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This study aims to identify the benefits and costs of participation in small group consumption communities (SGCCs), and understand how benefits and costs experienced in these communities differ from those experienced in large group consumption communities (LGCCs).

Thematic analysis of data collected through multi-method approach comprising depth-interviews, participant observation of community events and online community forums was used to identify benefits and costs of SGCC participation.

Eight benefits and three costs of SGCC participation were identified. While some benefits and costs were found to be similar to those identified in LGCCs earlier, their experience and manifestation was found to differ significantly in SGCCs.

Data were collected from SGCCs located in India (collectivist culture). Hence, findings may not be reflective of individualist cultures.

Understanding that benefits and costs of community participation are experienced differently in SGCCs and LGCCs may be useful input for managers wanting to seed/nurture consumption communities. By increasing benefits and reducing costs, managers can transform communities into vibrant social systems, and thereby improve members’ engagement and involvement.

Of the eight benefits identified in the study, two benefits – Escape and Meaningful Engagement are identified for the first time. The study also explores costs of SGCC participation (an area hitherto under explored) in detail. In addition, the study illustrates how some of the benefits despite being seemingly similar in SGCCs and LGCCs are inherently different.

What happens to nonelite workers’ meaning, belonging, and identity when work is “on-demand”? On-demand organizations, such as Uber and TaskRabbit, have ambiguous boundaries and locations of workers. This qualitative study investigated how organizational and societal boundary discourse and the organization of the work itself, constructed sometimes conflicting worker roles that influenced how ride-hailing workers understood the boundaries of the on-demand organization and their location with respect to it. The roles of app–user and driver–partner constructed ride-hailing workers as outside the boundaries of the organization, while the driver–bot role constructed them as (nonhuman) elements of organizational technology. While the driver–partner role had positive and empowering identity, meaning, and belongingness associations, its conflict with the other roles blocked these positive associations, and led to cynicism and fatalism. We reflect on the possible impacts of the on-demand economy on society, workers, and the practice of work, particularly for nonelite workers.

This paper aims to examine the role of technology in shaping the interplay between intimate and economic relations in collaborative consumer networks (CCNs).

This research is based on a three-year participatory netnographic and ethnographic field study of hosts, guests and community members within the Airbnb home-sharing network in New Zealand. The data consist of interviews, online and offline participant observations and brief discussions onsite (large-scale Airbnb events, host meetups and during Airbnb stays).

The findings reveal how technologies shape the relational work of home-sharing between intimate and economic institutions through grooming, bundling, brokerage, buffering and social edgework. This paper proposes a framework of triadic relational work enacted by network actors, involving complex exchange structures.

This study focusses on a single context – a market-mediated home-sharing platform. The findings may not apply to other contexts of economic and social exchanges.

The study reveals that the construction of specific relational packages by Airbnb hosts using their digital technologies pave a path for home-sharing to skirt the norms of the home as a place of intimacy and the market as a place for economics. This allows these two spheres to flourish with little controversy.

By augmenting Zelizer’s relational work, this study produces theoretical insights into the agentic role of technology in creating and stabilising a CCN.

Using a combined Industrial Marketing and Purchasing’s network approach and institutional theory, this paper aims to explore why firms exploit dual marketing strategy that targets both the consumer (business-to-consumer) and business markets (business-to-business). This study uses the regulated housing market as its research context in examining how housing developers cope with government intervention when implementing a dual marketing strategy.

This study applies a qualitative case study research approach, using 19 in-depth interviews, from the purposefully selected industry actors within the housing market, observations and documents.

The findings uncover housing developers’ struggles in dealing with government intervention when they adopt a dual marketing strategy. When dealing with the regulated consumer market, developers formed an issue-based net with other competitors and used their association to bargain with the government for flexibility in public policy. When selling to the business market, in which the private investment club emerged as a powerful actor, they initiated strategic net and influenced property developers’ pricing and selling strategies. The findings also demonstrate that the restrictions imposed on the consumer market have a spillover effect on the business market, which reflects the contextual embeddedness of the two markets.

This study contributes to the understanding of how actors strategize and co-evolve when implementing a dual marketing strategy. It helps policymakers, business actors and other connected actors to understand the interactions of all actors within a network that affects each other’s decisions.

This study discusses the evolution of supply chain and the growing importance of dual marketing strategies. To understand the concept of dual marketing, we present a scenario faced by property developers in Malaysia on the impact of public policy on dual marketing strategy. This study is to uncover (1) the reasons why and how property developers adopt dual marketing strategy, (2) the impact of housing policy on the developers' dual marketing strategy and how they strategise to cope with the policy.

The purpose of this paper is to critique the adequacy of efforts to capture the complexities of customer experience in a business-to-business (B2B) context using input–output measures. The paper introduces a strategic customer experience management framework to capture the complexity of B2B service interactions and discusses the value of outcomes-based measurement.

This is a theoretical paper that reviews extant literature related to B2B customer experience and asks fresh questions regarding B2B customer experience at a more strategic network level.

The paper offers a reconceptualisation of B2B customer experience, proposes a strategic customer experience management framework and outlines a future research agenda.

This paper is conceptual and seeks to raise questions surrounding the under-examined area of B2B customer experience. As a consequence, it has inevitable limitations resulting from the lack of empirical evidence to support the reconceptualisation.

Existing measures of customer experience are problematic when applied in a B2B (services) context. Rather than adopting input- and output-based measures, widely used in a business-to-consumer (B2C) context, a B2B context requires a more strategic approach to capturing and managing customer experience. Focussing on strategically important issues should generate opportunities for value co-creation and are more likely to involve outcomes-based measures.

