Customers increasingly rely on other consumers' reviews to make purchase decisions online. New insights into the customer review phenomenon can be derived from studying the semantic content and style ...properties of verbatim customer reviews to examine their influence on online retail sites' conversion rates. The authors employ text mining to extract changes in affective content and linguistic style properties of customer book reviews on Amazon. com. A dynamic panel data model reveals that the influence of positive affective content on conversion rates is asymmetrical, such that greater increases in positive affective content in customer reviews have a smaller effect on subsequent increases in conversion rate. No such tapering-off effect occurs for changes in negative affective content in reviews. Furthermore, positive changes in affective cues and increasing congruence with the product interest group's typical linguistic style directly and conjointly increase conversion rates. These findings suggest that managers should identify and promote the most influential reviews in a given product category, provide instructions to stimulate reviewers to write powerful reviews, and adapt the style of their own editorial reviews to the relevant product category.
Customer Engagement (CE) research has been growing considerably over time, however, most of this research emanates from developed economies and large organizational contexts. Little is known about CE ...strategies when it comes to family-owned businesses in emerging market context. This paper tries to synthesize the extant literature on CE to identify the state of research concerning CE practices followed in family-owned businesses from emerging markets. To achieve this objective, we first conducted a structured literature review of CE research published in last two decades in the top tier management and marketing journals. Second, drawing from the insights received from the findings of the structured review, we design a structured interview schedule to collect first-hand data from the managers working in family-owned businesses in India. This rich data is then analyzed using a qualitative data analysis package. Findings from our analysis reveal that social media platforms, continuous monitoring of the customer feedback and reviews, importance to non-financial goals, safeguarding the reputation, and maintaining the trustful relationship are critical aspects of family-owned firms’ CE strategy. Another interesting aspect about the CE strategies in family businesses vis-à-vis non-family-businesses, specifically from an emerging country context is the reliance on the third-party agencies to manage the content creation and digital marketing. Study findings not only help advance the scholarship within the twin fields of customer engagement and family business, but also provide valuable insights to the practitioners of family-owned businesses.
Previous research has conceptualized and modeled customer orientation (CO) in one of two ways: as a psychological phenomenon antecedent to critical job states (i.e., stress and engagement) or as ...frontline employee behaviors that are caused by these same job states. Building on meta-analytic data, this study finds greater support for the causal relationships implied by a psychological construal of the construct and reveals that CO influences frontline employees'job outcomes through its effects on stress and engagement. Moderation analyses also indicate that CO's influence on model variables is stronger when frontline employees' customer workloads increase and is weaker as the need for customer persuasion increases. These findings contradict widely held assumptions rooted in a behavioral view of CO—namely, that CO is a consequence of job states, a proximate determinant of job outcomes, and most beneficial when ample opportunity for customer engagement exists. Overall, the results support a broadened perspective that recognizes that CO improves job outcomes because it enhances frontline employees' psychological welfare in addition to being good for business. These findings suggest that managers should consider CO an important criterion in frontline employee decisions, recognize CO as beneficial when limited opportunity for customer engagement exists, and avoid efforts to curtail CO's costs at the frontline employee level.
As a motivational factor, uniqueness drives individuals to seek and choose unique goods or experiences. The act of wearing masks obscures individuals' facial features and influences their desire for ...uniqueness. This study aims to explore how wearing masks promotes individual uniqueness- seeking behavior. Three experiments were performed using various product categories (Starbucks coffee cups, sweatshirts, suitcases, and baseball caps) and sample types (college student and adult samples). Experiment results show that wearing masks obscures individuals' facial features and weakens their self- perceived uniqueness, thereby increasing their willingness to actively purchase unique products. This study is the first to examine the effect of wearing masks on individuals' choice of unique products. Practically, the results suggest that customized products can compensate for the lack of self-perceived uniqueness brought about by facial occlusion, thus providing valuable guidance for companies and retailers that offer customized services in formulating and designing marketing strategies.
Using qualitative studies involving executives and customers, this study explores the nature and scope of customer engagement (CE), which is a vital component of relationship marketing. We define CE ...as the intensity of an individual's participation in and connection with an organization's offerings and/or organizational activities, which either the customer or the organization initiate. We argue that it is composed of cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and social elements. Finally, we offer a model of CE, in which the participation and involvement of current or potential customers serve as antecedents of CE, while value, trust, affective commitment, word of mouth, loyalty, and brand community involvement are potential consequences.
How do people approach marketing in the face of uncertainty, when the product, the market, and the traditional details involved in market research are unknowable ex ante? The authors use protocol ...analysis to evaluate how 27 expert entrepreneurs approach such a problem compared with 37 managers with little entrepreneurial expertise (all 64 participants are asked to think aloud as they make marketing decisions in exactly the same unpredictable situation). The hypotheses are drawn from literature in cognitive science on (1) expertise in general and (2) entrepreneurial expertise in particular. The results show significant differences in heuristics used by the two groups. While those without entrepreneurial expertise rely primarily on predictive techniques, expert entrepreneurs tend to invert these. In particular, they use an effectual or nonpredictive logic to tackle uncertain market elements and to coconstruct novel markets with committed stakeholders.
The emergence of 24/7 cable news channels within the US revolutionized news consumption, offering viewers accessibility beyond fixed broadcast schedules. While the phenomenon began with CNN, ...competitors quickly emerged, targeting different political ideologies and mirroring the heightened polarization that has altered American society. Cable news channels must market themselves effectively to their audiences through distinctive product differentiation strategies. Understanding these approaches provides insights into information dissemination, political communication, and audience engagement dynamics. This paper aims to conduct a formal media analysis of current self-promotional advertisements across the big three cable news networks within the US to derive insights into contemporary differentiation strategies crucial for monitoring the industry’s technological transition. As the rest of the world has begun to wrestle with increased polarization, this analysis will be relevant to anticipating how non-US news sources use ideology and values to position themselves within highly competitive markets.
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