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1 – 10 of over 28000Hulda G. Black, Leslie H. Vincent and Steven J. Skinner
This paper aims to examine the relationship between customer networks and intercustomer social support, through the theoretical lens of service dominant logic (SDL). Co-creation…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the relationship between customer networks and intercustomer social support, through the theoretical lens of service dominant logic (SDL). Co-creation and objective performance objectives are analyzed to understand the differential impact of instrumental and social/emotional intercustomer support on performance.
Design/methodology/approach
A combination of survey and secondary data were collected within a health-club setting to test hypotheses. The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.
Findings
A customer’s network ties positively impact his/her intercustomer support perceptions, and this relationship is moderated by tie strength. Further, instrumental support impacts objective performance measures, while social/emotional has a greater impact on affective outcomes.
Research limitations/implications
As customers become more connected, it is in the interest of the organization to capitalize on these connections. Future research should investigate what types of programming and marketing can directly enhance the number and types of connections customers form with others.
Practical implications
Service organizations can benefit by fostering environments where customers connect with each other. These connections need not be at a high level; simple, informational connections prove to benefit the organization.
Originality/value
The present research is designed to add to the research on intercustomer support in the service literature. This study investigates network-level antecedents of intercustomer support. Further, this research connects intercustomer support to objective (firm-reported) measures of performance. Last, this research examines intercustomer support through the lens of SDL and investigates its impact on co-creation outcomes.
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Wenhua Shi, Jianmei Ma and Chen Ji
The purpose of this paper is to study how customers’ social ties can be performed as one kind of switching costs, which can affect customer loyalty and have a moderate effect on…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to study how customers’ social ties can be performed as one kind of switching costs, which can affect customer loyalty and have a moderate effect on the relationship between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, and to improve the typology study of switching costs and give suggestions for companies about how to strengthen customer loyalty.
Design/methodology/approach
An empirical research is implemented to prove the effectiveness of the study model, using factor analyses, regression analyses and structural equation model analyses as data analyses approaches.
Findings
The research results prove the direct and moderate effect of social ties loss costs, and the effectiveness and reasoning of the new typology of switching costs.
Practical implications
According to the research results, companies can take measures to enhance customers’ social ties loss costs properly so as to strengthen their loyalty.
Originality/value
This research comes up with a new kind of relational switching costs, social ties loss costs and proves its effects, thus improving the typology of switching costs, and makes practical suggestions for companies.
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Yu Che, Yongqiang Li, Kim-Shyan Fam and Xuan Bai
This study aims to examine the underlying mechanism of buyer–seller ties and salespeople’s performance. Also examined was the moderating effects of the density of the customer…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to examine the underlying mechanism of buyer–seller ties and salespeople’s performance. Also examined was the moderating effects of the density of the customer network in which the salesperson is embedded.
Design/methodology/approach
The study developed a framework incorporating five key variables: strength of ties, network benefits, network density, sales effectiveness and sales revenue. The framework was tested using data from insurance companies in China.
Findings
Process regression and stepwise regression results indicated that information, influence and solidarity benefit will mediate the effects of strength of ties on sales effectiveness both when taken as a set and separately. Information, influence and solidarity benefit will mediate the effects of strength of ties on sales revenue when taken as a set, but only influence will mediate the effect separately. In addition, the positive relationship between strength of ties and solidarity benefit is weaker when network density is high.
Practical implications
Sales managers should initiate trainings and workshops about how to obtain high-quality information from customers, improving influencing power and establishing solidarity with customers. Moreover, salespeople should avoid conducting business with a group of customers if they are densely connected to one another.
Originality/value
On the one hand, this study contributes to the underlying mechanism research on buyer–seller ties and sales performance. On the other hand, it contributes to the contingency research on sales performance and the development of social network theory.
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Jia Jin, Yi He, Chenchen Lin and Liuting Diao
Social recommendation has been recognized as a kind of e-commerce with large potential, but how social recommendations influence consumer decisions is still unclear. This paper…
Abstract
Purpose
Social recommendation has been recognized as a kind of e-commerce with large potential, but how social recommendations influence consumer decisions is still unclear. This paper aims to investigate how recommendations from different social ties influence consumers’ purchase intentions through both behavior and brain activity.
Design/methodology/approach
Utilizing behavioral (N = 70) and electroencephalogram (EEG) (N = 49) experiments, this study explored participants’ behavior and brain responses after being recommended by different social ties. The data were analyzed using statistical inference and event-related potential (ERP) analysis.
Findings
Behavioral results show that social tie strength positively impacts purchase intention, which can be fitted by a logarithmic model. Moreover, recommender-to-customer similarity and product affect mediate the effect of tie strength on purchase intention serially. EEG findings show that recommendations from weak tie strength elicit larger N100, N200 and P300 amplitudes than those from strong tie strength. These results imply that weak tie strength may motivate individuals to recruit more mental resources in social recommendation, including unconscious processing of consumer attention and conscious processing of cognitive conflict and negative emotion.
