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In today's connected market, brands are more likely than ever to face negative press that can put their customer relationships to the test. Building and fortifying positive aspects of the brand-customer relationship (such as brand commitment, brand love and self-brand connections) may ward off some of the impact of negative information on customers, but this does not always provide full protection. Even customers who love a brand can turn against it when negative information enters the picture. Considering this, the current study provides an exploratory investigation into a new way to build up customer resilience that would otherwise not be formed simply by strengthening positive attributes of the customer-brand relationship. It argues that brands can strengthen their customers' immunity to negative brand-related information by using an immunity metric (i.e., merely asking customers to reflect on their immunity makes them more resilient to actual negative information in the future). The construct of immunity has the dual benefit of being diagnostic of relationship strength, as well as acting as an immunizing agent. We test this effect and the process underlying it using three pilot studies, three multi-method studies, and interviews with customers and managers across different contexts. By doing so, the study establishes the theoretical and practical value of customer immunity to negative information and makes critical conceptual and pragmatic contributions to the existing body of customer research., Author(s): Omar Merlo [sup.1] , Andreas B. Eisingerich [sup.1] , Wayne D. Hoyer [sup.2] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.7445.2, 0000 0001 2113 8111, Imperial College Business School, , SW7 2AZ, London, [...]

Business-to-business (B2B) practitioners are increasingly interested in capabilities to holistically manage touchpoints along B2B customer journeys (CJs) to remain competitive. Research in the B2B context, however, has investigated neither what constitutes such a customer journey management capability (CJMC) nor how, whether, or when it creates value. Taking a mixed-methods approach, we conceptualize and operationalize B2B CJMC as a supplier's ability to achieve superior customer value along the B2B CJ by strategically creating value-anchored customer touchpoints characterized through the implementation of consistent resource usage across internal organizational boundaries and by continuously monitoring value creation toward the individual members of the buying center. Analyzing a multisource dataset, we provide evidence that B2B CJMC has an indirect effect on firm performance (i.e., return on sales) through two opposing mechanisms (i.e., customer loyalty and customer-related coordination costs). Importantly, using survey and archival data, we show that, overall, B2B CJMC has a significant and positive impact on firm performance through the two mechanisms. Finally, these underlying mechanisms are also prevalent when testing for the moderating factors switching costs, number of touchpoints, and product versus service., Author(s): Christian Homburg [sup.1] [sup.2] , Moritz Tischer [sup.1] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.5601.2, 0000 0001 0943 599X, Marketing Department, University of Mannheim, , 68131, Mannheim, Germany (2) grid.5379.8, 0000000121662407, Alliance [...]

Complex services, such as healthcare, struggle to realize the benefits of value co-creation due to the substantial challenges of managing such services over the long-term. Key to overcoming these challenges to value co-creation is a profound understanding of dialogue (i.e., 'quality of discourse' facilitating shared meaning) during service interactions. Contributing to an emerging literature, we undertake a longitudinal, ethnographic study to assess dialogue between professionals and patients through the lens of dialogic engagement (i.e., iterative mutual learning processes that bring about action through dialogue). We develop and empirically support six dialogic co-creation and co-destruction mechanisms that impact on the resolution of tensions and integration of knowledge resources between service providers and consumers. We reveal the multidimensional and dynamic nature of value created or destroyed through these mechanisms in dialogue over time. Taking healthcare as an exemplar, we offer a research agenda for developing our understanding of DE in complex services., Author(s): Debbie Isobel Keeling [sup.1] , Kathleen Keeling [sup.2] , Ko de Ruyter [sup.3] [sup.4] , Angus Laing [sup.5] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.12082.39, 0000 0004 1936 7590, University of Sussex [...]

Although social media use is gaining increasing importance as a component of firms' portfolio of strategies, scant research has systematically consolidated and extended knowledge on social media marketing strategies (SMMSs). To fill this research gap, we first define SMMS, using social media and marketing strategy dimensions. This is followed by a conceptualization of the developmental process of SMMSs, which comprises four major components, namely drivers, inputs, throughputs, and outputs. Next, we propose a taxonomy that classifies SMMSs into four types according to their strategic maturity level: social commerce strategy, social content strategy, social monitoring strategy, and social CRM strategy. We subsequently validate this taxonomy of SMMSs using information derived from prior empirical studies, as well with data collected from in-depth interviews and a quantitive survey among social media marketing managers. Finally, we suggest fruitful directions for future research based on input received from scholars specializing in the field., Author(s): Fangfang Li [sup.1] , Jorma Larimo [sup.1] , Leonidas C. Leonidou [sup.2] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.19397.35, 0000 0001 0672 2619, School of Marketing and Communication, University of Vaasa, , [...]

