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The purpose of this paper is to explore the factors influencing customers’ willingness to participate in virtual brand community’s value co-creation and help companies better operating the virtual brand community.

Based on social cognitive theory and the features of the virtual brand community, this paper constructed a model of factors influencing customers’ willingness to participate in virtual brand community’s value co-creation. Then this paper quantitatively analyzed the mediating effect and the moderating effect.

The empirical analysis came to the following conclusions: first, in virtual brand communities, customers’ willingness to participate in value co-creation would be influenced by subject factors, environment factors, brand factors and perceived value factor. Second, customer involvement is an important moderator. The more involved the customer is, the more he/she will rely on the virtual brand community. Particularly, customer involvement has a positive moderating effect on the influence of subject factors, while it has a negative moderating effect on the influence of community experience and community trust. Third, perceived value plays a significant mediating role between subject factors and customers’ willingness to participate in value co-creation.

The results of this study can help companies better understand the influence of external factors like environment and brand so that they can better operate the virtual brand community and encourage customers to contribute to the development of the community and the brand.

Most of the existing studies focused on the formation of virtual brand communities and customers’ participation behaviors, but there is limited research focusing on what contributes to customers’ participation in value co-creation of virtual brand communities. This study, therefore, attempts to bridge the research gap.

The purpose of this study is to outline a conceptual framework for customer engagement in the context of social media for emerging markets. Three competing models of customer engagement were identified and tested to arrive at the best suited model for the given contexts. The alternative conceptual frameworks involve the constructs of active participation, community trust and community commitment in relation to customer engagement.

Data were collected using questionnaires sent via e-mail to respondents. Structural equation modelling was then used to arrive at the best suited model, while also empirically testing for the relationships among the constructs.

The study, by way of an empirical comparison of alternative conceptual frameworks, presents a customer engagement framework best suiting the social media context for emerging markets. The study also outlines active participation, community trust and community commitment to be acting as antecedents to customer engagement. Further active participation is identified as a necessary antecedent to customer engagement based on the comparative assessment of the frameworks.

While there is not much consensus on the nature of customer engagement, the study offers insights to marketers in terms of managing customer engagement with their brand communities. The study identifies the role and importance of inducing active participation in a brand community context. Further, it also identifies community trust and community commitment to be occurring as antecedents to customer engagement, with commitment implying for a more pronounced role in the framework.

There is no consensus among researchers regarding the nomological network surrounding customer engagement. Further, very few of these studies have focussed on this construct in the context of emerging markets. This study thus attempts to close the above gap, by testing for alternative conceptual frameworks involving customer engagement, in the context of social media for emerging markets.

Co-creating value with customers is important for companies in order to gain a competitive advantage. Based on resource theory and social interaction theory, the purpose of this paper is to explore the customer participation mechanism in co-creating value and test the effects of different types of customer resources and multi-level customer–firm interaction on customer value.

Data were collected from tourism industry. Hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling.

The results indicate that both the customer’s human resource and relationship resource have a significantly positive effect on customers’ utilitarian value and hedonic value through reactive and proactive interactions. Reactive interaction has a full mediating effect on the relationship between relationship resource and proactive interaction, whereas proactive interaction has a full mediating effect on the relationship between reactive interaction and hedonic value.

This study explores the mediating effects of customer–firm interaction between customer resources and customer value. This paper contributes to the understanding of customers’ motivations for, and the processes of, participating in value co-creation.

This study aims to explore the value co-creation for developing cultural and creative virtual brand communities (CCVBCs) by developing a conceptual framework based on the stimulus-organism-response framework, social cognition theory (SCT) and social exchange theory (SET).

The proposed conceptual framework was developed from a comprehensive review of the related literature. This study tested and validated the proposed framework using partial least square structural equation model based on the data collected through a survey.

First, perceived hedonic benefit was positively affected by content personalization, user interaction design and technological innovation. Perceived social benefit and perceived self-achievement benefit were positively affected by user interaction design and technological innovation. Second, user content creation behavior was affected by perceived social benefit and perceived self-achievement benefit; user browsing behavior was significantly affected only by perceived hedonic benefit, and interaction behavior was significantly affected by perceived hedonic benefit, perceived social benefit and perceived self-achievement benefit. Third, perceived social benefit and perceived self-achievement benefit partially mediated the relationship between user interaction design and interaction behavior. As for the influence of technological innovation on interaction behavior, however, and the influence of user interaction design and technological innovation on content creation behavior, both perceived social benefit and perceived self-achievement benefit had complete mediation.

