Consumers are empowered to exert influence on brands through social networking sites (SNSs), which make it possible for consumers to become active content creators in their relationship with firms. ...To further understand brand value co-creation, we use the socio-technical theory to build a model of brand co-creation with key antecedents−social commerce information sharing, social support, and relationship quality, with privacy concerns as a moderator. Through an empirical study, we found that social commerce information sharing, social support and relationship quality positively affect brand co-creation directly/indirectly and privacy concerns moderate the effects of social commerce information sharing on brand co-creation. This article contributes to the literature on the value co-creation paradigm and social commerce by: 1) developing the concept of brand co-creation in social commerce; 2) explaining how consumers engage in online brand co-creation activities; 3) arguing that privacy concerns may hamper the effects of brand co-creation. Our study provides an innovative approach to brand management practices in today's marketplace.
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The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) offers exciting opportunities for marketing practice and academic research. In this study, through the application of natural ...language processing, machine learning, and statistical algorithms, we examine extant literature in terms of its dominant topics, diversity, evolution over time, and dynamics to map the existing knowledge base. Ten salient research themes emerge: (1) understanding consumer sentiments, (2) industrial opportunities of AI, (3) analyzing customer satisfaction, (4) electronic word-of-mouth–based insights, (5) improving market performance, (6) using AI for brand management, (7) measuring and enhancing customer loyalty and trust, (8) AI and novel services, (9) using AI to improve customer relationships, and (10) AI and strategic marketing. The scientometric analyses reveal key concepts, keyword co-occurrences, authorship networks, top research themes, landmark publications, and the evolution of the research field over time. With the insights as a foundation, this article closes with a proposed agenda for further research.
This study researches how firms can improve their product innovation in coopetition alliances through alliance governance. Our survey-based study of 372 vertical alliances in the medical device ...industry contributes to a clarification of prior studies' contrasting findings on product innovation when coopetition is present in alliances. Our results show that the singular use of relational governance improves product innovativeness in vertical alliances that experience growing levels of coopetition. In contrast, the singular use of transactional governance reduces product innovativeness with growing coopetition. When firms apply both relational and transactional governance as plural governance, vertical coopetition alliances get access to new ways to improve their product innovativeness.
Senior leaders increasingly embed paradoxes into their organization's strategy, but struggle to manage them effectively. To better understand how they do so, I compared in-depth qualitative data from ...six top management teams exploring and exploiting simultaneously. The results informed a model of dynamic decision making in which strategic paradoxes can be effectively engaged. The details of this dynamic decisionmaking model extend and complicate our understanding of managing paradoxes by depicting dilemmas and paradoxes as interwoven, explicating a consistently inconsistent pattern of addressing tensions, and framing both differentiating and integrating practices as necessary for engaging paradox.
Viral products and ideas are intuitively understood to grow through a person-to-person diffusion process analogous to the spread of an infectious disease; however, until recently it has been ...prohibitively difficult to directly observe purportedly viral events, and thus to rigorously quantify or characterize their structural properties. Here we propose a formal measure of what we label "structural virality" that interpolates between two conceptual extremes: content that gains its popularity through a single, large broadcast and that which grows through multiple generations with any one individual directly responsible for only a fraction of the total adoption. We use this notion of structural virality to analyze a unique data set of a billion diffusion events on Twitter, including the propagation of news stories, videos, images, and petitions. We find that across all domains and all sizes of events, online diffusion is characterized by surprising structural diversity; that is, popular events regularly grow via both broadcast and viral mechanisms, as well as essentially all conceivable combinations of the two. Nevertheless, we find that structural virality is typically low, and remains so independent of size, suggesting that popularity is largely driven by the size of the largest broadcast. Finally, we attempt to replicate these findings with a model of contagion characterized by a low infection rate spreading on a scale-free network. We find that although several of our empirical findings are consistent with such a model, it fails to replicate the observed diversity of structural virality, thereby suggesting new directions for future modeling efforts.
