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The purpose of this paper is to develop and validate a scale to measure customer social participation in brand communities, specifically e-travel companies’ communities.

A qualitative research has been undertaken to generate a pool of items. Based on Churchill’s (1979) scale development process, numerous reliability and validity tests have been conducted to confirm the scale structure. Data were collected through online and field surveys from the students and hotel guests who have either subscribed, liked or joined any e-travel service companies’ community brand page using any social networking site or have ever posted or considered reviews and ratings of any e-travel service companies via their official site or via a mobile app while planning their travel.

The findings depict nine items on a three-dimensional scale for measuring customer participation in travel brand communities created on social networking sites.

The findings provide important implications for hotel and travel managers and are likely to encourage future studies in the field of social media and travel brand communities.

This paper contributes to the literature by providing refinement to the distinct operationalization and conceptualization of customer online participation, specifically in social media-based travel brand communities. This paper is the first to develop a multidimensional scale of customer social participation in e-travel companies’ communities. This is a new addition to existing literature, as the majority of empirical studies in this field are from participation other than customer social participation and contexts different from e-travel companies.

Demand for long-term care services increases with population aging. This study aims to develop a conceptual model of elderly customers’ health-care experiences to explore the antecedents, mechanisms and outcomes of social participation in long-term care service organizations.

Using a two-phase data collection approach, this study collects data from 238 elderly customers in a long-term care service organization. The final data are analyzed through structural equation modeling.

The results show that care management efforts (i.e. customer education, perceived organization support, role modeling, perceived other customer support and diversity of activity) influence elderly customers’ psychological states (i.e. self-efficacy and sense of community), leading to increased social participation. In addition, high levels of social participation evoke positive service satisfaction and quality of life, both of which alleviate switching intention.

This study is one of the first conclusive service studies focused on the role of elderly customers’ social participation in their long-term care experience. The findings contribute to health-care service marketing and transformative service research, and expand understanding of elderly customers’ health-care experience, especially in long-term care service settings.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how various gratifications obtained in the social media context affect customer participation, and its sequential effect on brand trust, brand commitment and word of mouth (WOM) in social media brand communities.

The data were collected from 352 respondents who used social media using a survey method. The data were assessed using AMOS with structural equation modeling.

The findings depicted that among all gratifications obtained in the social media context, information seeking, incentive and brand likeability strongly affect customer participation, which sequentially affect brand trust, commitment and WOM in social media brand communities. In the context of social media brand communities, brand trust partially mediates the relationship between customer participation and its two outcome variables (brand commitment and WOM).

The present paper contributes that theory of uses and gratifications has particular significance and supposed to be provided further importance in the field of social media. It also presents a vivid and rich understanding of why customers use social media and participate in social media brand communities.

The purpose of this paper is to construct and validate customer social participation (CSP) scale in the context of brand communities on social media.

In this study, various tests for reliability and validity have been performed to confirm scale structure. Data were collected using survey method from the student and non-student sample.

The results confirm a multi-dimensional scale with nine items for measuring customer participation in social media brand communities.

The results of this study present several implications for online brand communities managers and are likely to support future research in the context of social media brand communities.

This paper is the first to develop a multi-dimensional scale of customer participation in social media brand communities. This is a new addition to existing literature, as the majority of empirical studies in this field are from participation other than CSP, and contexts different from social media brand communities.

This research aims to contribute to the transformative service research (TSR) literature by examining how customer participation in the service process influences their service experience and eudaimonic well-being, as moderated by customer empowerment and social support.

In the contexts of wedding (n = 623) and tourism services (n = 520), two surveys were conducted to test the hypotheses using mediation and moderation analyses.

Customer participation had a positive effect on their well-being, as mediated by service experience. These effects were moderated by customer empowerment and social support. Specifically, customer empowerment negatively moderated the relationship between customer participation and their service experience for both services. In addition, the moderating effect of social support on the relationship between customer participation and service experience was positive for the wedding service but negative for the tourism service.

The findings imply that firms should encourage customer participation to enhance their service experience and well-being. In addition, the firm could judiciously empower customers by adapting to the level of customer participation. Furthermore, depending on the complexity of the service required to produce the expected service outcomes, the firm may encourage the customers to engage their social network for support.

This research uses the service ecosystem perspective to examine the roles of the customer, the firm and the customer's social network in shaping their service experience and well-being for two common and important mental stimulus services, enriching the authors’ understanding on the role mental stimulus services play in enhancing consumers' eudaimonic well-being.

The purpose of this study is to examine the transformation expectations and well-being of lenders as a consequence of participation in peer-to-peer (p2p) lending in India. The study tested the influence of transformation expectations on well-being, social connectedness on transformation expectations and the influence of customer participation on financial empowerment of borrowers.

A cross-sectional survey research design was adopted to collect data from 434 customers in India. Structural equation modelling procedure was performed to test the hypothesized relationships.

