Jan Kietzmann

Ride on! Mobility Business Models for the Sharing Economy

The public perception of shared goods has changed substantially in the past few years. While co-owning properties has been widely accepted for a while (e.g., timeshares), the notion of sharing bikes, cars, or even rides on an on-demand basis is just now starting to gain widespread popularity. The emerging “sharing economy” is particularly interesting in the context of cities that struggle with population growth and increasing density. While sharing vehicles promises to reduce inner-city traffic, congestion, and pollution problems, the associated business models are not without problems themselves. Using agency theory, in this article we discuss existing shared mobility business models in an effort to unveil the optimal relationship between service providers (agents) and the local governments (principals) to achieve the common objective of sustainable mobility. Our findings show private or public models are fraught with conflicts, and point to a merit model as the most promising alignment of the strengths of agents and principals.

Mobility at work

Innovations in mobile technology shape how mobile workers share knowledge and collaborate on the go. We introduce mobile communities of practice (MCOPs) as a lens for understanding how these workers self-organize, and present three MCOP case studies. Working from contextual ambidexterity, we develop a typology of bureaucratic, anarchic, idiosyncratic and adhocratic MCOPs. We discuss how variations in the degree of organizational alignment and individual discretion shape the extent to which these types explore and exploit mobile work practices and approach organizational ambidexterity. This article concludes with important strategic implications for managing mobile work and practical considerations for identifying, creating, and supporting MCOPs.

Interactive Innovation of Technology for Mobile Work

Despite the increasing popularity of mobile information systems, the actual processes leading to the innovation of mobile technologies remain largely unexplored. This study uses Action Research to examine the innovation of a mobile RFID technology. Working from Activity Theory, it departs from the prevalent product-oriented view of innovation and treats technology-in-the-making as a complex activity, made possible through the interaction of manufacturers, their organisational clients and their respective mobile workers. The lens of a normative Interactive Innovation Framework reveals distinctive interaction problems that bear on the innovation activity. In addition to difficulties emerging from dissimilar motivations for the innovation project, the mobile setting presents unique contradictions based on the geographical distribution of its participants, the diverse role of mobile technology, the complexity of interacting through representations and the importance of the discretion with which mobile work activities are carried out today.

Understanding outsourcing contexts through information asymmetry and capability fit

Outsourcing is a strategic activity that has long been central to operations management research and practice. Yet, there are still many outsourcing management challenges that remain. In this article, we explore two of the outsourcing challenges that motivated this special issue and are central to the 10 articles included. To do this, we develop a theoretical model that examines how variations in capability fit and information asymmetry combine to present firms with four different outsourcing contexts. We then explain how each of the articles included in this special issue relate to our theoretical model and explore several avenues for future research.

RFID and the end of cash

RFID-embedded money is likely to mean the end of anonymous transactions and with it one of the last bastions of personal anonymity.

Branded Flash Mobs: Moving Toward a Deeper Understanding of Consumers’ Responses to Video Advertising

Ads are no longer unidirectional or one-dimensional but a blend of offline and online techniques designed to directly interact with the community. For many companies, advertising via online platforms such as YouTube and Vimeo has replaced commercials on television altogether. Recently, branded flash mobs have emerged as a popular form of viral advertising. While many branded flash mobs have experienced millions of YouTube views a metric such as view count does not fully indicate the effectiveness of the ad. This netnographic study evaluates viewers’ attitude toward the ad to better understand the effects of branded flash mobs. After examining 2,882 YouTube comments from three virally successful branded flash mob ads, a typology is developed, referred to as the archetype of consumer attitude matrix, to enable academics to formulate research questions regarding branded flash mobs. These archetypes of consumer attitudes to the online ad, in this case branded flash mobs, aid in the assessment of consumer response based on processing (cognitive versus emotive) and stance (supportive versus antagonistic). This typology also serves as a guide to marketing managers in the use of branded flash mobs in their viral campaigns. The article concludes with recommendations for future research.

Generation-C: Creative Consumers in a World of Intellectual Property Rights

Generation-C is a generational movement consisting of creative consumers, those who increasingly modify proprietary offerings, and of members of society who in turn use the developments of these creative consumers. It is argued that their respective activities, creating and using modified products, are carried out by an increasing number of people, everyday, without any moral and legal considerations. The resulting controversies associated with existing intellectual property rights are discussed, and suggestions put forward that the future can only bring conflict if such legislation is not changed so that derivative innovations are allowed to flourish. The article concludes with important messages to organisations, intellectual property rights lawyers, owners of property rights, governments and politicians, suggesting they reconsider their respective stances for the good of society.

Minding the gap: bridging computing science and business studies with an interdisciplinary innovation challenge

For todays information technology organization, working in teams across functional and even organizational boundaries has become an integral part of every project. When asked about these projects, practitioners regularly report on how grave differences between business professionals and technology teams have negatively affected project performance. The serious gap between how the two sides think, talk and work is systemic already in the training and education of both Business and Computer Science students at the university level. This paper describes the design of a competitive SFU Innovation Challenge which aims to bridge that gap by tasking interdisciplinary groups to create iPhone application prototypes and related business innovation roadmaps. This document then summarizes the objectives of the SFU Innovation Challenge, and reports on the difficulties and positive results that materialized when students combined their technological problem- solving techniques and managerial strategies for effectively confronting real-world problems.

