationships with the FBP itself, rather than with the brand.

The interest in customer experience has increased at a phenomenal rate. However, research to capture the true meaning of the concept is limited. Therefore, this study aims to address the question of what are the underlying dimensions that constitute the construct of customer experience.

The netnography method is utilized to validate a priori concepts that have been identified in the literature within the tourist industry in Egypt.

The results identified eight dimensions; comfort, educational, hedonic, novelty, recognition, relational, safety and beauty, which are consistent with major studies on experience.

The focus of the study was on customer reviews that were written in English and posted online. Therefore, care should be taken when interpreting these findings.

This study attempted to gain a meaningful degree of understanding of customer experience construct. The results suggest a number of implications for service, marketing and brand managers. The knowledge of customer experience and the challenge of creating great customer experience are of utmost importance. Many marketers acknowledge the importance of customer experience, but they have very little knowledge of what the components are of customer experience.

Netnography has not been widely used as a marketing research technique.

Due to the worldwide internet usage and online presence of businesses, digital marketing is an integrated part of the overall marketing strategy. One of the main investments in this field is the investment on more creative content that engages more potential customers. Online brand communities (OBCs) are used by businesses as a tool to have higher rates of engagement. Many researchers have developed customer engagement (CE) models to better understand it, but the transition economies like the countries of the Balkan are somehow left aside. Due to this identified gap in the literature, this paper aims to provide a model explaining the drivers and outcomes of CE, specifically on OBCs.

The research is based on primary data collected with an online questionnaire. Sample consisted of 764 respondents from four Balkan countries (Kosovo, North Macedonia, Albania and Montenegro). Data were analyzed using SPSS Statistics and IBM AMOS 26. To test the research model and hypotheses, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were used.

First, the study found a positive impact of entertainment and customer satisfaction, and celebrities’ endorsement in CE. Furthermore, the results revealed a positive impact of CE on customer purchase intention and customer loyalty.

The research findings aim to help businesses of Balkan countries to better understand the importance and operation of CE in OBC.

This paper enriches the existing digital marketing literature of transition economies with a model of online CE.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of gamification design elements of virtual corporate social responsibility (CSR) game on customers’ continuance intention to participate in social value co-creation and the mediation effect of psychological benefit.

Three scenario simulation experiments of the between-subjects design were conducted to examine the influencing mechanism of reward mechanism of virtual CSR game on customers’ continuance intention to participate in social value co-creation.

The findings indicated that: there are significant differences between the effect of behavior-based reward and result-based reward on customers’ continuance intention to participate in social value co-creation; the psychological benefit plays a moderating role between game reward mechanism and customers’ intention to continuously participate in social value co-creation; the game narrative mode plays a moderating role in the influence of game reward mechanism on customers’ intention to continuously participate in social value co-creation; the background for game placement moderates the interactions of game narrative mode and game reward mechanism on customers’ continuance intention to participate in social value co-creation, namely there is significant interaction of gamification design elements on psychological benefit and customers’ continuance intention to participate in social value co-creation.

This research has the following limitations. First, restricted by research conditions, the game scene, as the experiment material, can only be exposed to the participants in the form of text, thus customers’ psychological benefit (especially the entertainment experience) may be affected. Second, theoretical argument and literature support were not enough when the authors put forward the research hypotheses, due to the lack of research on the application of gamification in the CSR field. Third, considering the complexity, the authors took the psychological benefit as a unidimensional variable, in this research; it may be funnier to divide it into three variables. Finally, because the game design elements form into a virtual customer environment that jointly influences customers’ psychological benefit, the method of qualitative comparative analysis can be considered in future research.

It provides insights for marketers on the planning and design of a CSR strategy. The conclusions of this research have a certain guiding significance to the formulation of CSR strategy and the practice of social value co-creation. First, enterprises can apply gamification to the design of virtual CSR projects to promote customers’ continuance intention to participate in social value co-creation. Second, on the consideration of customers’ psychological benefit, enterprises should reasonably match such game design elements as game placement background, game narrative mode and game reward mechanism, when designing a virtual CSR game, so as to promote customers continuously participating in a virtual CSR project.

Virtual CSR projects are in fact the activities that enterprise co-create social value with their stakeholders. So, the research on customers’ continuous participation in virtual CSR projects is helpful for increasing social welfare.

This study confirms the effect of reward mechanism of a virtual CSR game on customers’ continuance intention to participate in social value co-creation from the perspective of customer psychological benefit. It also provides insights for marketers on the planning and design of a CSR strategy.