Improving the understanding of customer experience in a B2B context should allow organisations to design better services and consequently enhance the experiences of their employees, their customers and other connected actors.

This paper critiques the current approach to measuring customer experience in a B2B context, drawing on contemporary ideas of value-in-use, outcomes-based measures and “Big Data” to offer potential solutions to the measurement problems identified.

To examine the potential for including forums in an online ethnography that draws on data from multiple online sites.

Taking a broadly post-structuralist approach to identity and embodiment online, the research drew on three sources of data: asynchronous email interviews, in-game participant observation and six months of forum observation.

The community in question was socially located around multiple field sites online and forums remain an integral part of the social lives of online gamers. The practice and ethics for examining forums from a qualitative perspective are outlined and how this can fit into an ethnographic account. Some of the data is then presented from this strand of the research to illustrate how researching a forum as a ‘lurker’ can complement theoretical trajectories and analyses from other parts of the dataset.

This research details a novel way of examining forums qualitatively as part of a larger dataset. Furthermore, the chapter posits how relatively unobtrusive methods of observation can bring to the fore the ways in which prejudice still structures online social interaction.

To investigate the presentation of self of participants in occupational online forums.

Interpretation of more than 300 profiles of participants to a banking‐related occupational online forum based on Goffman's seminal analysis of presentation of self and on the literature on mystification and fragmentation in virtual environments.

Contributors to the occupational online forum adopted one of several main categories of profiles. These categories differed in the degree of detail with which profiles were filled and showed that forum users chose a certain degree of mystification or de‐mystification for their profile. The presentation of self in the online occupational forum was related to the presentation in offline environments, such as in the workplace as well as to other online contexts, such as in electronic chats. The categories of profiles were also associated with strikingly different registration dates and number of posts per year and per contributor.

The research analyzed only the profiles of contributors to the online forum, but not their motivations or posts.

Employees and employers should hone their ability to present online information about themselves and to interpret the virtual image(s) others present.

This paper covers: grounded categorization of adopted fronts in occupational online forums; conceptualization of the presentation of self in online environments as related to the participation of multiple online and offline social contexts; identification of simultaneous processes of fragmentation and continuity at play in online forums through their participants' presentation of self.

Over the past few years online fashion communities have proliferated becoming an increasingly powerful forum for user-generated content, and consequently, the fashion industry has shown great interest in such communities. The purpose of this paper is to review and analyse brand advocacy behaviour within luxury brand accessory forums: to analyse the role these communities play in influencing purchase intention; assessing their contribution to fashion brand love.

The study adopted a netnographic approach to the phenomenon of online luxury accessory communities. The research reports observational data including blog texts and audience comments for four popular forums: The Purse Forum, The Fashion Spot, The Bag Forum (TBF) and Shoe Forum (SF). Although the forums are open to all and are designed to be internationally relevant; the observations were conducted from a base in the UK.

Findings indicate that informants display some unifying characteristics clustered around engagement, involvement, self-concept and self-connection, brand love and hedonic values. Informants however, display some discernible differences as they “rally” to two distinctive totems: first, active luxury brand advocates and second, passive brand advocates. Although subtle, these differences suggest significant possibilities for fashion brand owners.

Further research could include the measurement of brand advocacy to distinguish more clearly between high and low levels of advocacy and the resulting consumer behaviour intentions. One sub-group that would be interesting to explore is that of brand evangelists and their relationship with fashion brands: what are the reasons for treating brands as religious artefacts and can this extreme level of advocacy be developed by marketing? The study focused on observing online posts by self-selected brand advocates. A worthwhile comparison could be made with fashion communities where brand marketers are active participants and how this influences the discourse and actions of brand advocates.

The findings indicate that all forum members are incredibly attached to their brands, but will still consider purchasing several brands as their “evoked set”. Additionally, even when demonstrating involvement, they can operate as passive observers in the online community.

Social media, especially online forums, play an important role in contemporary luxury fashion branding. This study addresses the role these forums play in supporting brand love and the contribution they make to luxury brand advocacy. Membership and influence dynamics are reported; which have resonance to both practitioners and researchers.

Marketing literature views word-of-mouth (WOM) as unidirectional communication in which consumers transmit either positive or negative messages based on their consumption experiences. Becoming visible in online forums, however, are consumers who engage in WOM as part of interactions with other consumers. This article aims to investigate a phenomenon frequently occurring in these interactions: consumers who defend companies and brands against others' negative WOM.

The authors investigated the online defense phenomenon in its natural setting using an online ethnography, known as a netnography.

This study provides empirical evidence for the existence of six different defense styles, as well as details of the identified factors underlying consumers' choices of defense styles. Moreover, the authors' analysis highlights the different outcomes of various company- and brand-defending behaviors and illustrates that this consumer phenomenon can be effective in preventing the spread of negative WOM or in mitigating its impact.

Future research could benefit from further testing the effectiveness of the various defense styles as well as investigating how to stimulate this important buffer against negative WOM.

Companies are increasingly allocating resources to the monitoring of online conversations so as to be able to respond to criticisms in social media. The authors' findings indicate that other consumers frequently respond to these complaints before the companies do. These company and brand defenders could replace some of the resources companies currently devote to social media.

The present study identifies company and brand defending as a new WOM activity, thus extending the concept of WOM beyond praising and complaining. In addition, this study suggests that consumers who counter negative messages are not necessarily loyal, as previously assumed, but rather motivated by a sense of justice or a need for self-enhancement.