Originality/value
This study considers the effects of continuous social ties on purchase intention and models them mathematically, exploring the intrinsic mechanisms by which strong and weak ties influence purchase intentions through recommender-to-customer similarity and product affect, contributing to the applications of the stimulus-organism-response (SOR) model in the field of social recommendation. Furthermore, our study adopting EEG techniques bridges the gap of relying solely on self-report by providing an avenue to obtain relatively objective findings about the consumers’ early-occurred (unconscious) attentional responses and late-occurred (conscious) cognitive and emotional responses in purchase decisions.
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Yossef Arie and Gustavo S. Mesch
This study investigated the association between structural conditions and social incentives and their effect on the ethnic composition of mobile social networks. Regarding…
Abstract
Purpose
This study investigated the association between structural conditions and social incentives and their effect on the ethnic composition of mobile social networks. Regarding structural conditions, we examined the role of the ethnic group’s size, socioeconomic status, and heterogeneity of the city in which the business was located. Regarding social incentives, we investigated the social diversification hypothesis, which expects that residentially and socially segregated minority groups will take advantage of mobile communications to diversify their mobile communication ties with outgroup members.
Methodology/approach
Two data sets were used. The first was the aggregation of the mobile communication patterns of business customers as measured by one of Israel’s mobile phone operators in April 2010. The database included 9,099 call data records. The second was a data set of the social characteristics of 103 Israeli cities from the Israeli Bureau of Statistics. Both data sets were merged according to the place of residence of each customer.
Findings
Israeli Arab businesses in homogeneous Jewish and mixed cities operate in an environment with more structural opportunities to create outgroup ethnic ties than Arab businesses in homogeneous Arab cities. Jewish businesses in ethnically mixed cities have more outgroup mobile ties than comparable businesses in homogenous Jewish cities.
Implications
We expand previous models and suggest a structural diversification approach in which ethnic mobile social networks vary across homogeneous and ethnically mixed cities. These variations result in different social incentives as the diversification approach assumed, as well as different structural conditions, as the structural approach indicates.
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Wei Wei, Shue Mei, Jiameng Yang and Zhiyong John Liu
More and more firms are utilizing social media as a distribution channel to sell products. By establishing business accounts on social media firms provide information service to…
Abstract
Purpose
More and more firms are utilizing social media as a distribution channel to sell products. By establishing business accounts on social media firms provide information service to strengthen their relationship with customers and boost sales. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the pricing, information service provision and channel strategies of firms who sell products through social media.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors use a game theoretical model to study a dual-channel supply chain consisting of one manufacturer and one retailer. Two scenarios are considered – under one scenario the manufacturer and under the other the retailer, respectively, solely provides information service. Both firms’ pricing decisions and profits are compared.
Findings
The authors find that in the dual-channel model with either the manufacturer or the retailer providing information service to enhance the demand: a firm that has stronger social ties with customers is willing to provide more information services; when the manufacturer provides information service, it charges a direct price higher than the wholesale price, and whether the direct-channel price exceeds the retail price depends on the strength of the manufacturer’s social ties with customers; when the retailer provides information service, the direct price is equal to the wholesale price, both lower than the retail price; and a firm always prefers itself rather than the other firm to provide information service. However, the whole supply chain is better off if the manufacturer rather than the retailer provides information service.
Research limitations/implications
Besides the relationship between firms and customers, the peer relationship among customers also impacts the supply chain performance, which might be studied in the future.
Originality/value
The study is novel in theoretically exploring the influence of firms’ social relationship with customers on firms’ pricing and channel strategies.
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Jose Celso Contador, Jose Luiz Contador and Walter Cardoso Satyro
This paper proposes the “fields and weapons of the competition model applied to business networks” – CAC-Redes (in Portuguese, Campos e Armas da Competição – Redes de negócio), an…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper proposes the “fields and weapons of the competition model applied to business networks” – CAC-Redes (in Portuguese, Campos e Armas da Competição – Redes de negócio), an extension of the fields and weapons of the competition model (CAC) – to study the competition and competitiveness of companies operating in business networks in a competitive environment while integrating organizational competencies, interorganizational ties and company positioning to provide competitive advantage.
Design/methodology/approach
CAC-Redes is born from the cross-fertilization process of various theoretical perspectives, namely, industrial organization, traditional view of operational activities and resources, relational view, strategic alignment, transaction cost theory and social perspectives in networks, structured according to systems theory and under the mantle of competitive advantage theory. To discover the structure of existing models of competitiveness in networks, a bibliographic search was conducted in the Scopus database. Quali-quantitative empirical research was undertaken in companies from six different economic sectors through structured questionnaires and personal interviews to understand how companies competed and discover the determining factors of their competitive advantage.
