Online consumption communities: An introduction

Online consumption communities play a significant role in the life of many consumers. These communities remove temporal and spacial boundaries, allowing consumers to convene online to connect over a shared consumption interest anytime and from anywhere. The objective of this special issue is to advance our understanding of online consumption communities and stimulate future research in this exciting research domain. Eight papers are included that present cutting-edge research exploring three issues: (1) governance and conflict management in online consumption communities, (2) implications of community membership for individual and societal well-being, and (3) drivers of community success under different ownership structures. In this introductory editorial, each of the papers and its contribution is briefly overviewed

Exploring consumptive moments of value-creating practice in online community

Conceptual blind spots persist when it comes to understanding the value of consumptive dimensions of participation, such as lurking, in online community. This article uses a practice-theoretical lens to conceptualize the consumptive moments of online community practices and explores how they shape different value outcomes. Building on a mixed-method investigation through two studies within an online gardening community, findings reveal two specific consumptive moments, direct and vicarious, and their differential role in the creation of community engagement and vitality. These findings suggest that lurking is not adequately described as a unidimensional construct, but is best understood as vicarious consumptive moments of specific online community practices with distinctive value outcomes. Implications for research on online consumption community are discussed

Entertainment events in shopping malls – profiling passive versus active participation behaviors

This paper presents an empirical framework for operationalizing passive versus active participation in the context of shopping mall entertainment events (e.g. school holiday events and fashion shows) and assesses the framework’s utility for segmenting and profiling shopping mall entertainment audiences. Exploratory factor analysis of data collected at shopping mall events revealed two distinct dimensions, “relax and be entertained” and “socialize and explore” reflecting passive and active participation respectively. Based on nine activities operationalizing passive versus active participation, two distinct audience segments reporting different levels of immediate and future shopping behaviors were identified. The “Engage Me” segment (active-dominant audience) was more likely to stay longer at the mall, purchase food and non-food items, share the event experience with others, and attend similar entertainment events in the future than the “Entertain Me” segment (passive-dominant audience). The activities operationalizing passive versus active participation were tested with 280 participants at two family-oriented shopping mall entertainment events. This paper extends the knowledge in the retail event marketing literature whereby it confirms passive versus active participation levels at retailing events, and verifies that passive and active participation levels can be measured and differentiated operationally. The findings provide insights on the utility of shopper participation level as a meaningful segmentation variable, pertinent to both the marketing and management of shopper experiences within a retailing entertainment event. Managerial implications and limitations of this paper are discussed

Conflict Culture and Conflict Management in Consumption Communities

This study explores conflict culture as a distinct and influential element of a consumption community’s broader culture, and explores how communities initiate, perform, manage, and resolve intra-community conflicts. A four-year interpretive study of the Premium Cola consumption community reveals two sets of formal and informal elements of conflict culture; explains how community members perform routine, and manage transgressive conflicts; shows how members garner positive and negative practical, identity, and relationship value from these two types of conflict; and documents how a community’s conflict culture develops through inventing new conflict behaviors to resolve transgressive conflicts. The study thus contributes new theoretical insights to the literature on social conflict in online consumption communities, discusses managerial implications, and initiates a discussion about conflict culture

Exploring the Mediating Effect of E-social Capital Between Community Members Interaction and Consumer Engagement

This article explored the effect of instrumental interaction and relational interaction on consumer engagement (community engagement and brand engagement) among community members. The mediating effect of E-social capital was investigated as well. The research results showed that: both instrumental interaction and interpersonal interaction promote the formation of E-social capital (online trust and online reciprocity); online trust plays a partial mediating role between community interaction (instrumental interaction, relational interaction) and community engagement, but the influence of online reciprocity on community engagement is not significant; community engagement leads to brand engagement. The findings enrich the theories of brand community and consumer engagement and contribute to the virtual community management

Toward a theory of repeat purchase drivers for consumer services

The marketing discipline’s knowledge about the drivers of service customers’ repeat purchase behavior is highly fragmented. This research attempts to overcome that fragmented state of knowledge by making major advances toward a theory of repeat purchase drivers for consumer services. Drawing on means–end theory, the authors develop a hierarchical classification scheme that organizes repeat purchase drivers into an integrative and comprehensive framework. They then identify drivers on the basis of 188 face-to-face laddering interviews in two countries (USA and Germany) and assess the drivers’ importance and interrelations through a national probability sample survey of 618 service customers. In addition to presenting an exhaustive and coherent set of hierarchical repeat-purchase drivers, the authors provide theoretical explanations for how and why drivers relate to one another and to repeat purchase behavior. This research also tests the boundary conditions of the proposed framework by accounting for different service types. In addition to its theoretical contribution, the framework provides companies with specific information about how to manage long-term customer relationships successfully

Drivers and technology-related obstacles in moving to multichannel retailing

Today, multichannel retailing is a key strategic issue for most retailers. Yet, while there are many drivers associated with retailers going multichannel so too are there technology-related obstacles, however, few prior empirical studies explore these themes. In light of this, by using a multi-case approach to understand the key drivers and technology-related obstacles associated with retailers moving to multichannel retailing our study makes two key contributions. First, we extend prior theory by providing novel empirical insights into the main drivers underpinning retailers using a multichannel strategy. We find that meeting customer needs and increasing sales were the primary drivers behind retailers using the strategy, although there is diversity in the way retailers respond to these motives. Second, we provide empirical support for a proposed theoretical framework which summarises the key technology-related obstacles retailers encounter when going multichannel, by stage of implementation. The framework reveals that retailers face technology-related obstacles when implementing a multichannel strategy due to the need to switch/acquire resources and achieve channel integration. Furthermore, the framework highlights that these resource and channel integration issues are often interrelated with each other and with other staff engagement and cultural issues, vary by retailer and stage of implementation, and pose greater obstacles to retailers using new and multiple channels than the extant literature suggests

Measuring the deliverable and impressible dimensions of service experience

Service innovation has become a priority within the field of innovation management and is increasingly focused on creating memorable experiences that can result in customer loyalty. Studies of experience design suggest individual service elements to be managed when staging an experience, whereas conceptual models in the literature emphasize the holistic way in which an experience is perceived. In short, service experience is greater than the sum of its parts. Therefore, successful innovation management requires the ability to understand and measure the mechanisms by which service innovations impact customers' experiences. Our research addresses this need by identifying dimensions of service experience and developing a tool for their measurement. Using a three stage process of systematic literature review, rigorous scale development and reduction, and validation, we identify six dimensions of the service experience and develop scales to measure each one. This results in a model of service innovation that highlights the levers through which a company's service innovation efforts can result in memorable experiences and ultimately new service success

The impact of generation Y’s customer experience on emotions: online banking sector

Recently, banking sector focused on attracting Generation Y (individuals born between 1980 and 2000) because they have emerged as a huge force with growing spending power which will unavoidably rival with Baby Boomers’ market dominance. They try to attract them through a unique customer experience, especially the ability of differentiation. Using the Mehrabian & Russell’s model of stimulus (S) - organism (O) - response (R), this study developed the Generation Y customer experience framework that intends to explain their consumer emotional responses toward customer experience attributes in a bank through three aspects: pleasure, dominance, and arousal toward online banks. Empirical evidence, based on data from a survey suggests that the overall customer experience attributes in the bank had a positive relation with emotional responses in different ways. “Value for money”, “Getting things right the first time” and “Put the consumer first” emerged as the most important attributes for Generation Y in experiencing a bank.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio