Now showing 1 - 10 of 53
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    Detecting, Preventing, and Mitigating Online Firestorms in Brand Communities
    ( 2019) ;
    Ludwig, Stephan
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    Grewal, Dhruv
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    Online firestorms pose severe threats to online brand communities. Any negative electronic word of mouth (eWOM) has the potential to become an online firestorm, yet not every post does, so finding ways to detect and respond to negative eWOM constitutes a critical managerial priority. The authors develop a comprehensive framework that integrates different drivers of negative eWOM and the response approaches that firms use to engage in and disengage from online conversations with complaining customers. A text-mining study of negative eWOM demonstrates distinct impacts of high and low arousal emotions, structural tie strength, and linguistic style match (between sender and brand community) on firestorm potential. The firm’s response must be tailored to the intensity of arousal in the negative eWOM to limit the virality of potential online firestorms. The impact of initiated firestorms can be mitigated by distinct firm responses over time, and the effectiveness of different disengagement approaches also varies with their timing. For managers, these insights provide guidance on how to detect and reduce the virality of online firestorms.
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    Scopus© Citations 176
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    When Does Customer-Oriented Leadership Pay Off? An Investigation of Frontstage and Backstage Service Teams
    (Sage Periodicals Press, 2017-06-19) ;
    De Luca, Luigi
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    Miceli, Gaetano “Nino”
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    Morgan, Robert E.
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    The service literature highlights the importance of organizational leaders in creating an organization-wide customer orientation (CO). Yet some open questions remain regarding this relationship: Are organizational leaders from different hierarchical levels equally effective in creating a CO? Does the functional role of employees affect the importance of certain leaders? More generally, when does customer-oriented leadership really pay off? To address these questions, we investigate how senior managers’ and direct supervisors’ CO affects the CO climate and effectiveness of both frontstage and backstage service teams. Analyzing multisource data from 575 employees and their supervisors from 110 teams in a retail bank, we find that the effect of perceived senior manager CO on team CO climate and team effectiveness is stronger in backstage teams while perceived direct supervisor CO has a greater influence in frontstage teams. Moreover, team CO climate consensus moderates the effect of team CO climate on team effectiveness. These results suggest that, contrary to past theorizing, customer-oriented leadership does not per se increase team CO climate and team effectiveness; rather, the correct coupling of leadership source and degree of customer contact needs to be achieved. Service managers should use these findings and appoint the correct leader to implement CO, to make the organization-wide CO diffusion more efficient and effective.
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    Scopus© Citations 11
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    Integrating Bricks with Clicks : Retailer-Level and Channel-Level Outcomes of Online-Offline Channel Integration
    This research examines the impact of online-offline channel integration (OI), defined as integrating access to and knowledge about the offline channel into an online channel. Although channel integration has been acknowledged as a promising strategy for retailers, its effects on customer reactions towards retailers and across different channels remain unclear. Drawing on technology adoption research and diffusion theory, the authors conceptualize a theoretical model where perceived service quality and perceived risk of the Internet store mediate the impact of OI while the Internet shopping experience of customers moderates the impact of OI. The authors then test for the indirect, conditional effects of OI on search intentions, purchase intentions and willingness to pay. Importantly, they differentiate between retailer-level and channel-level effects, thereby controlling for interdependencies between different channels. The results of three studies provide converging evidence and show that OI leads to a competitive advantage and channel synergies rather than channel cannibalization. These findings have direct implications for marketers and retailers interested in understanding whether and how integrating different channels affects customer outcomes.
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    Co-Marketing Capability: Scale Development and Performance Implications
    (Business Perspectives, 2014-05-01) ;
    Co-marketing alliances are a sustainable source of competitive advantage, though alliances still pose significant management challenges. Little is known about which capabilities allow firms to manage ongoing co-marketing alliances. Drawing on in-depth interviews with marketing alliance managers, the authors differentiate three dimensions of co-marketing capability and develop a multi-dimensional scale for its measurement. They test the relationship of co-marketing capability with alliance performance, as well as the moderating role of boundary conditions specific to alliances, using a cross sectional survey of 287 chief marketing officers. They find amplifying and buffering effects of the alliance context. The empirical results imply that managers who want to benefit from their co-marketing alliances should invest in alliance coordination, inter-firm communication, and knowledge management capabilities, and that alliance tenure, power imbalance among partners, and alliance flexibility affect resource allocation decisions.
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    Profiting from customer relationship management : The overlooked role of generative learning orientation
    This study aims to examine the direct and moderating effects of generative learning on customer performance. The authors test the relationships between CRM capabilities, generative learning, customer performance, and financial performance with a cross industry survey of CEOs and senior marketing executives from 199 firms. Partial Least Squares are used to estimate the parameters of the resulting model. The results reveal that generative learning affects customer performance directly. Moreover, the interaction of CRM capabilities and generative learning contributes to customer performance. This finding suggests that firms need a well-developed generative learning orientation to fully benefit from translating new insights resulting from CRM capabilities into establishing, maintaining, and enhancing long-term associations with customers, and vice versa. The main limitations are those that typically apply to cross-sectional-surveys. Although several steps were taken to reduce the concern of key informant bias and common method variance, dependent and independent variables were collected from the same source at a single moment in time. Ceteris paribus, an increase of generative learning orientation by one unit (seven-point scale) can command an increase of up to 7% of the average customer performance due to its direct and interaction effect. Because even small changes in customer performance have a strong impact on financial performance, this finding indicates a remarkable and substantial result for managers. Though previous research provides evidence of the adaptive learning consequences of CRM, a review of the literature reveals a lack of studies that analyze the importance of generative learning orientation for successful CRM.
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    Scopus© Citations 10
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    Channel Extension Strategies: The Crucial Roles of Internal Capabilities and Customer Lock-In
    (Springer Gabler, 2012-02) ; ;
    Pernet, Nicolas
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    This study addresses the important but yet unresolved question of how firms can create com-petitive advantage from their multichannel marketing strategy. More specifically, the authors investigate the antecedents of channel extension strategies and their performance implications. Results from an empirical study including top managers from 308 firms indicate that in addi-tion to environmental factors, a firm's channel expansion is directly related to its strategic channel management capability, and that this capability is more important in turbulent envi-ronments. Furthermore the study reveals that firms need an appropriate customer lock-in strategy to benefit from the addition of novel channel types or traditional channel expansion.
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