Findings
Only seven models of competitiveness in network were found, and their structures and characteristics are quite different from those of CAC-Redes. Empirical research confirms all the hypotheses that support CAC-Redes, which, combined with those of CAC, indicate the CAC-Redes corroboration.
Research limitations/implications
CAC-Redes does not apply to networks without intercompany competition, studies on network governance and corporate strategy formulation.
Practical implications
CAC-Redes is effective in studying complex competitiveness phenomena because it considers multiple influences; provides a process based on qualitative and quantitative variables that increase the probability of formulating successful competitive strategies; simplifies the differentiation of skills from core competencies and determines them; proposes a competitive advantage criterion to select suppliers; creates a unifying language to represent the different strategic specificities of companies, competitors, suppliers, customers and the company environment and provides a library containing 181 weapons (resources) and dozens of interorganizational ties that can be used in empirical studies with other methodologies.
Social implications
CAC-Redes, due to its originality and peculiarities, theoretically contributes to theory of resources because it dispenses with the assumption, “unique resource, source of competitive advantage”; to relational view because it considers interorganizational relationships as a competence and treats it quali-quantitatively and to core competencies because if the strategy changes, different core competencies will be needed. Furthermore, it is an alternative to the dynamic capabilities perspective, and it transforms the five manufacturing performance objectives into nine for the entire company.
Originality/value
CAC-Redes is an original model because its structure and characteristics comparatively differ from those of existing models, and 14 singularities are detected.
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Enhui Yan, Jianlin Wu and Jibao Gu
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how complementors’ marketing capability and technology capability affect their performance. Drawing on social capital theory, the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how complementors’ marketing capability and technology capability affect their performance. Drawing on social capital theory, the authors examine platform network centrality as a mediator and platform reputation as a moderator of the relationships between these two capabilities and complementor performance.
Design/methodology/approach
This study collects data by questionnaire from 154 Chinese firms adopting e-commerce platforms. Hierarchical multiple regression is used to test the hypotheses of this study.
Findings
This study finds that complementors’ marketing capability and technology capability positively affect performance by increasing their platform network centrality. Moreover, platform reputation positively moderates the relationship between platform network centrality and complementor performance, and it strengthens the mediating role of platform network centrality.
Originality/value
This paper emphasizes the critical role of marketing capability and technology capability on complementor performance. It explores the improvement path of complementor performance from the perspective of network position, which is a key element for complementors to effectively leverage their capabilities to build competitive advantage.
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Marcel Paulssen, Raphael Roulet and Sina Wilke
The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to investigate the role of perceived risk as a moderator of the key relational mediators of satisfaction and trust, and second, to…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to investigate the role of perceived risk as a moderator of the key relational mediators of satisfaction and trust, and second, to test the influence of perceived product value and social bonding as antecedents of brand satisfaction and brand trust to understand their effectiveness under different risk conditions. Palmatier et al. (2006) call for the study of moderators of relational mediators, such as trust and satisfaction, which may determine the effectiveness of different relationship marketing strategies.
Design/methodology/approach
This study investigates business-to-consumer relationships between a car brand and its customers, applying structural equation modeling.
Findings
Results show that perceived risk moderates the mediating role of both brand trust and brand satisfaction on relationship outcomes. When perceived risk is low, brand satisfaction alone determines brand loyalty, whereas when perceived risk is high, brand trust exclusively determines brand loyalty. Thus, the effectiveness of social bonding tactics as a prime determinant of trust is contingent on consumers’ risk perceptions.
Research limitations/implications
A limitation of the present research is its focus on one product category. Further investigations should be conducted to expand the findings’ generalizability.
Practical implications
The often-recommended social bonding between boundary spanner and customers is only an effective relationship marketing strategy in situations of high perceived risk.
Originality/value
This study clarifies the role of perceived risk in marketing relationships by testing alternative models.
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Mercedes Marzo‐Navarro, Marta Pedraja‐Iglesias and Ma Pilar Rivera‐Torres
Globalization, competition and market saturation have caused a growing interest by firms in developing strategies directed at creating brand loyalty among their customers…
Abstract
Globalization, competition and market saturation have caused a growing interest by firms in developing strategies directed at creating brand loyalty among their customers, especially in markets with low growth rates. In order to reach this objective, relationship marketing must be applied, which considers the mutual benefits derived from the creation of stable relationships between buyers and sellers. The study herein developed analyses the existence of groups of customers from the service sector who value the offer of relational benefits by the organisation, in which benefits are centred basically on the relationship with the contact personnel. As a result, the customers state greater levels of satisfaction with and loyalty to the organisation.
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