Essi Pöyry

Can we get from liking to buying?Behavioral differences in hedonic and utilitarian Facebook usage

Abstract Companies’ Facebook pages have emerged as a commonly used marketing channel and their importance as a sales channel is likely to increase. Details about consumers’ underlying motivations to use these pages need to be linked to their effect on the host company’s business. This study distinguishes between consumers’ hedonic and utilitarian motivations for using company-hosted Facebook pages and relates them to two types of community usage behavior: browsing and participation. The effects on variables closely linked to business performance are examined. Analysis of data collected from 1162 members of a travel agency’s Facebook page reveals that hedonic motivations indicate a higher propensity to participate in the community whereas utilitarian motivations relate more strongly to merely browsing the community page. The participating members, however, do not show intentions to buy from the host company or refer it to others, while the browsers do. For practitioners, the finding that hedonic community participants are needed to maintain the community, but that they are unlikely to profit the company, is crucial.

The Danger of Engagement: Behavioral Observations of Online Community Activity and Service Spending in the Online Gaming Context

ABSTRACT Research indicates that customer engagement in online communities has positive effects on related businesses, and that, on an aggregated level, community activity and service spending are positively related. Therefore, marketing efforts tend to focus on promoting the community activity of customers. However, aggregates might not properly reflect processes at the individual level. We argue that in contexts in which both service consumption and community activity deplete resources, the latter might actually substitute for the former. Substitution effects can emerge from reveling: customers partly satisfy their need for a service by habituating to it during engagement in communities without actually consuming it. The present study reports empirical evidence of the so-called reveling effect in the online gaming context and suggests that theories motivating a positive relationship between engagement and service spending are oversimplified; for the relatively inactive community members an increase in engagement leads to increased spending, but for the already active members increasing engagement decreases spending. For marketers, it is important to know that increases in engagement might not lead to increased spending for the already engaged individual.

Introduction to Customer Analytics and Data-Led Omnichannel Commerce Minitrack

The continued development of e-commerce, social media, online information search and business intelligence have fundamentally changed the conducting of business in all fields and industries. Virtually all businesses are now facing an omnichannel world, in which presence and activity in a number of different channels determines business success. The rise of digital communications and data has changed many things in traditional industries as more and more industries are able to understand, track, serve and sell their offerings digitally. Passing customers smoothly from one channel to another is increasingly important, and many businesses that have excelled in the digital space are turning to more traditional channels to embrace the combination opportunities. Simultaneously new media and applications, e.g. cutting edge moving image social media applications, commoditized high-definition virtual reality and algorithm-based automated procurement systems, keep the scene lively. Combining the old and the new has become a competence and a sustainable source of competitive advantage. One of the primary sources of this competitive advantage is the ability to extract timely and relevant customer data for serving customers better. Customer analytics comes in various forms, but the cutting edge of such analytics is one that starts from practical and acute needs of the customer. Such customer analytics is not legacy database-led, but deals with customer interaction, engagement and service design, and is linked to protocols of how to react to, target, automate and optimize. A minitrack concentrating on these core developments of ecommerce and e-business is proposed for HICSS-50.

Generating leads with sequential persuasion: should sales influence tactics be consistent or complementary?

Firms are becoming increasingly systematic in sales lead generation activities and recognize that multiple interactions are often required to generate leads and to reassure buyers of the benefits of an offering. However, the literature is contradictory regarding what types of persuasive messages should be used across these multiple interactions. This paper investigates what combination of sales influence tactics (SITs) should be used when customers are approached more than once regarding the same offering, that is, sequentially. Should the SITs be consistent (the same), or complementary (different)? Consistent vs. complementary SIT approaches were tested in two field experiments, one with an electronics manufacturer in a single communication channel setting and one with a financial services provider in a cross-channel setting. The results supported our hypothesis and indicated that the use of complementary SITs across interactions, regardless of the order, increases lead conversion.

Conceptualizing e-selling

This research explores and investigates the conceptualization of e-selling. A review and 42 in-depth interviews with industry experts show that e-selling is seen as an activity distinct from ecommerce, e-marketing and e-retailing - digital human-like interaction directed at increasing customer value by securing a business exchange. The article discovers 16 different interactivity cues that do not fit the traditional concepts of e-commerce and e-marketing. The results also identify several key issues for the future of e-selling, including value creation-orientation and serving hedonism.

Online information search and utilization of electronic word-of-mouth

Research on online consumer information search behavior has typically concentrated on search-type information instead of experience information. This article focuses on electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) as a source of experience information, and we study the relationships between the antecedents, amount and utilization of eWOM searched. Using survey data from 1660 customers of two travel agencies, we find that 1) the search for eWOM differs distinctively from the search for marketer-generated online content, and 2) the more eWOM is being searched, the less it is being utilized in the final purchase decision.

Towards a Governance Approach to Determinants of Reseller Management Success

Purpose In mature global B2B product markets, management of external sales channels, governed by contractual relationships, is a key determinant of business performance. However, existing sales channel management literature lacks focus on contractual governance and reseller management success. The purpose of the study is to systematically review different governance theories in relation to sales channel management, and to show which factors are the most influential in making or keeping external sales channels effective. Design/methodology/approach A case study on a large B2B ICT company is used to reflect on the way the different theoretical governance perspectives explain sales channel management success. Interviews and mini-questionnaires were used to collect data. Findings Expressions of interdependence and equality alongside persevered personal relationships are important in managing daily business activities and in avoiding bad will at the reseller’s grass-root level. Future-oriented planning, long-t...

Personalized Product Recommendations: Evidence from the Field

Targeting personalized product recommendations to individual customers has become a mainstream activity in online stores as it has been shown to increase click-through rate and sales. However, as personalization becomes increasingly commonplace, customers may feel personalized content intrusive and therefore not responding or even avoiding them. Many studies have investigated advertising intrusiveness and avoidance but a research gap on the effect of degree of personalization on customer responses based on field evidence exists. In this paper, 27,175 recommendation displays from five different online stores are analyzed. The results show that the further the customer is in the purchasing process, the more effective personalization is if it is based on information about the present rather than past browsing session. Moreover, recommendations in passive form are more effective than recommendations in active form suggesting the need to dispel the perception of intrusiveness.