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The past two decades have witnessed little, if any, growth in the numbers of small firms with employees in the UK. At the same time, a substantial growth in the numbers of self‐employed without employees as a component of the UK national labour force has been witnessed. The current article reports on a recent study into direct selling that accounts for around 500,000 “independent contractors” at any one time, albeit, in this case, operating often as part of an invisible economy, though linked with household‐name direct selling companies. With the advent of more large companies, such as the recently privatised utilities, using direct selling as a distribution format, there is a strong case for achieving a wider understanding of the dynamics of this system.

Relationship marketing (RM) has emerged as a new marketing idea for many firms in Western countries. The aim of this paper is to review the evolution of RM ideas. Definitional difficulties are sorted out, a typology of many of the relationships is developed, structural and social bonds are identified and whether RM is a paradigm shift for marketing theorists and practitioners is debated. This paper argues that RM is not a paradigm shift, but rather an appropriate marketing approach when management considers product/service, customer, and organization factors. The paper’s contribution is its comprehensiveness and up‐to‐date review of the evolution of core RM ideas.

The purpose of this paper is to make two main contributions: first, showcase the diversity of service research in terms of the variety of used theories and methods, and second, explain (post-publication) success of articles operationalized as interest in an article (downloads), usage (citations), and awards (best paper nomination). From there, three sub-contributions are derived: stimulate a dialogue about existing norms and practices in the service field, enable and encourage openness amongst service scholars, and motivate scholars to join the field.

A mixed method approach is used in combining quantitative and qualitative research methods while analyzing 158 Journal of Service Management (JOSM) articles on several criteria such as their theory, methodology, and main descriptive elements (e.g. number of authors or references) and then using automated text analysis (e.g. investigating the readability of articles, etc.).

The results show that the JOSM publishes a large variety of articles with regard to theories, methods of data collection, and types of data analysis. For example, JOSM has published a mixture of qualitative and quantitative articles and papers containing firm-level and customer-level data. Further, the results show that even though conceptual articles create the same amount of interest (downloads), they are used more (citations).

This paper presents many descriptive results which do not allow for making inferences toward the entire service research discipline. Further, it is only based on one service research journal (JOSM) through a five-year span of publication.

The results have a number of implications for the discipline that are presented and discussed. Amongst them are that: the discipline should be more open toward conceptual articles, service research shows an imbalance toward theory testing, there is more potential to work with transactional data, and writing style should be more accessible (i.e. readable).

This paper is the first to conduct an in-depth analysis of service research articles to stimulate dialogue about common publishing practices in the JOSM and to increase the openness of the field.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between e-marketing (eM) and consumers’ buying behavior particularly exploratory buying behavior tendencies (EBBT) with moderating effect of a gender in the context of China.

Structural equation modeling using SPSS/AMOS was majorly applied to ascertain the relationship and hypotheses testing. First, the correlation of eM toward EBBT is examined using five factors: internet marketing (IM), e-mail marketing (EMa), intranet marketing (IMa), extranet marketing (EM), and mobile marketing (MM). Second, the relationship of each dimension of the eM model is determined autonomously to ensure the importance of such emerging technologies in marketing communications. Third, the effect of gender as a moderator is measured. To this end, primary data were collected through random distribution of the questionnaires among 1,600 consumers particularly students of the universities between February 2016 and August 2016 within North China.

The findings revealed that eM has a significant correlation on consumers’ EBBT. The comprehensive analysis of each factor of eM, i.e., IM, EMa, IMa, EM, and MM is positively correlated to EBBT. The present study revealed that gender did not moderate among the relationships of eM and EBBT. Additionally, study furnishes practical directions on how managers can utilize such emerging and revolutionary technologies in marketing activities to probe, understand, and reinforce consumers’ buying behavior.

The research has limitations related to geographical location and sample size which thus limits the widespread generalization.

This study affirmed that organizations must engage the consumers using such technologies that are more likely acceptable by consumers in the present customer-oriented and digital era. The marketers must engage consumers the way they wish to be engaged by developing appropriate promotional strategies. The study provides possible implications both theoretical and managerial along with a contribution to the literature of eM and consumers’ buying behavior.

Understanding the emerging technologies may furnish valuable insights for individuals to work well within Chinese SMEs.

The topic of eM has acknowledged as an evolving concept which is gaining an intense concern of both academician and practitioners. Therefore, more research mainly empirical work is still needed to probe the insights of eM across the globe. This study attempts to fulfill such need with empirical evidence together with an in-depth examination of eM determinants, collectively and autonomously.

The main aim of this paper is to demonstrate that “volunteer” employees’ perception of dimensions of intellectual capital (IC) – human, structural and relation capital – creates a motivational environment to enhance knowledge-sharing intention (KSI) and stimulates “volunteer” employee engagement (VEE). The model is applied on the non-profit organizations (NPOs) sector that base their path on sharing values with volunteers and employees in relation to which they have to implement engagement strategies that are beneficial to both developing and deploying individual and organizational human capital.

