Brand advocacy in the frontline:how does it affect customer satisfaction?

\u3cp\u3ePurpose: Many organizations expect their service engineers, or frontline employees (FLEs), to behave as brand advocates by engaging in favorable communication about the brand and its offerings toward customers. However, this approach is not without risk as customers may be disappointed or even frustrated with brand advocacy behavior in many service encounters. The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of FLEs’ brand advocacy on customer satisfaction with the service encounter, and identify the conditions under which the effects are detrimental. This paper specifically considers service issue severity and product newness as contingency conditions. Design/methodology/approach: Building on social identification theory, the paper builds a conceptual model, which is empirically tested using a data set that matches data from service engineers, customers, and archival records from the after-sales service department of a globally operating business-to-business print and document management solutions provider. Findings: This paper finds that brand advocacy behavior harms customer satisfaction especially in service encounters that involve simple service issues (e.g. maintenance) for products that are new to the market. Fortunately, brand identification can compensate this negative effect under many service conditions. While the joint effect of brand identification and advocacy is most beneficial for severe service issues of new products, no effect on customer satisfaction was found for established products. Practical implications: This paper identifies those service situations in which brand advocacy is advisable and guides managers toward achieving more favorable customer evaluations. Originality/value: Past research has considered several FLE branding activities in the frontline but the effects of brand advocacy have not been isolated. In addition, most studies have assumed the effects of employee brand-related behaviors on customer satisfaction to be universally positive rather than negative and focused on antecedents and not on moderators and consequences.\u3c/p\u3

How do innovators adopt radical innovations from new technology ventures?

Although the technology adoption/diffusion model is widely used as a framework for explaining and predicting the adoption of innovations attention for the specific circumstances under which innovators adopt radical new products from new technology ventures is scant and represents a gap in the literature. At the earliest stage of development of an innovation, product categorization may still be open for discussion, technical and social norms still absent, and the survival of the new technology venture may be uncertain. As a result, innovator-customers face the difficult and rather lonely task of evaluating a fuzzy innovation and innovation context. Based on these observations we aim to extend adoption theory to better fit this early stage of market diffusion by developing a framework that explains the role of reference customers and opinion leaders in innovator customers' adoption process. Drawing on a socio-cognitive perspective of the marketplace and organizational ecology we explain the mechanisms at work and use information seeking theory to develop propositions for future testing. We use our insights to develop an agenda for future research in this area

Challenging explanations of consumer loyalty in ongoing cross-border service relationships

Research on cross-border shopping has typically focused on consumers’ one-time visits to foreign countries (e.g., Guo, Vasquez-Parraga, and Wang 2006; Kwak, Jaju, and Larsen 2006; Piron 2006). It has ignored the increased development of consumers’ ongoing crossborder relationships with foreign service-providers and the evolution of consumer-foreign provider loyalty

Effective configurations of value creation and capture capabilities:extending Treacy and Wiersema’s value disciplines

This article theoretically elaborates and empirically investigates the alignment of the value creation and capture capabilities of Treacy and Wiersema’s (1993, 1995) typology of three strategies for superior customer value (product leadership, operational excellence, and customer intimacy). Drawing on configuration theory, the current study develops three propositions that predict how each strategy in Treacy and Wiersema’s typology corresponds to a particular mix of value creation and capture capabilities, which lead to competitive advantage and success in the marketplace. Using fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis, data from a multi-industry sample of 110 R&D managers and 242 customers serve to empirically identify the operating models of the three conceptually derived strategies and their customer value performance. The results confirm the anticipated three strategies and indicate that each exhibits a unique combination of value creation capabilities and carefully aligned set of value capture capabilities. Although the three strategies demand clear trade-offs in the value creation domain, for value capture such trade-offs do not exist

The role of marketing accountability at the marketing and research and development departments' integration and the new product success

Marketing accountability is accepted as an important issue in various studies due to the current business working atmosphere, in which proof of contribution is demanded. At the same time, the integration between Marketing and Research&Development (R&D) departments is stated as crucial for successfully commercialization of new products. Recognizing that these both fertile research areas but also a lack of integration between them, this study sets out to conjoint these streams of researches and develops an integrated model. Specifically, this paper examines the effect of marketing accountability on the integration and joint learning of the Marketing and R&D departments. The basic premise is that increased marketing accountability will positively affect R&D s trust and recognition for the marketing and allow for better integration within the departments and also learning. The research builds on Granovetter s ideas regarding the effects of weak and strong ties. Apart from social relations works, we also draw on knowledge management literature, in order to better identify how and through which mechanisms marketing accountability affect new product succes

