Marketing in the Sharing Economy Eckhardt, Giana M.; Houston, Mark B.; Jiang, Baojun ...
Journal of marketing,
09/2019, Volume:
83, Issue:
5
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
The last decade has seen the emergence of the sharing economy as well as the rise of a diverse array of research on this topic both inside and outside the marketing discipline. However, the sharing ...economy’s implications for marketing thought and practice remain unclear. This article defines the sharing economy as a technologically enabled socioeconomic system with five key characteristics (i.e., temporary access, transfer of economic value, platform mediation, expanded consumer role, and crowdsourced supply). It also examines the sharing economy’s impact on marketing’s traditional beliefs and practices in terms of how it challenges three key foundations of marketing: institutions (e.g., consumers, firms and channels, regulators), processes (e.g., innovation, branding, customer experience, value appropriation), and value creation (e.g., value for consumers, value for firms, value for society) and offers future research directions designed to push the boundaries of marketing thought. The article concludes with a set of forward-looking guideposts that highlight the implications of the sharing economy’s paradoxes, maturation, and technological development for marketing research. Collectively, this article aims to help marketing scholars not only keep pace with the sharing economy but also shape its future direction.
Review articles: purpose, process, and structure Palmatier, Robert W.; Houston, Mark B.; Hulland, John
Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science,
2018/1, Volume:
46, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Online communities have experienced burgeoning popularity over the last decade and have become a key platform for users to share information and interests, and to engage in social interactions. ...Drawing on the social contagion literature, the authors examine the effect of online social connections on users' product purchases in an online community. They assess how product, user, and network characteristics influence the social contagion effect in users' spending behavior. The authors use a unique large-scale data set from a popular massively multiplayer online role-playing game community—consisting of users' detailed gaming activities, their social connections, and their in-game purchases of functional and hedonic products—to examine the impact of gamers' social networks on their purchase behavior. The analysis, based on a double-hurdle model that captures gamers' decisions of playing and spending levels, reveals evidence of "social dollars," whereby social interaction between gamers in the community increases their in-game product purchases. Interestingly, the results indicate that social influence varies across different types of products. Specifically, the effect of a focal user's network ties on his or her spending on hedonic products is greater than the effect of network ties on the focal user's spending on functional products. Furthermore, the authors find that user experience negatively moderates social contagion for functional products, whereas it positively moderates contagion for hedonic products. In addition, dense networks enhance contagion over functional product purchases, whereas they mitigate the social influence effect over hedonic product purchases. The authors perform a series of tests and robustness checks to rule out the effect of confounding factors. They supplement their econometric analyses with dynamic matching techniques and estimate average treatment effects. The results of the study have implications for both theory and practice and help provide insights on how managers can monetize social networks and use social information to increase user engagement in online communities.
The dynamic components of relational constructs should play an important role in driving performance. To take an initial step toward a theory of relationship dynamics, the authors introduce the ...construct of commitment velocity—or the rate and direction of change in commitment—and articulate its important role in understanding relationships. In two studies, the authors demonstrate that commitment velocity has a strong impact on performance, beyond the impact of the level of commitment. In Study 1, modeling six years of longitudinal data in a latent growth curve analysis, the authors empirically demonstrate the significance of commitment velocity as a predictor of performance. In Study 2, the authors use matched multiple-source data to investigate the drivers of commitment velocity. Both customer trust and dynamic capabilities for creating value through exchange relationships (i.e., communication capabilities for exploring and investment capabilities for exploiting opportunities) affect commitment velocity. However, trust and communication capabilities become less impactful as a relationship ages, while investment capabilities grow more important. The authors offer three post hoc tenets that represent initial components of a theory of relationship dynamics that integrates two streams of relationship marketing research into a unified perspective.
Well-known brands are frequently imitated, misused, or tampered with. Firms facing these threats routinely turn to the legal system and file trademark infringement lawsuits in an attempt to prevent ...revenue losses and brand equity dilution. In this article, the authors address the largely unexplored issue of brand protection. First, they categorize all major types of trademark infringement. Second, using signaling and prospect theories, they present a conceptual model that outlines the financial consequences of defending a brand in court. The authors test the predictions of this framework using a large sample of trademark infringement lawsuits and find that although investors react negatively in the short term to firms' filing and even to firms' winning such cases, the long-term performance of firms that successfully leverage the legal system to protect their brands is positive.
Reviewers as developmental coaches Houston, Mark B.; Hulland, John
Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science,
2021/1, Volume:
49, Issue:
1
Journal Article
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