To verify the existence of relationships between the constructs of IC, KSI and VEE a partial least squares structural equation model on a sample of 300 “volunteer” employees of NPOs was tested to verify the research hypotheses, as this could explain the causal relationships.

The results confirm that KSI is positively and directly influenced by the favourable environment resulting from the motivations below the dimensions of IC. The improvement of KSI, determined by IC, has a positive effect on VEE.

Despite the limitation created by the peculiarities of NPOs and the role of volunteers, this paper suggests a strategic approach that the management could implement to create an environment based on the exchange of knowledge and to increase engagement in the value co-creation process.

The ability of a company to adopt sharing strategies depends on the existence of an environment in which individuals are willing to exchange knowledge realizing mutual benefits. The work broadens this perspective by providing governance with a behavioural model that creates a direct relationship between IC, KSI and VEE.

This paper aims to provide a history of relational perspectives in marketing practice from the nineteenth through to the twentieth century.

This paper engages in a systematic reading of published histories of retailing practice using the key attributes of transaction and relationship marketing as a conceptual framework to interrogate whether earlier practitioners were committed to either approach.

This paper supplements the studies conducted in other domains that undermine the idea that relational practices were rejected in favor of transaction-type approaches during the industrialization of the USA and Canada.

The content of this paper provides textbook authors with a means to fundamentally revise the way they discuss relationship marketing. It has a similar pedagogic utility.

This paper studies the writings of practitioners known to be pioneers of retailing to unravel their business philosophies, comparing and contrasting these to known attributes of relationship marketing. It deals with an historical period that has not previously been studied in this level of detail by marketing historians.

This paper aims to apply a broader perspective of branding to foster new insights and develop strategies to address product counterfeiting.

A review of the counterfeiting and branding literature leads to the development of a new conceptual framework that incorporates proactive, collaborative processes, in addition to the traditional product branding approach.

The integrative framework provides a basis to develop innovative, proactive strategies that complement traditional branding approaches to address product counterfeiting. The complexity of an integrative framework (or network) offers more opportunities for the firm to co-create robust meaning with multiple stakeholders. Identity elements are readily copied, whereas meanings are not. These strategies help to control counterfeiting by developing deep and inimitable relationships between managers and other stakeholders in a marketing network.

A research agenda is proposed to structure future studies on counterfeiting.

The framework outlines how to leverage collaboration between managers and brand stakeholders to complement conventional approaches to control counterfeiting based on traditional product branding.

This paper contributes to the growing body of counterfeiting and brand protection literature by adapting and applying contemporary integrative branding concepts, leading to novel strategies to address the issue.

This paper aims to review the existing literature about consumer engagement, provide an accurate mapping of this research field, propose a consumer engagement typology and a conceptual framework and offer a research agenda for this domain.

A systematic literature review using several quality filters was performed, producing a top-quality pool of 41 papers. After that, a text mining analysis was conducted, and five major research streams emerged.

This paper proposes five distinct research streams based on the text mining analysis, namely, consumer engagement, online brand community engagement, consumer-brand engagement, consumer engagement behaviours and media engagement. Based on this, a consumer engagement typology and a conceptual framework are suggested and a research agenda is proposed.

This paper presents scientific value and originality because of the new character of the topic and the research methods used. This research is the first study to perform a systematic review and using a text-mining approach to examine the literature on consumer engagement. Based on this, the authors define consumer engagement typology. A research agenda underlining emerging future research topics for this domain is also proposed.

El presente artículo tiene por objeto revisar la bibliografía existente sobre el engagement de los consumidores, proporcionar una descripción precisa de este campo de investigación, proponer una tipología del engagement de los consumidores y un marco conceptual, y ofrecer una agenda de investigación.

Se realizó una revisión sistemática de la literatura utilizando varios filtros, lo que permitió seleccionar 41 trabajos de alta calidad. Después, se realizó un análisis de minería de textos y surgieron cinco corrientes principales de investigación.

Este documento propone cinco corrientes de investigación distintas basadas en el análisis de minería de textos: i) Participación del consumidor; ii) Participación de la comunidad de marcas en línea; iii) Engagement del consumidor-marca; iv) Comportamientos de engagement del consumidor; v) y engagement de los medios de comunicación. Sobre esta base, proponemos una tipología de engagement del consumidor y un marco conceptual y proponemos una agenda de investigación.

Este documento presenta el valor científico y la originalidad debido al nuevo carácter del tema y los métodos de investigación empleados. Esta investigación es el primer estudio que realiza una revisión sistemática y utiliza un enfoque de minería de textos para examinar la literatura sobre engagement de los consumidores. Sobre esta base, los autores definen la tipología de engagement del consumidor. También se propone un programa de investigación que subraya los temas de investigación futuros emergentes para este ámbito.