Although the returns of customer participation on new product development (NPD) performance can vary substantially, the current literature lacks a systematic conceptual and empirical integration ...showing when customer participation is valuable in enhancing NPD performance. Building on knowledge management theory, the authors present a conceptual framework that synthesizes a variety of contingency factors. A meta-analysis empirically examines the moderating effects of contextual factors between customer participation and NPD performance. The analysis reveals that involving customers in the ideation and launch stages of NPD improves new product financial performance directly as well as indirectly through acceleration of time to market, whereas customer participation in the development phase slows down time to market, deteriorating new product financial performance. Furthermore, the benefits of customer participation on NPD performance are greater in technologically turbulent NPD projects, in emerging countries, in low-tech industries, for business customers, and for small firms. The authors discuss several theoretical and managerial implications about when to engage customers in the innovation process.
Firms employing hierarchical loyalty programs (HLPs) periodically demote customers from higher to lower status level to divest from unprofitable customers and boost profitability. However, existing ...literature lacks objective evidence on how customer demotion affects demoted customers’ future purchase behaviors and ultimately profitability for the firm. Moreover, customers in the HLP’s higher position may respond to customer demotion differently from those in the HLP’s lower position. Drawing upon emotions and equity theories, this study quantifies how the profits that customers contribute to the firm change after customer demotion, and compares demoted customers’ behavioral reactions from top-tier with those from bottom-tier based on customers’ actual behavior data from a major retail bank in South Korea. The findings show that withdrawing customer status actually deteriorates customer profitability, and customers with top-tier status decrease their profitability more dramatically than those with bottom-tier status after demotion. The results contribute to previous literature on customer demotion and relationship marketing, and provide specific guidelines into how firms should design and implement customer demotion in HLPs.
•This paper investigates when AI or human salespeople serve B2B buyers better.•This paper develops a framework to affect the relative effectiveness of AI.•This paper provides propositions on the ...relative effectiveness of AI across the buyer–seller relationship stages.•This paper provides a solid foundation which future researchers can build upon.
Given the infusion of artificial intelligence (AI) in B2B sales, AI salespeople perform required sales tasks more effectively than human salespeople in some contexts but not in others. To gain insights about the contexts in which the relative effectiveness of AI over human salespeople varies, this conceptual paper develops a framework which systematically organizes contingency factors. Further, by combining the relationship lifecycle theory with AI job replacement theory, this paper provides well-grounded propositions about when AI or human salespeople perform better for buyers in distinct relationship stages with the seller. The paper concludes with implications and future research directions on the adoption of AI in B2B sales. In doing so, this paper provides a solid foundation which future researchers can build upon and enriches the discussion about the contingency factors, the changing roles of human salespeople, and how to structure sales organization with AI and human salespeople.
A contextual approach to supply chain risk mitigation Chang, Woojung; Ellinger, Alexander E; Blackhurst, Jennifer
The international journal of logistics management,
11/2015, Letnik:
26, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Purpose
– As global supply networks proliferate, the strategic significance of supply chain risk management (SCRM) – defined as the identification, evaluation, and management of supply chain-related ...risks to reduce overall supply chain vulnerability – also increases. Yet, despite consistent evidence that firm performance is enhanced by appropriate fit between strategy and context, extant SCRM research focusses more on identifying sources of supply chain risk, types of SCRM strategy, and performance implications associated with SCRM than on the relative efficacy of alternative primary supply chain risk mitigation strategies in different risk contexts. Drawing on contingency theory, a conceptual framework is proposed that aligns well-established aspects of SCRM to present a rubric for matching primary alternative supply chain risk mitigation strategies (redundancy and flexibility) with particular risk contexts (severity and probability of risk occurrence). The paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
– Conceptual paper.
Findings
– The proposed framework addresses supply chain managers’ need for a basic rubric to help them choose and implement risk mitigation approaches. The framework may also prove helpful for introducing business students to the fundamentals of SCRM.
Originality/value
– The framework and associated research propositions provide a theoretically grounded basis for managing the firm’s portfolio of potential supply chain risks by applying appropriate primary risk mitigation strategies based on the specific context of each risk rather than taking a “one size fits all” approach to risk mitigation. An agenda for progressing research on contingency-based approaches to SCRM is also presented.