Extant research examining interpersonal trust in business-to-business (B2B) buyer-seller relationships focuses on its multidimensionality, mainly from a business perspective. Our research captures an element of business relationships that is heretofore under-examined: the personal side of the relationship between the buyer and seller. We examine the interplay between both business and personal trust on performance in the relationship, namely analyzing customer relationship satisfaction and customer loyalty. We also test our model using perceived market turbulence as a moderating variable since turbulence in the marketplace could strain the relationship between the buyer and seller and affect the strength of the statistical relationships between business and personal trust on performance in the relationship., Author(s): Stephanie M. Mangus [sup.1] , Eli Jones [sup.2] , Judith Anne Garretson Folse [sup.3] , Shrihari Sridhar [sup.4] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.252890.4, 0000 0001 2111 2894, Hankamer School of [...]

Although brands increasingly disseminate their brand biographies through brand sources, this research shows that this practice can decrease brand attitudes and consumer preferences. A brand source activates consumers' persuasion knowledge, increasing negative thoughts and impeding narrative transportation into the brand biography. This research furthermore demonstrates that the negative impact of a brand source in the dissemination of brand biographies depends on self-congruence, such that a detrimental effect on consumer attitudes and preferences occurs when the brand biography is incongruent with consumer's self-concept, but is mitigated when the brand biography is self-congruent. These findings suggest that the dissemination of brand biographies by brand sources requires consideration of source and congruence effects., Author(s): Ali Tezer [sup.1] , H. Onur Bodur [sup.2] , Bianca Grohmann [sup.3] Author Affiliations: (1) grid.256696.8, 0000 0001 0555 9354, Department of Marketing, HEC Montréal, , 3000 chemin de [...]

How many customers can we expect? As of May 2020, 33 million Americans were unemployed. U.S. weekly jobless claims jumped to 6.6 million in the first week of April alone. [...]

We study how digital service firms can develop an active customer base, focusing on two questions. First, how does the way that customers use the service postadoption to meet their own needs (personal usage) and to interact with one another (social usage) vary across customer acquisition methods? Second, how do firm-to-customer and customer-to-customer communications promote different types of usage? We study these questions using two data sets and by developing a multivariate hierarchical Poisson hidden Markov model (HMM), which fits the data significantly better than univariate and latent class approaches. We indeed find that postadoption behavior varies depending on customer acquisition method and dynamic states. At the total usage level, in one context (an annotation and note-taking service), customers who heard about the service through search and mass-invite exhibited significantly higher usage compared to those who joined through word of mouth (WOM), whereas in another context (a cloud-based file storage service), customers who joined through WOM referrals tended to exhibit higher usage. Yet, examining how routes of adoption relate to specific types of behavior, personal versus social usages, reveals a more nuanced picture. Furthermore, in both contexts, communications postadoption influenced engagement, albeit in different ways. Firm-to-customer communications, through company posts to Twitter and blog entries, had varying effects on customer behavior and in some cases led to lower personal and/or social usage; however, customer-to-customer communications tended to increase personal-use engagement across latent states and in both data sets. The findings suggest that firms offering digital services should pay attention to how the mode of customer acquisition is related to subsequent usage intensity, accounting for both personal and social activity, and encourage customers to interact with each other postadoption. History: Accepted by Pradeep Chintagunta, marketing. Supplemental Material: The online technical appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/ mnsc.2017.2754. Keywords: customer engagement * adoption routes * hidden Markov models * search * word of mouth * digital marketing * Bayesian estimation * social influence * web services * social apps, 1. Introduction Over the past decade many digital companies, including industry giants Google, Facebook, and Microsoft, as well as entrepreneurial firms like Evernote and Wix, have begun hosting a significant [...]