Daniel Nunan

Gamification and the online retail experience

Purpose – As online retailing grows in importance there is increasing interest in the online customer experience. The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of gamification, the use of game mechanics, in enabling consumer engagement with online retailers. Design/methodology/approach – The research adopts a qualitative methodology carrying out 19 in-depth interviews with individuals who are frequent online shoppers. Findings – Findings support the importance of including game elements to enhance the retail experience. However, data also suggests that without appropriate management customers can subvert gamification strategies to create their own “games” which increases competitive pressure between retailers. Practical implications – The paper suggests ways in which retailers might more successfully “gamify” their online retail stores and reduce incidences of undesirable customer behaviour. Originality/value – This paper provides empirical support to the current paucity of research into the role of gamification in the context of the online retail experience.

Who are you and what do you value? Investigating the role of personality traits and customer-perceived value in online customer engagement

ABSTRACT While the importance of customer engagement has been widely acknowledged, a gap remains in terms of our understanding of how customers engage with products and services delivered online. Addressing this gap is important given the increasing proportion of time spent interacting with companies online and the key role of customer engagement in delivering an effective customer experience. This paper seeks to address this gap through developing a theoretical framework of online customer engagement (OCE) anchored in 28 semi-structured interviews with members of social media brand communities. This study’s contribution to the customer engagement literature is twofold. First, the study will bring new insights regarding personality traits as an antecedent of OCE and, second, customer-perceived value emerges as a novel consequence of OCE. Understanding what personality traits drive customers to engage online and what value they perceive to receive in this digital age can help managers to better segment and evaluate their customers’ online engagement. Online brand communities can be improved accordingly.

‘Mental mobility’ in the digital age: entrepreneurs and the online home-based business

Home-based online business ventures are an increasingly pervasive yet under-researched phenomenon. The experiences and mindset of entrepreneurs setting up and running such enterprises require better understanding. Using data from a qualitative study of 23 online home-based business entrepreneurs, we propose the augmented concept of ‘mental mobility’ to encapsulate how they approach their business activities. Drawing on Howard P. Beckers early theorising of mobility, together with Victor Turners later notion of liminality, we conceptualise mental mobility as the process through which individuals navigate the liminal spaces between the physical and digital spheres of work and the overlapping home/workplace, enabling them to manipulate and partially reconcile the spatial, temporal and emotional tensions that are present in such work environments. Our research also holds important applications for alternative employment contexts and broader social orderings because of the increasingly pervasive and disruptive influence of technology on experiences of remunerated work.

Big Data Surveillance and the Body-subject

This paper considers the implications of big data practices for theories about the surveilled subject who, analysed from afar, is still gazed upon, although not directly watched as with previous surveillance systems. We propose this surveilled subject be viewed through a lens of proximity rather than interactivity, to highlight the normative issues arising within digitally mediated relationships. We interpret the ontological proximity between subjects, data flows and big data surveillance through Merleau-Ponty’s ideas combined with Levinas’ approach to ethical proximity and Coeckelberg’s work on proximity in the digital age. This leads us to highlight how competing normativities, and normative dilemmas in these proximal spaces, manipulate the surveilled subject’s embodied practices to lead the embodied individual towards experiencing them in a local sense. We explore when and how the subject notices these big data practices and then interprets them through translating their experiences into courses of action, inaction or acquiescence.

Exploring reidentification risk Is anonymisation a promise we can keep

The anonymisation of personal data has multiple purposes within research: as a marker of ethical practice, a means of reducing regulation and as a safeguard for protecting respondent privacy. However, the growing capabilities of technology to gather and analyse data have raised concerns over the potential reidentification of anonymised datasets. This has sparked a wide-ranging debate among both academic researchers and policy makers as to whether anonymisation can continue to be relied upon. This debate has the potential to create important implications for market research. This paper analyses the key arguments both for and against anonymisation as an effective tool given the changing technological environment. We consider the future position of anonymisation and question whether anonymisation can retain its key role given the potential impact on both respondent trust and the nature of self-regulation within market research.

Reflections on the future of the market research industry: is market research having its ‘Kodak moment’?

In this viewpoint, the author argues there are parallels between Kodak’s inability to take advantage of the shift from print to digital and the current state of the market research industry. He warns that market researchers may double down on the client/agency business model but this is wrong as it would lead to financial decline. Market research is already too dependent on other sources of data collection, like Facebook and Google. There should be a shift away from the term market research, a use of sector expertise to address issues around ethics and there should be an openness to firms of all types who have a stake in making sure that ‘evidence matters’.

Addressing the market research skills gap

Recently, the concept of value co-creation has gained popularity as it embraces customer and operant resources into the entire value-creation process, thereby overcoming the gaps of conventional marketing. In the last decade, literature of value co-creation gave multiple definitions to clarify the concept. The overlapping definitions became a source of confusion to both academics and practitioners. Realizing this need, a detailed structured literature review was undertaken and using a thematic content analysis, 27 elements of co-creation were identified. These elements were further classified into five pillars, namely: process environment, resource, co-production, perceived benefits and management structure. The paper presents a conceptualization of value co-creation by developing a framework that integrates five categories. This research is limited to the selected articles published on value co-creation in the first decade of the twenty-first century.