Developing an internationalization strategy using diffusion modeling:the case of Greater Amberjack

\u3cp\u3eFor farmers of new fish species, market adoption is needed in order to grow a viable business. Farmers may try to sell the new species in their firms’ domestic markets, but they might also look at other markets. However, as markets are becoming more global and competitors more international, considering internationalization may be a necessity rather than a choice. Using diffusion modelling, and based on results of an online supermarket experiment, the innovation and imitation parameters are estimated and diffusion curves for five countries predicted in an attempt to determine the best lead market for introducing fillets of farmed greater amberjack (Seriola dumerili). The production capacity consequences of implementing different internationalization strategies (i.e. “sprinkler” and “waterfall”) were also explored. A waterfall strategy refers to the sequential introduction of a product in different markets, whereas the sprinkler strategy concerns the simultaneous introduction of a product in multiple international markets. Since a sprinkler approach requires many resources and the ability to quickly ramp up production capacity, a waterfall approach appears more suitable for farmers of greater amberjack. Italy and Spain appear to be the best lead markets for greater amberjack farmers to enter first.\u3c/p\u3

Beyond the retention-acquisition trade-off:capabilities of ambidextrous sales organizations

\u3cp\u3eSales organizations aim to grow their firms' business by acquiring new customers while retaining their existing ones. Although customer acquisition and retention are complementary processes, they involve different sales process capabilities that often compete for investments. However, firms that succeed in effectively combining these capabilities are ambidextrous and will enjoy superior growth and profits. Although developing ambidexterity is a fundamental sales management task, it has received little attention in research. Based on the Motivation-Opportunity-Ability framework we identify a set of organizational sales capabilities that can help sales organizations' joint management of acquisition and retention capabilities, and explain their influence drawing on Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) theory. Survey and time-lagged archival performance data from 174 firms provide an empirical test of the conceptual model and hypotheses developed. Results confirm that incentive management, cross functional cooperation, and the interaction of cross functional cooperation and sales training capabilities are positively correlated with sales organization ambidexterity. In addition, we find a positive correlation of customer prioritization on ambidextrous selling. Results confirm that firms with high levels and aligned acquisition and retention capabilities enjoy superior organic growth. However, contrary to expectation, increases in profit growth are only accomplished if acquisition capabilities are high.\u3c/p\u3

Why did they do it? How customers’ self-service technology introduction attributions affect the customer-provider relationship

\u3cp\u3ePurpose – Customers often think that innovations, such as self-service technologies (SSTs), are introduced by service providers to cut costs rather than extend customer service levels. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how customers use such attributions to adjust their perceptions of relational value. Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on attribution and relationship marketing theories, this study proposes a conceptual model that includes benefit and cost attributions, their antecedents, and consequences. Survey data came from customers of a supermarket that recently introduced self-scanning technology. Findings – Attributions mediate the impact of SST performance on relational value. This value is highest for customers with high-benefit and low-cost attributions; customers with low-benefit and low-cost attributions exhibit detrimental effects on the exchange relationship with the firm. Characterized by low self-efficacy, low education, and low spending, these latter customers appear ambivalent and possibly confused about the provider’s motives for introducing SST. Practical implications – This research has important implications for service managers responsible for communicating technological innovations to customers. A clear reason for the introduction should be provided, to stimulate customers’ attribution and prevent ambivalence among those with low self-efficacy and low education. Originality/value – Most SST research focusses on adoption, non-adoption, and disadoption. The more subtle responses by customers facing a new SST and the consequences for the customer-provider exchange relationship, as addressed herein, have been left largely unexplored.\u3c/p\u3

Exploring the effectiveness of pursuing competing technologies in parallel projects during predevelopment

Prior research has studied the effectiveness of parallel projects in the research and development stages. However, it has ignored predevelopment, which R&D intensive firms generally distinguish as a separate stage lodged between research and development. Predevelopment focuses on activities and decisions to select, from a subset of related technologies, the best option for a product application. Parallel projects are often a means of speeding up this process by actively pursuing learning spillovers. This paper develops assumptions about learning potential and then uses a real option model to test the trade-off between the higher costs and benefits of this parallel project approach. We compare outcomes for predevelopment using the same approach under research and development conditions, respectively. The results reveal that, when moving from research to development, the effectiveness of pursuing competing technologies in parallel projects first increases and then decreases, with a maximum positive result in predevelopment. The results also show that learning spillovers can compensate for the higher investment costs. Data from an empirical case support our findings