Jenny van Doorn

Customer Engagement Behavior: Theoretical Foundations and Research Directions

This article develops and discusses the concept of customer engagement behaviors (CEB), which we define as the customers’ behavioral manifestation toward a brand or firm, beyond purchase, resulting from motivational drivers. CEBs include a vast array of behaviors including word-of-mouth (WOM) activity, recommendations, helping other customers, blogging, writing reviews, and even engaging in legal action. The authors develop a conceptual model of the antecedents and consequences—customer, firm, and societal—of CEBs. The authors suggest that firms can manage CEBs by taking a more integrative and comprehensive approach that acknowledges their evolution and impact over time.

Critical Incidents and the Impact of Satisfaction on Customer Share.

In business markets, the long-term nature of relationships may prompt parties to conduct “business as usual,” but negative critical incidents (CIs) can cause a destabilization of these long-term relationships. The authors develop a comprehensive dynamic model of customer loyalty to account for the impact of negative CIs on both the nature and the magnitude of the relationships between satisfaction and customer share. The results indicate that CIs trigger a stronger updating of the customer relationship, which moves customers from a business-as-usual mind-set to a reconsideration of the relationship. Furthermore, nonlinearities in the relationships are much more pronounced in the presence of CIs. Depending on the relationship quality, CIs have different consequences for customer relationships, and if relationship quality is high, a negative CI can even have a positive impact on customer share.

Customer Value Management: An Overview and Research Agenda

Customer value management has become important in marketing practice and marketing science. In this article we provide an overview of the literature on customer value management. We specifically focus on literature exploring the determinants of customer retention, customer expansion and customer lifetime value. Our overview shows that some results are consistent throughout a number of studies and are hence more generalizable, such as that commitment can be considered as an important determinant of customer retention. However, our investigation also reveals some important research gaps. Based on this, a research agenda consisting of nine research areas is outlined. Important future research issues concern the relationship between brand- and customer value management, and the development of models for optimizing CLV.

Is There a Halo Effect in Satisfaction Formation in Business-to-Business Services?

Despite the growing number of longitudinal investigations of customer satisfaction, the occurrence and type of dynamic effects within satisfaction formation has not been entirely clarified. This article explores these dynamic effects on both the level of attribute and overall service satisfaction and investigates whether the halo effect that has been identified in a business-to-consumer context also emerges in business relations. The results show that in our empirical example, within-level dynamic effects dominate, whereas halo effects are weak. In light of evidence regarding nonlinear effects in satisfaction formation, this study also investigates nonlinearities. The dynamic relations in our empirical example show a positive asymmetry, meaning that favorable satisfaction evaluations have a greater propensity to carry over to the next period than do less favorable ones. Therefore, customers in the long-term business relations of this study maintain a certain tolerance toward their service provider, which limits the diagnostic power of current satisfaction ratings to detect problems in the relationship.Despite the growing number of longitudinal investigations of customer satisfaction, the occurrence and type of dynamic effects within satisfaction formation has not been entirely clarified. This article explores these dynamic effects on both the level of attribute and overall service satisfaction and investigates whether the halo effect that has been identified in a business-to-consumer context also emerges in business relations. The results show that in our empirical example, within-level dynamic effects dominate, whereas halo effects are weak. In light of evidence regarding nonlinear effects in satisfaction formation, this study also investigates nonlinearities. The dynamic relations in our empirical example show a positive asymmetry, meaning that favorable satisfaction evaluations have a greater propensity to carry over to the next period than do less favorable ones. Therefore, customers in the long-term business relations of this study maintain a certain tolerance toward their service provider, which limits the diagnostic power of current satisfaction ratings to detect problems in the relationship.