This study found that the characteristics of developing CCVBCs affected perceived benefit in participating in the value co-creation process. The results contributed to the value creation research by enriching the understanding of user value co-creation in developing CCVBCs.

The purpose of the study was to investigate the effect of electronic word of mouth (eWOM) on the value co-creation (VCC) and purchase intentions of consumers in Facebook fan pages of smartphone brands in India.

The data were collected using a structured questionnaire from a sample of 762 members from India present in the selected fan pages of smartphone brands in Facebook, and the data were analyzed through structural equation modeling.

This empirical study revealed a positive relationship among the three variables and provided new insights after analyzing the collected data. There was clear evidence of VCC being partially mediated by eWOM and purchase intention.

The perspective of the study was to validate the proposed conceptual model by considering members’ perception of the product, as put forth on Facebook fan pages. The methods used in this study could be adapted to conduct further studies on other social networking sites like Instagram and Twitter.

The study contributes to the existing literature of eWOM, VCC and consumer behavior in social networking sites, and our findings will help marketers to develop a new method of disseminating product information to and within India through social networking sites.

This study aims to investigate the impact of three types of online customer-to-customer interaction qualities on customers' participation intention through customer–firm affection in online mass service contexts to address the influence of several types of intercustomer interactions.

The data were amassed using retrospective experience sampling. The hypothesized relationships were examined utilizing structural equation modeling.

The results demonstrate that the perceived quality of the friend-interaction (e.g. [non-]verbal online interaction with friends), neighboring customer-interaction (e.g. [non-]verbal online interaction with stranger users) and the audience-interaction (crowding) has a significant impact upon customer participation intention, mediated by customer–firm affection.

This research was performed in the situation of online mass services (e.g. massively multiplayer online role-playing games). Future studies could extend the findings by conducting further studies across various types of services and by comparing results across different categories of mass services (e.g. hedonic vs utilitarian).

Online mass service marketers should focus on facilitating all three types of online customer-to-customer interactions (i.e. friend-, neighboring customer-, and audience-interaction). For example, online game developers may need to require users to communicate and collaborate with not only friends but also stranger users to progress and succeed in online multiplayer games.

The current study differs from prior research by addressing the influences of not only online intercustomer interaction qualities but also customer–firm affection on customer participation intention.

Understanding the role and implications of information and communication technology (ICT) in service is the key research priority for service science and the management of service quality. The purpose of this paper is to address this priority by providing insights into the role of “engagement platforms” (EPs), physical or virtual customer touch points where actors exchange resources and co-create value. Despite an emerging body of literature that emphasizes the fit between engagement and technology-enabled service contexts, EPs remain ill-defined. Specifically, little is known about the particular types of EPs, their characteristics, and implications for the performance of service ecosystems and managing service quality.

By drawing on two illustrative case studies, the authors investigate and theorize about the characteristics and dynamics of EPs in virtual/physical contexts, and identify if, how and to what extent configurations of EPs may enhance resource exchange within and across service ecosystems.

By building on emerging research at the service/engagement interface, the paper introduces the notion of the “engagement ecosystem,” as a configuration of individual, mutually dependent EPs that represent specific interactivity-facilitative loci. The paper explicates the relevance of the model and highlight opportunities for future research in this emerging field of inquiry.

The work addresses the call for research at the intersection of ICT and service science through development and application of the engagement ecosystem concept. The theorizing process draws on two illustrative case studies, and thereby provides a theoretical contribution and foundation for future research in this emerging area.

The authors guide managerial decision-making regarding the implementation, adoption, and utilization of engagement ecosystems. Furthermore, the nature of “engagement” as a bridging concept implies that the work can help managers to operationalize service-centric thinking.

By showing how individual EPs form engagement ecosystems, the paper bridges theory and practice, and offers new insight in the realm of practical application of the S-D logic.

Customer complaints and service recovery via virtual customer service channels (VCSCs) present unique recovery situations unlike those commonly found in traditional complaint handling channels. Some of these distinct challenges include the presence of multiple customers during a recovery, which creates the possibility for uncivil customer-to-customer (C2C) exchanges to harm a complainant’s experience. To this end, this paper aims to explore customer- and firm-level aspects as they relate to social media complaint handling. A customer-level moderator (attitude toward complaining) and a firm-level moderator (relative promptness of the response) are examined.

