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Advances in information technology have enabled consumers to connect and communicate as they never have before. This chapter conceptualizes information and the digital machines that enable contemporary connection and communication as being part of a “Moveable Feast.” A brief historical review tracing the impact and evolution of information technology on consumers’ lives and the marketplace is first provided. Culminating the historical review is a metaphorical description of the current period as a “Moveable Feast” of information, whereby consumers and digital machines interact to create and share information “dishes” with other consumers worldwide. With this guiding metaphor in place, current marketing-relevant information phenomena are described within a framework of three important digital dyads proposed to exist between humans and machines. Deep discussion of machine–machine, human–machine, and human–human dyads points to the importance of information as a resource that consumers create and exchange in the contemporary marketplace. This chapter concludes by encouraging marketers and marketing researchers to consider the impact and importance of digital information and information technology on consumers’ ability to connect and communicate with digital machines and with one another.

This chapter stems from the need to focus on the inherent interplay of faculty and student engagement while studying the impact of social media in higher education teaching and learning. The discussion is specifically concerned with the role and affordances of microblogging in the rethinking of the teacher/student relationship and in blurring the boundaries of academic contexts. The chapter examines an early experimentation of Twitter use to foster and monitor participation by the master students enrolled in a Human Resources Management class in an Italian university. The pilot is discussed referring to lessons learned from a range of accounted empirical cases and relevant studies on microblogging for teaching and learning in academia. A special focus addresses both a revised notion of academic scholarship and engagement, prompted by emergent profiles of networked faculty, and debates about the multiple ways of conceptualizing student engagement in the current academic cultures and contexts, being challenged by an increasingly complex digital landscape and by a varied typology of learners coming to university. As conclusion, issues related to the range of alignments to be taken into account when adopting social networking services in a higher education context are suggested as cues for an ongoing discussion.

The purpose of this study is to understand customer experience (CX) in business-to-business (B2B) markets through the perspectives of buyer–seller dyads. This study aims to evaluate how customer journey, touchpoints and digital and social media (DSM) influence CX and offer avenues for sellers to align their efforts with buyers’ requirements to create and manage CX.

Integrating insights of practicing buyers and sellers in the pharmaceutical B2B industry, this study follows the phenomenological approach to understand their experience through their perspectives on the customer journey, touchpoints and DSM.

The findings of this study include convergence in the perspectives in journey stages, journey enablers, stakeholder involvement, touchpoint preference and DSM’s use. The study findings also include divergence in perspectives in the senior management engagement, journey enablers, selling center involvement, DSM purpose and usage of DSM platforms. These offer opportunities for sellers to align with buyer journey, touchpoints and DSM to create and manage CX.

Sellers in pharmaceutical B2B markets have been dependent on traditional knowledge to influence customer journey and touchpoints and the advent of DSM has enhanced the challenge. To avoid this confusion, sellers need to have clarity of customers’ expectations on the journey, touchpoints and DSM. This enables sellers to allocate their resources better to achieve the desired outcome in CX.

This first-of-its-kind study captured the convergence and divergence perspectives of pharmaceutical B2B buyer–seller dyads from the lens of the uncertainty reduction theory and social penetration theory. The study suggests opportunities for pharmaceutical sellers to create and manage CX.

Cause-related B2B marketing programs involve sponsoring organisations working with B2B suppliers with the help of non-profit organisations (NPOs) on practises relating to environmental friendliness, workforce diversity, human rights, safety, philanthropy and business ethics. The study aims to identify the combinatory factors driving the adoption of Digital B2B platforms for managing cause-related B2B marketing programs.

The study adopts an innovative approach of fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) on data collated from top corporations in India supporting cause-related B2B marketing programs. Sponsoring organisations and NPO dyads (i.e. survey both) filled out an email survey on 264 cause-related B2B marketing programs.

The study establishes that the combination of technological, organisational and environmental factors would lead to the adoption of Digital B2B platforms in managing cause-related B2B marketing programs. The study identifies six combinations of these factors for adopting Digital B2B platforms within and across sponsoring organisations and NPOs.

The study findings would aid cause-related B2B marketers in developing Digital B2B platforms’ capabilities by understanding the different combinations of factors driving adoption. Digital B2B platforms’ capabilities can improve market performance if developed as core competencies.

The study findings would enable improvements in the implementation and performance of cause-related B2B marketing programs. Better management of cause-related B2B marketing programs would help increase beneficiary coverage and the realisation of societal goals.

To the author’s knowledge, this is the first study to apply the TOE framework in conjunction with complexity theory to explain the diffusion of adoption of Digital B2B platforms for managing cause-related B2B marketing programs.

