On The Role Of Normative Influences In Commercial Virtual Communities

The potential to reconcile economic benefits to the firm with the social needs of customers has made commercial virtual communities a popular tool for companies to support their core products/service with a value-added service option. An important key to the success of such a virtual community is the behavior of its members. In this paper, we develop a framework of pro-social behavior (i.e., community citizenship behavior and contribution intentions) for understanding and explaining the motivation of virtual community members to actively participate in and care for the community. We show that the main determinants of pro-social behavior are the social norm of reciprocity and the personal norm of obligation. Reciprocity, in turn, is impacted by the value of the information and the socio-emotional support exchanged by the virtual community members.marketing ;

FAC-SEM using PLS-SEM: An empirical illustration in a customer value measurement context

FAC-SEM is a special type of multigroup analysis where the groups are structured as a factorial design. The aim of FAC-SEM is to assess how the path model parameters vary as a function of the dimensions of the underlying factorial design. As such, FAC-SEM offers researchers a unique opportunity to further understand their experimental data. This paper explains how the FAC-SEM methodology can be used in a PLS path modeling context and demonstrates the procedure using empirical data from a customer value measurement stud

Antecedents of industrial brand equity: An empirical study

Industrial branding has emerged as an important issue, allowing firms to gain substantial competitive advantage, especially in markets where product commoditization and electronic procurement are on the increase. This article proposes, and empirically validates, a theoretically structured approach to measure brand equity, its antecedents and its consequences for industrial products. The model distinguishes between product and corporate brand equity, uses buyer perceived performance on the dimensions of the marketing mix as antecedents of brand equity, and relates them to re-purchase and loyalty intentions.Economics ;

Boost Customer Loyalty With Online Support: The Case Of Mobile Telecomms Providers

The paper explores the effect of customer satisfaction with online supporting services on loyalty to providers of an offline core service. Supporting services are provided to customers before, during or after the purchase of a tangible or intangible core product, and have the purpose of enhancing or facilitating the use of this product. The Internet has the potential to dominate all other marketing channels when it comes to the interactive and personalized communication that is considered quintessential for supporting services. Our study shows that the quality of online supporting services powerfully affects satisfaction with the provider and customer loyalty through its effect on online value and enjoyment. Managerial implications are provided.marketing ;

Online complaining: understanding the adoption process and the role of individual and situational characteristics

Despite the relevance of online customer complaining, little research exists in this area. The purpose of this paper is twofold. First, develop and test a conceptual model to understand customers’ intention to adopt online complaining. Second, compare two competing perspectives regarding elaboration likelihood (i.e. willingness / ability to exert cognitive effort and consumption value) for the moderating impact of individual differences. Regarding the first objective, our findings reveal that customer’s attitudes toward online complaining are explained by outcome and process characteristics. Attitude towards online complaining is also influenced by individual characteristics, but surprisingly remains unaffected by situational characteristics. In contrast, usage intentions are influenced by situational characteristics, but do not depend on personality differences. Surprising results are found concerning our second objective. For the moderating impact of affect-based personality characteristics, the often used cognitive effort perspective to elaboration likelihood is not supported. Rather the consumption value perspective applies for these variables