Spectator Sport and Population Health: A Consultation with U.S. College Athletics Employees

A growing number of studies have been published to understand how spectator sport may influence the health of a population. However, it is unknown if these studies address research questions relevant to professionals engaging in the promotion of spectator sport. We conducted a web-based survey with 136 practitioners employed in U.S. college athletics to identify their research priorities and needs regarding spectator sport’s influence on population health. The combination of qualitative and quantitative analyses show that future research needs to be focused particularly on one of the following research themes: (a) social psychological benefits of sport spectatorship and (b) psychological impact of sport spectatorship. The findings further suggest the integration of environmental well-being and eudaimonic well-being into the domain of population health. Based on these findings, we propose future research directions as informed and guided by the practitioners’ perspectives

Social control in online communities of consumption: a framework for community management

Online communities of consumption (OCCs) represent highly diverse groups of consumers whose interests are not always aligned. Social control in OCCs aims to effectively manage problems arising from this heterogeneity. Extant literature on social control in OCCs is fragmented as some studies focus on the principles of social control, while others focus on the implementation. Moreover, the domain is undertheorized. This article integrates the disparate literature on social control in OCCs providing a first unified conceptualization of the topic. The authors conceptualize social control as a system, or configuration, of moderation practices. Moderation practices are executed during interactions operating under different governance structures (market, hierarchy, and clan) and serving different purposes (interaction initiation, maintenance, and termination). From this conceptualization, important areas of future research emerge and research questions are developed. The framework also serves as a community management tool for OCC managers, enabling the diagnosis of social control problems and the elaboration of strategies and tactics to address them

Insight into consumer experience on UK train transportation services

Customers’ experiences are significant in a rapidly changing service context, and this is shaped by the quality of service provided. With social media changing the way consumers engage with service providers, experiences are shared online. This study carried out three analyses of brand-related conversations on Twitter with the aim of exploring consumers’ attitudes to and experiences of train operating companies. Firstly, Python was used for the tweet mining and sentiment analysis (n = 1,914,494 tweets) to investigate the polarity between the opinions of commuters. Secondly, tweets were thematically analysed and grouped to understand how consumers experience the service quality. Lastly, content analysis of the tweets was carried out to identify the variations in service quality. Results indicated that there is overall positive customer experience, however, there are variations in service quality dimension across the different train groups, highlight the need to improve service quality at different touchpoints, especially the tangible features of the trains and presence of responsive and emphatic staff. This study further broadens the context of customer experience through eWOM on social media for service brands, contribute towards related literature on sentiment analysis and service brands, providing significant theoretical and practical implications for researchers and managers

Interaction Dynamics in an Online Community: a Longitudinal Analysis of Communication Genres

The growth of online communities has created borderless and virtual spaces where geographically dispersed consumers can participate in informational and commercial exchanges. While the importance of these communities is undeniable, consumer researchers, public policy makers and marketers do not have a full understanding of the relationship dynamics in these communities. This article departs from traditional life-cycle community development models, by using rhetorical genres repertoire as an analytic apparatus for investigating online communities' dynamics. In this nethnography, we analyzed the discourse of bulletin boards hosted at BabyCenter.com. Our findings show how periods in the life of a community correspond with changes in the nature and expression of specific communicative genres, themselves a consequence of members' contrasting struggle between community involvement and personal independence. [to cite]