Considering the unique characteristics of equity crowdfunding platforms including the removal of stringent structural barriers (e.g. lack of co-location), high visibility and traceability of investor characteristics, large pool of available investors and simplified transaction process, the authors aim to examine how the two most prevalent mechanisms (i.e. homophily and repeated ties) unfold in this context by incorporating the contextual characteristics. The authors theorize an inverted U-shaped relationship between leader-backer similarity and the likelihood of co-investment in a syndicate on equity crowdfunding platforms. In addition, a leader–backer dyad is more likely to form new syndicates if the students have more prior co-investment ties.

The empirical study is based on data from the AngelList syndicate platform and a linear probability model (LPM) with fixed effects is adopted to estimate the syndicate formation.

The authors find that the similarity between a leader and a backer has an inverted U-shaped relationship with the leader and backer's likelihood of co-investment in a syndicate, which is different from the dominant homophily-based tie formation in venture capital (VC) syndicates and other digital platform contexts. Although equity crowdfunding platforms encourage the possibility of exploring new partners, investors are more likely to co-invest with others who have stronger prior ties.

This research theoretically contributes to the scant literature of equity crowdfunding syndicates by contextualizing two most prevalent mechanisms (i.e. homophily and repeated ties) driving tie formation in VC syndicates and digital platforms.

Actor engagement (AE) literature shows inconsistent understandings of engagement intensity. However, a holistic picture of the nature of AE intensity is foundational to advance empirical AE models and measurement frameworks. This paper provides a nuanced understanding of what engagement intensity is and how it unfolds on different network levels.

This conceptual study draws from a literature review and offers a comprehensive classification scheme of AE intensity. The literature review extends beyond marketing and service research and draws from the etymology of AE intensity in management and social science, specifically, the fields of student, employee and civic engagement.

The classification scheme clarifies that AE intensity at the individual level refers to actors' affective and cognitive tone and varying magnitudes (i.e. efforts, duration, activeness) of resource investments. At the dyad level, AE intensity represents relational strength, and at the network level, it refers to the degree of connectedness in the network.

The research reconciles conceptual inconsistencies in the AE literature. Our classification scheme goes beyond the individual actor and actor–actor dyad and offers a holistic overview of possible ways to operationalize AE intensity in networks.

The classification scheme can be used as a strategic checklist to include AE intensities of individual actors (e.g. customers and employees), relationships between these actors and network connectedness, when further developing engagement measurement tools and benchmarks.

This is the first study providing a comprehensive understanding of AE intensity from an individual, dyadic and network perspective.

The last few years have witnessed massive artificial intelligence (AI) and gaming adoption that has navigated the emerging markets. Moreover, according to the WOG summit (world government summit report, by Nielsen) 2020 reports, AI with gaming mechanisms are expected to enrich marketing services in the coming future in the emerging markets. Countries such as India, China and South Korea contribute significantly to this area, and recent forecasting allows the need to increase in emerging markets. Similarly, these countries have a maximum number of youth gamers and AI-driven technology adopters. The adoption of AI-driven technologies and amplification of gamification in marketing services are new phenomena. Moreover, gaming and AI dynamics are relatively new in emerging countries and need greater attention. Thus, this book chapter proposes a dyad model that would explain users' and companies' perspectives to understand the role of AI and gamification for the emerging markets. The chapter will explain how AI-driven gamification helps the users of emerging markets. The chapter will also illustrate how companies in emerging markets use AI for gamification. Therefore, the dyad model would also comprehend the gap, opportunities and challenges in this area and the subsequent strategies to help all the stakeholders.

The emphasis on inter-organizational systems gave rise to concerns about inter-organizational relationships as trading partners became aware of the socio-political factors and trust that affect their relationships. This paper examines the importance of inter-organizational-trust in business-to-business E-commerce organizations. It examines how inter-organizational relationships impact trading partner trust, perceived benefits, perceived risks, and technology trust mechanisms in E-commerce that can in turn influence outcomes of business-to-business E-commerce. This paper develops a conceptual model and tests the model using a case study research methodology. The aim is to solicit qualitative in depth understanding of inter-organizational-trust in business-to-business E-commerce. Eight organizations from a cross section of industries that formed four bi-directional dyads participated in the third stage of this study. The first two stages include exploratory case studies in three organizations in the automotive industry that applied EDI via Value-Added-Networks in 1997, and a nationwide survey of organizations that examined the extent of E-commerce adoption in Australia and New Zealand in 1998. The findings identify the need for trustworthy business relationships in an E-commerce environment.