Coproduction of Transformative Services as a Pathway to Improved Consumer Well-Being: Findings From a Longitudinal Study on Financial Counseling

Although many consumers turn to financial counseling to improve their financial well-being, the effectiveness of these counseling services remains nebulous and the exact mechanisms through which they improve consumer well-being require further research. This longitudinal research demonstrates that consumers’ coproduction of financial counseling services is pivotal for increasing their credit scores and for decreasing their financial stress. Drawing on self-determination theory, this study also shows that financial literacy, consumer involvement, and attachment styles are important drivers of coproduction. Involvement plays a moderating role, such that higher involvement substitutes for lower levels of financial literacy and mitigates the negative effects of attachment avoidance on coproduction. These findings help both counseling agencies and public policy makers improve the effectiveness of financial counseling. Financial counselors should track their customers’ objective and subjective financial literacy, involvement, and attachment styles, then segment customers, and, finally, tailor the service provision accordingly, to leverage coproduction as the pathway to consumers’ financial well-being. From a public policy perspective, the findings suggest that efforts to improve consumer financial literacy are important but should be supplemented with programs designed to increase consumer involvement in financial counseling; this combination promises to foster coproduction and improve consumers’ financial well-being.

Domo Arigato Mr. Roboto: Emergence of Automated Social Presence in Organizational Frontlines and Customers’ Service Experiences

Technology is rapidly changing the nature of service, customers’ service frontline experiences, and customers’ relationships with service providers. Based on the prediction that in the marketplace of 2025, technology (e.g., service-providing humanoid robots) will be melded into numerous service experiences, this article spotlights technology’s ability to engage customers on a social level as a critical advancement of technology infusions. Specifically, it introduces the novel concept of automated social presence (ASP; i.e., the extent to which technology makes customers feel the presence of another social entity) to the services literature. The authors develop a typology that highlights different combinations of automated and human social presence in organizational frontlines and indicates literature gaps, thereby emphasizing avenues for future research. Moreover, the article presents a conceptual framework that focuses on (a) how the relationship between ASP and several key service and customer outcomes is mediated by social cognition and perceptions of psychological ownership as well as (b) three customer-related factors that moderate the relationship between ASP and social cognition and psychological ownership (i.e., a customer’s relationship orientation, tendency to anthropomorphize, and technology readiness). Finally, propositions are presented that can be a catalyst for future work to enhance the understanding of how technology infusion, particularly service robots, influences customers’ frontline experiences in the future.

Happy Users, Grumpy Bosses: Current Community Engagement Literature and the Impact of Support Engagement in a B2B Setting on User and Upper Management Satisfaction

Managerial interest in facilitating online communities is thriving. We provide an overview of the current literature on community engagement from which we conclude that community engagement is investigated in various settings (in B2B and B2C environments), with various purposes (e.g., product support, brand communities), and shows somewhat mixed outcomes. Also, outcomes of community engagement are always investigated at the individual user level, even in B2B settings. However, in B2B networks there are often multiple layers within one organization, as the individual who uses a community is often distinct from the individual(s) responsible for purchase decisions. In the empirical part of our chapter, we go beyond the individual user by investigating how both users and upper management value the various ways their organization obtains customer support.

