Now showing 1 - 10 of 222
  • Publication
    The Effects of Cultural Differences on Consumers’ Willingness to Share Personal Information
    (Sage Publishing, 2023-02-28) ;
    Eggers, Felix
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    Verhoef, Peter
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    Consumer information is an increasingly valuable resource in the digitally interconnected modern world. Globally, the number of firms collecting and exploiting consumer information to optimize their marketing efforts is increasing rapidly. The authors determine how four cultural dimensions—power distance, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, and long-term orientation—affect consumers’ willingness to share their personal information with firms (WTS). The authors empirically test the direct effect of national culture on WTS, as well as its moderating effect on the link between WTS and two of its key drivers, privacy concerns and perceived benefits. Drawing on regulatory focus theory, the authors develop a conceptual framework and test it using multilevel modeling on data from 15,045 consumers across 24 countries. The empirical findings demonstrate that national culture directly affects WTS and moderates the effects of both privacy concerns and perceived benefits on WTS. These results highlight the need for managers and marketers to consider international cultural differences when collecting consumer information.
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  • Publication
    Enabling Cocreation With Transformative Interventions: An Interdisciplinary Conceptualization of Consumer Boosting
    Service research emphasizes the relevance of consumers’ participation in the cocreation of transformative outcomes like health and well-being. However, in complex services, consumers’ limited operant resources and lacking resource integration efficiency hinder transformative value cocreation. Service research on mechanisms that facilitate well-being through efficient resource integration is sparse, but several disciplines elaborate cognitive interventions with that target. These interventions have been validated in various contexts. Nevertheless, concerns persist that they can hurt, rather than help, individual consumers. Overcoming such limitations requires an interdisciplinary effort. The present article outlines the new research area “transformative consumer interventions” (TCI) by integrating interventions theory, consumer psychology, and transformative service research in a health context. TCI provide theory-driven principles for the selection and design of interventions that facilitate operant resource integration in complex services. Additionally, we conceptualize consumer boosting, the first TCI-based intervention construct. Consumer boosts are efficient, context-specific, and personalized interventions that enhance individuals’ operant resources. Consumer boosting provides a pathway to transformative cocreation and alleviates the risk of unintended consequences and value co-destruction. This research illustrates that the transformative service domain stands to benefit substantially from getting involved in the discussion on consumer interventions and offers a unique perspective for further conceptual elaboration.
  • Publication
    Conversational Agents aus Kundenperspektive
    (Thexis Verlag, 2019-09-23) ;
    Meichtry, Thomas Markus
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  • Publication
    Understanding the Omnichannel Customer Journey: Determinants of Interaction Choice
    (Elsevier, 2018-08) ;
    Through the proliferation of channels and ways to engage in these channels, customers today have an unprecedented range of options to individualize their customer journeys. This study attends to the resulting complexity by investigating the overt and underlying reasons for customers’ interaction choices along the omnichannel customer journey. Data collected from focus groups, expert interviews, and laddering interviews with motor insurance customers illustrate that omnichannel customer journeys are inherently individualistic but driven by three types of effects. Some effects apply to singular interaction choices and are hence journey independent, while the strength of inertia between subsequent interactions depends on customers’ satisfaction with the interaction. Customer journey patterns, which pertain to specific portions of the journey, include research shopping and the novel impersonalization/ interactivity reduction effect. Our findings further provide additional explanations for these customer journey patterns and customers’ limited motor insurance search efforts. Based on the ultimate underlying motives for interaction choice, the four types of value-in-use customers seek in their interactions, a segmentation approach that is more effective than predominant efforts using observable interaction behavior is suggested.
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    Scopus© Citations 127
  • Publication
    Consumer empowerment in insurance: Effects on performance risk perceptions in decision making
    (Emerald, 2018-09-21) ;
    Abstract Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to enhance the understanding of consumer empowerment in the relationship between consumers and service providers. It draws on self-efficacy theory to conceptualize consumer empowerment and explain the impact on perceived performance risk in insurance decision making. Design/methodology/approach – This study employs data collected from an online survey involving 487 consumers in Switzerland, who recently decided on an insurance service. A structural equation model quantifies both the psychological effects on consumers’ perception of insurance services and behavioral effects on their decision-making process. Findings – Perceived consumer empowerment is conceptualized by perceived self-efficacy and perceived controllability. Both have a significant impact on perceived performance risk, while the former is partially mediated by the preference to delegate the decision to a surrogate. Moreover, customers’ involvement in the purchase process moderates both the direct and indirect effect of perceived self-efficacy on perceived performance risk. Research limitations/implications – The results are based on consumers’ perceptions from a single country. Furthermore, consumers’ perceptions were surveyed with a time lag after the decision-making process. To increase rigor, perceptions should be collected during decision making. Practical implications – Results show that consumer empowerment can be employed as a risk reduction strategy. Consumers with self-efficacy and controllability beliefs perceive significantly less performance risk; however, practitioners should consider that consumers are also motivated to make decisions independently rather than delegating their decisions. Furthermore, consumer empowerment depends on consumer will. For largely indifferent consumers, empowerment does not affect risk or decision delegation preference. Originality/value – The study is among the few empirical works to examine the effects of consumer empowerment on the consumer-service provider relationship on an individual level. Furthermore, applying consumer empowerment in relationship marketing implies a shift in research focus to the question of how consumers construe decision-making situations rather than objectively measuring the state of consumer relationship.
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    Scopus© Citations 15
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    Scopus© Citations 2