The findings show that relational transformation expectations leads to well-being, while social connectedness influences self and relational transformation expectations. Further, customer participation has a positive influence on financial empowerment of borrowers.

Managers may use these findings to create suitable marketing strategies for increasing customer participation in p2p lending.

Previous studies on transformative services have shown that well-being can be achieved through participation in services that are transformative by design, while this study has established that lender participation in peer-to-peer lending can result in relational transformation expectations and lead to well-being. Also, the current study has shown that social connectedness is an antecedent of transformation expectations.

Building upon uses and gratifications (UG) theory and social exchange theory, the current study establishes a theoretical model to examine the underlying relationship between customer motivations, active participation and electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) and purchase intentions on WeChat.

The data were gathered in a web-based survey of 301 WeChat users in mainland China. To empirically verify the proposed hypotheses, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM) were employed using online data.

Path analysis outcomes demonstrate that functional, hedonic and social motivations positively affect WeChat users' active participation. In addition, active participation significantly influences e-WOM intention while showing no correlation with purchase intention.

Theoretically, this article can enrich the extant system of relevant theories and offer a fresh perspective for further research on the generation of consumers' e-WOM intention and purchase intention in the WeChat context. Practically, the research outcomes provide insight for companies on how to motivate customers to participate in online activities, which subsequently improve WeChat users' willingness in conducting e-WOM communication and making purchase decisions.

Although mobile social media could serve as an influential marketing vehicle for individuals' engagement in social and commercial activities in today's mobile-matured environment, the substantial impact of active engagement on the relationship between customer motivation and purchase intention remains insufficiently explored. The outcomes not only contribute to the current body of knowledge, but also offer several managerial guidance for companies that pay attention to mobile social media marketing in a contemporary mobile media-saturated society.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the relationship between customer participation, co-created value and customer engagement as well as customer motivation involved in this process.

Respondents were randomly exposed to one of the six types of social media scenarios. A total of 181 respondents were drawn from an MTurk opt-in survey panel of individuals who resided in America and were over the age of 18 years.

Overall, the results of this study showed that as the level of customer participation increased, the level of co-created value decreased. The relationship between customer participation and customer engagement was fully mediated by co-created value. Extrinsic motivation was found to moderate the relationship between customer participation and co-created value but did not moderate the relationship between customer participation and customer engagement. Moreover, customer engagement was at its highest when an external reward was not offered, in other words, when customers were intrinsically motivated. Furthermore, when an external reward was offered, a significant effect of privacy concern on customer engagement was observed.

The study extends the current understanding of customer engagement through value co-creation, customer participation and perceptions of privacy in firm-initiated activities in social media.

The business environment is changing and so are the rules of doing business. Constant innovation is the key to win in this dynamic marketplace, so that the new ideas get converted into new marketable products quickly with the least possible mistake. One way to inculcate innovation is by the participation of customers in the new product development (NPD) process. Platforms like social media has provided an opportunity for firms to communicate, co-create and collaborate with customers. The present study aims to understand the customers' participation in three phases, namely idea generation, development and commercialization of the NPD process for its effectiveness.

With the help of review of existing literature, a theoretical model is proposed. This model is then empirically evaluated with data of 213 respondents using structural equation modelling (SEM). The respondents are majorly young social media users in India.

The results highlight that customer involvement is important in idea generation and commercialization phase of NPD process for its effectiveness. Also, the effectiveness of NPD process affects the financial performance of the firm. The use of social media is considered for its mediating role in NPD process effectiveness during the three phases. The results show that it has an effective role to play during the idea generation phase.

Consumers’ perspective concerning usage of social media for their participation in NPD is an unexplored area in general and in the Indian context in particular. To fill this research gap the present study is carried out.

The purpose of this paper is to present a systematic review of customer participation research specifically in online brand communities and summarize a number of basic issues as important research gaps that future research should address.

By using the content analysis method, this paper explores, analyses and presents a literature review by closely examining 113 articles published during 2001-2016, primarily from the leading marketing and management journals.

The findings of this review show that regardless of the plenty of studies in this area, a conceptual framework for customer participation is undetermined. This review presents a framework describing various antecedents, mediators, moderators and consequences of online brand community participation. Apart from this, various theories and models used in the reviewed articles are being depicted. The literature classification presented in this paper portrays the current trends and patterns of research in this area. This review also addresses research gaps in this area and presents them in the form of future research directions.

This review of literature carried out by the authors suggests that customer participation in online brand communities needs more focused conceptual research and the implications of this study will help researchers in this direction. Moreover, the managers can use the identified variables as a checklist to their online brand communities’ activities.

This paper is the first to provide a systematic review of customer participation in online brand community area that presents a comprehensive knowledge regarding the current state of research in this area on a single platform and provides a conceptual framework.