Data from three studies use partial least squares structural equation modeling to analyze hypothetical failure and complaining scenarios on VCSCs. Study 1A (a firm’s social media channel) and Study 1B (a firm’s online support community) investigate how a complainant’s predisposition toward complaining ultimately influences their experiential value (hedonic, pragmatic and sociability) during a virtual service recovery that includes uncivil communication from another customer. Study 2 further examines how the relative promptness of a service provider’s response either before or after uncivil C2C interactions hinders a complainant’s experiential value during the service recovery encounter.

The results show support for the influence of attitude toward complaining and the relative promptness of response as impactful to a complainant’s hedonic, pragmatic and social experience in virtual service encounters that involve one customer rudely interjecting into a complainant’s online service recovery encounter.

This research is one of the first to apply both customer- and firm-level moderating aspects associated with virtual service recovery encounters. The studies quantitatively assess the moderators’ influence on online dysfunctional behavior’s relationship with C2C fairness perceptions, and the subsequent experiential value a complainant receives on VCSCs. In particular, the investigation of relative promptness of a service provider’s response is a unique conceptualization that expands prior recovery studies’ focus on promptness or quickness of a recovery. The authors put forth a more prompt response that benefits the firm by purposively and symbolically closing out the encounter on VCSC, which somewhat reduces the negative effects of rude follow-up comments. This study is also novel because of the experiential focus on C2C interactions during recovery, rather than focusing on how a firm resolves a failure. In addition, this is the first service recovery study to assess multiple types of online customer service channels. Implications are put forth for service recovery theory and managers who attend to customer complaints on virtual channels.

Social factors, such as fellow spectators in a stadium or other fans sharing their experiences on online platforms, play a dominant role in spectator sport consumption. This conceptual article sets out to achieve three objectives: classify customer-to-customer (C2C) interactions in the sport fan context, develop a framework that links the classification of interactions to relevant outcomes and identify areas for related future research.

The authors integrate conceptual and empirical contributions on C2C interactions in the service, marketing and sport management literature.

The article proposes classifying C2C interactions into synchronous multi- and uni-directional interactions as well as asynchronous multi- and uni-directional interactions. The C2C interaction framework (C2CIF) proposes that such C2C interactions have hedonic, social, symbolic and utilitarian value outcomes. It further suggests that physiological, psychological and social processes underlie the co-creation or co-destruction of value and identifies contingencies at both the fan and the brand level.

Based on the C2CIF, we identify relevant topics for future research, in particular relating to technology-supported and virtual interactions among fans, fan-to-fan interactions across different countries and cultural backgrounds and fan-to-fan interactions as a way to reduce societal concerns.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the role of identity-based relationships, customer brand identification and peer identification, in driving customer outcomes including customer experiential hedonic value, social influence and repurchase intentions through the effects on value co-creation among customers and competitor brand hate, while taking into consideration the moderating impact of individualism.

The study integrates social identity theory, identity-based marketing perspective and self-construal theory to develop relationships. The data comprises a web-based survey of customers in the USA and was analyzed using structural equation modeling.

Customer brand identification and peer identification are drivers of value co-creation among customers, which leads to favorable outcomes at the customer and brand levels. Customer brand identification drives customers to hate competing brands, which, in turn, motivates customers to exert social influence in favor of their brand and to hold additional repurchase intentions. Customer brand identification and peer identification play different roles in motivating customers to co-create value with their fellows and drive customers to feel hatred toward competing brands contingent on customer individualism.

Customer brand identification and peer identification play different roles in engaging customers in value co-creation with their peers and competing brands have with their rivals. Individualism self-construal holds a dual role when interacting with customer identification. The study fills multiple gaps in the literature by examining additional effects of customer brand identification and peer identification and exploring a relatively new dimension of the value co-creation process, as well as the role of customers in the competition between brands.

Brands need to view customers who identify with them as socially active customers capable of participating in value co-creation with other customers and engaging in the rivalry faced by the brands. Moreover, brands are required to build and nurture relationships that are based on social identification to encourage customer brand identification and peer identification which results in favorable customer and business outcomes.

This study examines the effects of two forms of customer identification on value co-creation between customers and competitor brand hate. In addition, it identifies the dual moderating role of customer individualism on the effects of both social identification forms. The study fills multiple gaps in the literature by understanding new aspects of customer identification, value co-creation and brand hate.