Using Simulations in the Marketing Classroom

The verb “simulate,” from the Latin simulare, to copy, represent, or feign, has three distinct meanings in English. First, it can refer to something that imitates the appearance or character of something else, such as when an actor stoops or walks very slowly in order to portray an old person. Second, it can refer to the act of pretending, for example, in a child’s game of “playing house,” in which children pretend to be adults in a home situation. Its third, much more recent meaning refers directly to the act of producing a computer model of a complex phenomenon. Interestingly, tracking the use of the word simulate in written work and media over time (as well as its noun form “simulation” and its adjective forms “simulated” and “simulative”) shows a very rapid take-off in the 1950s and from then on. This is almost certainly due to the advent of computers, with their ability to rapidly calculate the interaction effects of the large numbers of complex variables that constitute a phenomenon. However, viewing simulation as something that can only be done by computers is, in our opinion, limiting. For the purposes of learning, the real world can indeed be copied, represented, imitated, and pretended, as well as pretended in the marketing classroom. Philip Kotler (2011) is quoted as saying that marketing takes a day to learn but a lifetime to master. Most students will find learning the fundamentals of marketing a lot easier than the principles of physics, less challenging than the complexities of studying a new language, and inevitably more exciting than an accounting course. But much of their real marketing learning will occur outside of the classroom. With the fundamentals in hand they will learn much more by observation, experimentation, and relentless practice. Stated differently, more of the learning that enables them to master marketing will occur in the real world than in the classroom. In their efforts to enhance and accelerate this learning, many marketing teachers have turned to simulations that take students as close to the edge of the real world as possible without actually falling in. Falling in might put real jobs, real reputations, real companies, and real relationships at risk. Taking students to the edge and allowing them to experience both the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat enables learning without many real liabilities. While many of the simulations used by marketing teachers require the use of computers, or the meaning of the word simulation in the third sense referred to above, marketing learning beyond the fundamentals can also occur through the other meanings of the word. It can occur by copying or imitating (e.g., a rude customer, a successful chief marketing officer), and it can happen when students pretend (e.g., to be ad copywriters, to be salespersons). In this special issue of Journal of Marketing Education, our intention was to engage as broad a perspective on simulations in the marketing classroom as possible. Thus, while some of the articles deal with the use of computerized marketing simulations, there are also articles that view simulations as imitating and pretending. The evidence from the body of work presented here suggests not only broadly that simulations enhance marketing learning but that different kinds of simulation can be very effective indeed. The special issue begins with a technique by Mills and Treen that enables students explore the nuances of valuebased pricing in an exciting and engaging way that has real potential payoffs. Students are required to “get something for free” on websites like Craigslist, and then to trade this up in a series of swaps, until they are able to sell their final trade for real money (or to keep it if they really like it). Not only do they enjoy the ups and downs of negotiation, and pocket cash, they also discover that price is not just about cost, or what an offering is worth to seller, or what competitors might be charging. Ultimately, it is mostly about what the offering is worth to the buyer. Next Flostrand, Ho, and Krider describe an exercise in which students are required to develop a marketing strategy for the most important product of all—themselves. “Marketing Me” is a drill in which alumni are brought in to engage with students in a simulated networking event context. The evidence is that the simulation enhances student understanding of segmentation, targeting, positioning, as well as enabling them to better prepare for the job and career search processes. Then Bal and her colleagues focus on how students can apply core consumer behavior concepts to a simulated advertising project with a serious objective: suicide prevention. A post hoc qualitative survey was conducted, and a 653542 JMDXXX10.1177/0273475316653542Journal of Marketing EducationKietzmann and Pitt research-article2016

The brand personalities of brand communities: an analysis of online communication

Purpose Online brand communities provide a wealth of insights about how consumers perceive and talk about a brand, rather than what the firm communicates about the brand. The purpose of this paper is to understand whether the brand personality of an online brand community, rather than of the brand itself, can be deduced from the online communication within that brand community. Design/methodology/approach The paper is empirical in nature. The authors use community-generated content from eight online brand communities and perform content analysis using the text analysis software Diction. The authors employ the five brand personality dictionaries (competence, excitement, ruggedness, sincerity and sophistication) from the Pitt et al. (2007) dictionary source as the basis for the authors’ analysis. Findings The paper offers two main contributions. First, it identifies two types of communities: those focusing on solving functional problems that consumers might encounter with a firm’s offering and those focusing on broader engagement with the brand. Second, the study serves as a blueprint that marketers can adopt to analyze online brand communities using a computerized approach. Such a blueprint is beneficial not only to analyze a firm’s own online brand community but also that of competitors, thus providing insights into how their brand stacks up against competitor brands. Originality/value This is the first paper examining the nature of online brand communities by means of computerized content analysis. The authors outline a number of areas that marketing scholars could explore further based on the authors analysis. The paper also highlights implications for marketers when establishing, managing, monitoring and analyzing online brand communities.