Online customer experience in an emerging e-retail market

Although customer experience has attracted significant attention in marketing theorizing for over three decades, research has barely progressed beyond the traditional conceptualizations of the concept. Specifically, research on multichannel retailing experience is scarce and fragmented despite previous calls to investigate how customer experience can be optimized at different channels. Additionally, although eWOM is fast supplanting traditional WOM as a determinant of consumer behavior whilst Internet platforms have been declared the future fronts for successful customer relationship management, previous studies rarely examined how consumers process and integrate multiple online reviews especially dissatisfied eWOM. Extrapolating from the foregoing, the following research question is posed: “How can online retailers exploit the link between previous shopping experiences and perceived credibility of negative experience reviews (PCoNERs) to enhance consumer-firm relationship quality?”To answer the above research question, an experience-perception-attitude model was built on the foundations of two social cognitive psychology theories (i.e. the schema theory and the elaboration likelihood model (ELM)) and consequently tested through four scenario-based experiments mapped out into one pilot study and two main studies. The pilot study and study 1 utilized a 2 × 2 between-subject factorial design while study 2 employed 2 × 2 × 2 between-subject factorial design. Data was generated from undergraduate and postgraduate students recruited from two universities located in southern Nigeria. Exploratory factor analysis, partial least squares structural equation modelling procedure, independent sample t-test, Chi-square, one-way analysis of variance, and multivariate analysis of variance were the analytical techniques utilized.Five major contributions are made. First, the thesis developed and tested a unique experience-perception-attitude model from the perspective of two social cognitive psychology theories. The experience-perception-attitude model not only portrayed the multi-channel character of online customer experience but also advanced Verhoef et al.’s (2009) holistic and dynamic model of customer experience by demonstrating how consumer-firm relationship quality can be enhanced through a simultaneous consideration of shopping experiences emanating from both company website and social media site. Second, the thesis extends the context-specific nature of customer experience by demonstrating that emotional experience is the most important driver of PCoNERs in a recession-ridden emerging e-retailing market. Third, the study advances the eWOM literature and ELM by drawing on the ELM to demonstrate that PCoNERs have negative effect on consumer-firm relationship quality; while also demonstrating that the effects of the two thresholds of elaboration (i.e. review source credibility and review frequency) become infinitesimal if consumers are exposed to reviews with consistent valence. Fourth, the thesis adds to the experimental design technique utilized by channel integration researchers and previous panel data-based studies by drawing on the netnographic research approach to utilize naturalistic narratives as experimental scenarios. Finally, the findings offer an evidence-based guide on how e-retailers can practically engage in the systematic management of customer clues. The findings will also assist all categories of e-retailers determine the strategic position to pursue based on their resources and capabilities

Engaging your customers via responding to online product reviews

Given the tremendous impact of online reviews on consumer choice, responding to online word of mouth (WOM) has become an important channel for firms to engage the consumers. This thesis investigates how firms can proactively respond to online product reviews to engage customers and manage customer relationships. In Study One, based upon the data of hotel reviews on Tripadvisor.com, I propose that responding by firms differ in three aspects, namely frequency, speed, and the amount of information, and these metrics exert significant influence on subsequent consumes’ WOM engagement, hotel rankings, and votes of usefulness of the reviews. Moreover, in contrast to responding to positive reviews, responding to negative reviews greatly affects consumption decisions given the negativity bias among consumers. Thus, the subsequent two studies examine whether responding help to alleviate the detrimental impact of negative reviews. Drawing from the literature on crisis management, service failure recovery, Study Two posits that sellers’ responses to negative WOM can be categorized as defensive and accommodative. Further, whether accommodative or defensive responding is more effective depends upon the nature of NWOM, namely regular NWOM or product failure. Based on the results of a between-subject experiment, Study Two provides evidence for the asymmetric impact of accommodative versus defensive responding. When confronting regular NWOM, defensive response outperforms accommodative response or no response, whereas accommodative response is superior to defensive response or no response when coping with a service failure. Further, based on the attribution of negative reviews, a moderated mediation effect is found. To enhance the external validity and robustness of these findings, Study Three provides econometric evidence that the relative effectiveness of accommodative vs defensive response on subsequent consumers’ evaluation of their consumption experience. Upon analyzing the hotels’ responses on Tripadvisor.com, responding can be a double-edged sword in that it works only when seller takes the appropriate responding strategies. In particular, the higher proportion of accommodative responses (defensive responses) for product failure reviews (regular negative reviews), the higher the subsequent consumers’ satisfaction. However, responding can backfire when the proportion of defensive responses (accommodative responses) for product failure (regular negative reviews) is high. To recapitulate, this thesis identifies whether and how online responding influences consumer experiences on social media. These research findings can help firms formulate effective responding strategies to take advantage of social media’s unique ability to engage customers and improve consumer satisfaction and loyalty

Customer perceptions of service failure, service recovery and loyalty recovery

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonBuilding sustainable customer relationships through effective service recovery is a worthwhile goal for all airline companies in an era of intense competition. Developing service recovery strategies that can strengthen customer loyalty in the event of service failure has become a major challenge for the airline business, but yet has received little attention from academics. To address the dearth in the literature, this study sets out to investigate how customers’ perceptions of perceived justice of service recovery and those factors external to the recovery encounter, including service failure attributions and company reputation, impact their loyalty recovery in the airline context. This study uses a quantitative method based on a surrey approach. A selfadministered questionnaire was purposively distributed among airline customers at Suvarnabhumi International Airport in Bangkok, Thailand. The study was tested using data collected from 480 travellers who had previously experienced a full service airline’s flight delay in the past 12 months and was analysed with Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). First, the results of this research confirm the robustness of the Expectation Disconfirmation Paradigm (EDP) for understanding customer perceived justice of service recovery in an exchange relationship context by emphasising significant positive effects of all dimensions of justice in restoring positive customer relationships. Second, the findings clarify the interrelationships between postrecovery customer trust, customer’s overall company satisfaction and customer loyalty by highlighting the important role of which trust plays in recovering customer loyalty. Third, The results further demonstrate how customer perceived justice of service recovery is contingent upon service failure attributions and company reputation. Lastly, the research provides airline managers with useful guidelines on developing cost-effective service recovery strategies focusing on maximising customer loyalty in different service failure situations

Special issue: Customer empowerment

The second French-German workshop about Consumer Empowerment took place at the University of Karlsruhe (KIT) between January 10-11, 2013. Within the scope of consumer empowerment scientists discussed recent developments in this field and established cross-disciplinary coop- erations in their own fields of research

Cross-cultural evidence for the influence of positive self-evaluation on cross-cultural differences in well-being

Poster Session F - Well-Being: abstract F197We propose that cultural norms about realism and hedonism contribute to the cross-cultural differences in well-being over and above differences in objective living conditions. To test this hypothesis, we used samples from China and the United States. Results supported the mediating role of positive evaluative bias in cross-cultural differences in well-being.postprin

Values and need satisfaction across 20 world regions

Poster Session F - Motivation/Goals: abstract F78Intrinsic valuing predicts the satisfaction of psychological needs (Niemiec, Ryan, & Deci, 2009). We conceptually replicate and extend this finding across 20 world regions. In multi-level models, Schwartz’s (1992) self-transcendence value was positively related to autonomy, competence, and relatedness satisfaction, even when controlling for the Big Five.postprin