The notion that customers provide distinct inputs that help tackle unique tasks in each new product development (NPD) phase leads firms to engage customers concurrently in various NPD stages rather ...than involving them only in one NPD stage. Involving customers in diverse NPD stages is based on the belief that the constructive effects of customer participation in each NPD phase could be supplementary. However, little is known about the joint effects of embracing customers in multiple NPD stages such as whether customer participation in a certain NPD stage enlarges or undermines the returns of customer participation in another NPD stage, and whether customer participation throughout the entire NPD process is really beneficial. Drawing upon the knowledge management perspective, this research investigates in which combination of NPD stages (ideation, development, and launch) engaging customers creates a synergistic or destructive impact on new product market performance. The results reveal that involving customers in both ideation and development stages and in both development and launch stages yields synergistic returns, whereas customer participation in both ideation and launch stages does not create any additional gains. Furthermore, customer participation across all three NPD stages does not improve new product market performance beyond the sole and joint effects of customer participation in two NPD stages. These noteworthy findings imply that the joint effects of customer participation do not always lead to synergistic impacts and depend on the value of customer knowledge and the difficulty of knowledge management of transferring and integrating customer knowledge gathered in various NPD stages. In a certain combination of NPD stages, where the difficulty of knowledge management becomes higher, customer participation cannot generate supplementary returns, and thus, firms can achieve a similar level of new product market performance with customer participation in limited NPD stages.
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate how to design a firm’s customer demotion policy and communication styles differently for customers demoted from top-tier and bottom-tier to promote their ...willingness to restore lost status and loyalty intentions.
Design/methodology/approach
Four scenario-based experiments were conducted in the customer demotion context of an airline’s hierarchical loyalty program. A total of 796 customers recruited from a survey panel participated in the study.
Findings
The results reveal that customers in top-tier demotion significantly increase their willingness to restore lost status and loyalty intentions when a short evaluation period (vs a long evaluation period) is given. Further, customers in bottom-tier demotion improve their willingness to restore and, in turn, their loyalty intentions more with a gain-focused communication style than with a loss-focused communication style. Willingness to restore lost status plays a mediating role in the process by which an appropriate match between demotion type and evaluation period type/communication styles leads to higher loyalty intentions.
Research limitations/implications
This study extends the research stream on customer demotion by examining how to execute customer demotion to mitigate its detrimental effects and facilitate demoted customers’ approach motivation and behavioral intentions, a critical but understudied topic that has been ignored by researchers.
Practical implications
Managers are advised to offer customized customer status evaluation periods and communication styles for top-tier and bottom-tier demoted customers to effectively promote their willingness to restore lost status and loyalty intentions.
Originality/value
This study is among the first to explore the possible varying effects of differential demotion policy and communication style on different tiers of customers.
•We explore appropriate type of service robot in a given relationship orientation.•Higher satisfaction emerges when functional robots are aligned with exchange orientation.•Social robots are ...evaluated more favorably when matching with communal orientation.•The match effect is driven by perceptions of warmth or competence of the robot.
This paper explores which type of service robot (functional vs. social) is evaluated more favorably depending on a firm’s communal or exchange relationship orientation and the underlying processes driving the appropriate match effect between type of service robot and relationship orientation. The results of two scenario-based experiments and one video-based study with respondents who actually experienced service robots reveal that higher customer satisfaction with the service robot emerges when functional (social) service robots are aligned with a firm’s exchange (communal) relationship orientation. Further, the match between social service robot and communal relationship orientation promotes customer satisfaction with the service robot primarily through perceptions of the warmth of the robot. In contrast, higher customer satisfaction with a functional service robot in an exchange relationship orientation results from increased perception of the competence of the robot. This study provides theoretical and practical implications about how to implement service robots in service encounters.
Involving customers in the new product development process has been found to create knowledge benefit for the firm. However, the different roads leading to a firm’s knowledge benefit through ...configurations of which new product development stage customers are engaged in, a firm’s internal co-creation-related capabilities, and the external environment have yet to be specified. To explore the alternative configurational paths to generating knowledge benefit through customer participation, a state-of-the-art fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis is applied to a sample of 181 new product development projects. The results reveal six different configurations to generate knowledge benefit in the new product development process and yield useful suggestions for obtaining knowledge benefit through customer participation.
Firms employing hierarchical loyalty programs (HLPs) periodically demote customers from higher to lower status level to divest from unprofitable customers and boost profitability. However, existing ...literature lacks objective evidence on how customer demotion affects demoted customers' future purchase behaviors and ultimately profitability for the firm. Moreover, customers in the HLP's higher position may respond to customer demotion differently from those in the HLP's lower position. Drawing upon emotions and equity theories, this study quantifies how the profits that customers contribute to the firm change after customer demotion, and compares demoted customers' behavioral reactions from top-tier with those from bottom-tier based on customers' actual behavior data from a major retail bank in South Korea. The findings show that withdrawing customer status actually deteriorates customer profitability, and customers with top-tier status decrease their profitability more dramatically than those with bottom-tier status after demotion. The results contribute to previous literature on customer demotion and relationship marketing, and provide specific guidelines into how firms should design and implement customer demotion in HLPs.