This study examines why some firms are better able than others to reap benefits from collaborating with their competitors in innovation. Whereas on the general level, collaborative innovation has ...been studied widely, and firm‐specific success factors in collaboration between competitors (i.e., coopetition) have not been exhaustively addressed. Earlier literature describes coopetition as a risky but potentially rewarding relationship in which sharing, learning, and protection of knowledge are recognized as the key issues determining the possible benefits and hazards. This study provides evidence of factors related to this, suggesting that the firm's ability to acquire knowledge from external sources (potential absorptive capacity) and to protect its innovations and core knowledge against imitation (appropriability regime) are relevant in increasing the innovation outcomes of collaborating with its competitors. This study also distinguishes between incremental and radical innovations as an outcome of coopetition, and provides differing implications for the two innovation types. The empirical evidence for the study was gathered from a cross‐industry survey conducted on Finnish markets. The data are analyzed with multivariate multiple regression analysis. The results of the analysis suggest that (1) potential absorptive capacity and appropriability regime of the firm both have a positive effect in the pursuit of incremental innovations in coopetition, and (2) in the case of radical innovations, appropriability regime has a positive effect, while the effect of absorptive capacity is not statistically significant. However, the results also indicate that there is a moderating relationship between these variables, in that the potential absorptive capacity is positively associated with creation of radical innovations within high levels of appropriability regime. These results yield important theoretical and managerial implications. As a whole, the results presented in this study provide new evidence on which types of firms can reap success in the challenging task of collaborative innovation with rivals. In the case of incremental innovation, a firm‐level emphasis on knowledge sharing and learning will positively affect the results of coopetition, as will an emphasis on knowledge protection. Thus, when incremental developments are pursued in coopetition, firms should not only seek to exchange knowledge to create value but also remember to secure the firm‐specific core knowledge within the firm's borders to stay competitive. On the other hand, when the firm is pursuing radical innovation with its rivals, the heaviest emphasis should be on protecting its existing core knowledge and also emerging novel innovations and market opportunities. Capabilities in knowledge acquisition are also beneficial in these cases, but the full benefits of knowledge exchange realize only when the firm's knowledge protection mechanisms are sufficiently strong, allowing for safe knowledge exchange between rivals.
Defining and designing a software product is not merely a technical endeavor, but also a socio-technical journey. As such, its success is associated with human-related aspects, such as the value ...users perceive. To handle this issue, the product manager role has become more evident in software-intensive companies. A unique, challenging context for these professionals is constituted by software startups, emerging companies developing novel solutions looking for sustainable and scalable business models.
This study aims to describe the role of product managers in the context of software startups.
We performed a Socio-Technical Grounded Theory study using data from blog posts and interviews.
The results describe the product manager as a multidisciplinary, general role, not only guiding the product by developing its vision but also as a connector that emerges in a growing company, enabling communication of software development with other areas, mainly business and user experience. The professional performing this role has a background in one of these areas but a broad knowledge and understanding of key concepts of the other areas is needed. We also describe how differences of this role to other lead roles are perceived in practice.
Our findings represent several implications for research, such as better understanding of the role transformation in growing software startups, practice, e.g., identifying the points to which a professional migrating to this role should pay attention, and the education of future software developers, by suggesting the inclusion of related topics in the education and training of future software engineers.
A product-harm crisis is a discrete event in which products are found to be defective and therefore dangerous to at least part of the product’s customer base. Product-harm crises are not only ...dangerous for consumers; they also represent a major threat to the reputation and equity of brands or companies, which often struggle with how to best respond. The marketing literature has witnessed a surge in interest on the consequences of product-harm crises for a variety of stakeholders, including consumers, the brand or company itself, its investors, as well as competitors. This article offers a systematic review of research on product-harm crises in the marketing literature. We discuss the antecedents and consequences of product-harm crises, their moderators and mediators, and the theories and methodologies used. We identify commonalities and differences between the studies, as well as gaps in the literature and avenues for future research. Finally, we synthesize the managerial implications across studies.
How does the viability of a product category shift over time? Studies abound on how categories emerge and become established, or fall out of use. Yet, extant research has often examined the evolution ...of categories one at a time, leaving open the question of how related categories affect a focal category's viability. In contrast, we consider both intra- and inter-category dynamics. Viewing categories as continuously shaped by actors' efforts to position their products, we argue that these efforts alter the coherence that products exhibit not only within a category (a category's heterogeneity), but also across related categories (a category's distinctiveness). We theorize how the interaction between a category's heterogeneity and distinctiveness shapes its subsequent viability. When a focal category's distinctiveness is low, the heterogeneity–viability relationship takes an inverted U-shape. However, as distinctiveness grows, the relationship flattens and eventually flips to a U-shape. We explain this by considering the trade-off between the "classification" and "valuation" benefits that a category affords. We find support for our argument by tracking 170 categories over an 11-year period on Kickstarter, one of the largest crowdfunding platforms. By providing a nuanced understanding of category dynamics, we shed new light onto the fluctuating viability of categories.
Digital technologies (DTs), such as the Internet of Things, big data, artificial intelligence, or blockchain, are considered as enablers for a more sustainable and circular economy. So far, ...literature on these topics has mostly focused on specific DTs and subareas of sustainable product management (SPM). The aim of this paper is to provide a more comprehensive overview of current and potential examples of DT applications in SPM (e.g., product design/assessment, supply chain management, and business models). The collected examples (n = 146) were analyzed based on a systematic literature review, using quantitative and qualitative content analysis. Deductive and inductive analyses of the examples revealed the potential of DTs in terms of their usability along the product life cycle, their role as enablers for circular economy strategies and in specific SPM activities. DT application often entails only incremental improvements, for example, increased efficiency of existing processes, with more radical forms of improvement remaining relatively scarce. There is clear room for greater adoption and optimization of DTs, in various areas of SPM, so as to accelerate the transition towards a more sustainable and circular economy.
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