Commentary: Why Do We Waste So Much Food? A Research Agenda

Food waste is an important societal problem with negative consequences for food security, the environment, and consumer well-being. Every year, one-third of all edible food products for human consumption are wasted or lost in the supply chain, while at the same time around 1 billion people around the globe are malnourished. In industrialized countries, per capita food waste amounts to 95–115 kilograms per year; the food wasted at the consumer level in industrial countries almost equals the total food production in subSaharan Africa (Gustavsson et al. 2011; Naylor 2011). Avoidable food waste also has an adverse environmental impact; the global carbon footprint of food waste ranks third, after the United States and China (FAO 2013). Food waste occurs throughout the whole food supply chain, yet reducing it at the consumer or household level is seen as a priority for several reasons. First, in industrialized countries, the largest share of food waste occurs at the consumer level (Gustavsson et al. 2011). Second, once the food has been transported to the consumer and possibly prepared in-home, use of resources and environmental impact is at its maximum. Third, while a large part of food lost earlier in the supply chain is at least used, for instance, to feed animals, household food waste for the most part ends up in the trash, causing additional costs and environmental impact (Gustavsson et al. 2011; Soethoudt and Timmermans 2013). Despite the dimension and urgency of the problem, academic literature researching food waste from a consumer behavior perspective is scarce. In particular, literature uncovering the theoretical mechanisms leading to food waste is lacking. The goal of this article is to shortly summarize what we know about why food waste occurs, and to develop promising avenues for future research to tackle this important problem.Food waste is an important societal problem with negative consequences for food security, the environment, and consumer well-being. Every year, one-third of all edible food products for human consumption are wasted or lost in the supply chain, while at the same time around 1 billion people around the globe are malnourished. In industrialized countries, per capita food waste amounts to 95–115 kilograms per year; the food wasted at the consumer level in industrial countries almost equals the total food production in subSaharan Africa (Gustavsson et al. 2011; Naylor 2011). Avoidable food waste also has an adverse environmental impact; the global carbon footprint of food waste ranks third, after the United States and China (FAO 2013). Food waste occurs throughout the whole food supply chain, yet reducing it at the consumer or household level is seen as a priority for several reasons. First, in industrialized countries, the largest share of food waste occurs at the consumer level (Gustavsson et al. 2011). Second, once the food has been transported to the consumer and possibly prepared in-home, use of resources and environmental impact is at its maximum. Third, while a large part of food lost earlier in the supply chain is at least used, for instance, to feed animals, household food waste for the most part ends up in the trash, causing additional costs and environmental impact (Gustavsson et al. 2011; Soethoudt and Timmermans 2013). Despite the dimension and urgency of the problem, academic literature researching food waste from a consumer behavior perspective is scarce. In particular, literature uncovering the theoretical mechanisms leading to food waste is lacking. The goal of this article is to shortly summarize what we know about why food waste occurs, and to develop promising avenues for future research to tackle this important problem.

Customer-Firm Interactions and the Path to Profitability : A Chain-of-Effects Model

This study investigates a chain of effects to understand the causal path from customer informational inquiries (CIIs) and firm-initiated contacts (FICs) to customer profitability. Drawing on social exchange theory, our framework identifies a set of attitudinal (perceived relationship investment and relationship quality), behavioral (customer cross-buy and service usage), and financial (customer profitability) consequences of CIIs and FICs and also explores the extent to which customer-perceived financial risk and customer involvement shape attitudinal reactions to CIIs and FICs. Using longitudinal data for a sample of 1,990 customers measured in four different periods, the framework is tested in financial services by applying seemingly unrelated regression techniques. Our results reveal that FICs and CIIs are a particularly valuable tool for strengthening the relationship with customers with a low level of involvement but high perception of financial services risk. For highly involved customers, FICs and CIIs are not very effective; CIIs can even backfire if the customer also perceives the risk to be low. Our results highlight the importance of market segmentation for marketers to more effectively manage when and to whom they should target marketing activities (FICs) and steer CIIs.

Face Concerns and Purchase Intentions: A Cross-Cultural Perspective

Many multinational companies employ a premium price strategy, especially in Asian markets. Literature indicates that this is possibly due to Asian consumers’ higher face concerns (concern for self-image and/or status earned in a social network) than Western consumers. That is, Asian consumers perceive that a high price signals face. This study investigates the impact of product tangibility (watch vs. musical) and social presence (stranger vs. acquaintance vs. close friend) on the relationship between face concerns and purchase intentions for high-priced options. We classify high versus low face concern using nationality (Chinese vs. Dutch) as a proxy as literature suggests. The results show that on average, Chinese consumers are more likely to buy a high-priced product than Dutch consumers, but they do not differ with regard to high (versus low) product tangibility and social presence. The findings of this research are highly relevant for international marketers.