Hedon Blakaj

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.